Strange Power Related Issues

[ScarcelyChubby]

Hi all,

 

For the past couple months I've been having a very strange issue that seems to be related to my PC's power.

 

The issue is that the PC will seemingly not boot at random, sometimes it will start without issue, other times it will show no signs of life, no LEDs, no peripherals lighting up (I do not have a buzzer connected, so there is no starting beep either). I'm not sure how pertinent it is, but when I plug in the displayport cable my monitor turns on and says no signal before going to sleep.

 

The only way I've determined to get it to start again is to leave it for a while and hope it powers on. The timeframe for this to occur is also random, sometimes I will wait five minutes and it will start, other times I have to wait 5 days before it will start again. I am aware that a common fix for problems like this is to unplug and hold the power button for 30 seconds to flush the capacitors, however this doesn't work for me. Other fixes I have tried include reseting the bios, turning off fast boot, getting rid of dust, reseating the memory, clean installing drivers with DDU, updating my motherboard bios, trying to start with all peripherals unplugged and even a clean install of windows. 

 

I should also mention that I don't believe this is a hardware issue either, I've had this issue for so long now that I've upgraded nearly every component of the PC for performance reasons and just to see if it will fix the issue. Despite replacing every componen bar the HDD and SSD, some multiple times, the issue still persists. My previous and current specs are below:

 

CPU:

i5 4460 > R5 2600

 

MOBO:

Some old Intel board > ASRock b350 k4 Fatal1ty > ASRock b450 pro4

 

RAM: 

HyperX 8GB DDR3 1866mhz > GSkill Ripjaws V 16GB DDR4 2800mhz (I've also tried a GSkill Ripjaws 4 kit that didn't fix the issue aswell) 

 

GPU: 

 

Gigabyte GTX 970 > MSI Armour GTX 1070ti > Stock Sapphire RX 5700xt 

 

PSU: Corsair VS650 > Silverstone Strider Essential 750W

 

Case:

Deepcool Tesseract BF > NZXT h500i

 

I've tried pretty much everything that I've found on other forums, so now that I've run out of forums to browse for fixes I thought I would create my own post. 

 

I'm genuinely puzzled as to what could be causing this at this point, the only components I haven't changed are the HDD and SSD, and I don't see how those could be responsible for an issue of this nature. My suspicion is that the problem has something to do with the power in my house, I know it isn't the extension boards I'm using as I've tried multiple and even plugged it directly into the wall socket with no success. It also doesn't work in any other rooms in my house. It is the only electrical device that shows any problems though, I have a PS4 and an Xbox One X in the same room both of which work perfectly fine. 

 

If anyone has any ideas as to what could be causing such an issue, whether it be with my houses electrical circuit or the PC itself, please let me know. I have no idea what to try next as I feel like I've tried everything at this point, so if you find something I may have overlooked feel free to point it out below. 

 

Any help is appreciated. 

 

[MrSimplicity]

2 hours ago, ScarcelyChubby said:

Any help is appreciated. 

 

Just a shot in the dark and after looking at this for like 30 minutes... What's the humidity like where you are? I can't imagine that's the issue but if you've replaced almost everything i can only think that either it's so dry there's a lot of static in the air or it's so humid that it's shorting. And somehow in the complete off chance, unplugg your HDD and SSD and try starting it. It will come up with a no boot drive error message but if it can turn it on like that with no issue. sometimes the least likely component can be the culprit. 

[ScarcelyChubby]

4 hours ago, MrSimplicity said:

Just a shot in the dark and after looking at this for like 30 minutes... What's the humidity like where you are? I can't imagine that's the issue but if you've replaced almost everything i can only think that either it's so dry there's a lot of static in the air or it's so humid that it's shorting. And somehow in the complete off chance, unplugg your HDD and SSD and try starting it. It will come up with a no boot drive error message but if it can turn it on like that with no issue. sometimes the least likely component can be the culprit. 

Ok I tried unplugging the HDD and SSD without any luck. But you might be on to something there with the humidity thing. I live on the east coast of Australia so humidity is quite bad. I also live on the coast so salt air is usually a problem too, but considering how new most of my components are this shouldn't be an issue yet.

[Gegger]

short out the front panel power pins on the mobo, see if that works

[ScarcelyChubby]

6 hours ago, Gegger said:

short out the front panel power pins on the mobo, see if that works

Thanks for the advice, when I had my old case I did suspect the power button might be faulty so I gave this a shot. Unfortunately it didn't work, and I got a new case so I doubt it is the power button. I will still give it another shot when I get home. 

[Palden]

This is going to sound really weird, but check your standoffs and make sure all the screws are making good connection with the mobo. Some mobos actually use the screws to the case as a ground for some rails and maybe one of them isn't making a good connection? Other than that, if you think you have dirty main power causing an issue, pick up a small UPS and try running your computer off of that. I haven't had a problem with APC UPSes and they're generally pretty cheap too