Pc Died Randomly, PSU Clicks But Isnt Dead

[worldisablaze]

Hi all, I'm new to the forum but have been building for some years now. I had build a pc almost a year ago now and it has been serving well as an HTPC and VR box in my living room. When I first put it together, I powered it on, the PSU "clicked," all the fans spun, and i got a bios screen. So naturally i put it all together in a Node 202, loaded windows onto it, and it worked just fine. I did notice that everytime i would boot it up, though, the PSU would "click", but it would be fine, windows loaded, games ran fine, nothing out of the ordinary. The clicking also happened when the computer would power off.

 

Specs:

ASRock A320M-ITX AM4

AMD Ryzen 5 1600

Noctua NH-L9i

Corsair Vengeance LPX 16gb (2x8gb)

Samsung 850 Evo sata

WD blue 1tb 2.5"

Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1660 Ti 

Corsair SF 450 W 80+ Gold

All wrapped up in a Node 202

 

Fast forward to today, tried to turn on the HTPC, PSU "clicked" like it always did, but nothing came on screen, then i would hear another "click", the PC turned off, then "click", and it was back on. It would do this for as long as i let it, which was like 5 mins at the most. So to hardware troubleshooting, i ripped it all down to just a single ram stick and CPU, still getting the same thing. So now thinking its the PSU, I find an old mobo and CPU from a previous build, break it out, and power it up with the Corsair PSU. Vualá! It powered on, and stayed on just fine. So then back to the HTPC board and CPU, i grab a known good PSU from another previous build, plug that one in, which is a Rosewill Capstone 550m, and of course, it "clicks," powers on, no display, "click" power off, "click" power on.

 

So with all of this said, what the heck is going on? Do i now expect to have a bad CPU or mobo? Im certain its not the PSU's at this point. Im just so confused on why it worked for 11 months, then decided to stop today.

 

Any help would be appreciated, Thanks.

[Cam B]

Sounds to me like its a motherboard problem. the clicking could have been from capacitors being strained or bad power delivery to the board itself

 

[Pickles von Brine]

Yeah sounds like a board to me. 

[Spotty]

14 minutes ago, worldisablaze said:

I did notice that everytime i would boot it up, though, the PSU would "click", but it would be fine, windows loaded, games ran fine, nothing out of the ordinary. The clicking also happened when the computer would power off.

Your PSU has a relay switch. The click you hear when you switch the system on or when the system turns off is the sound of the relay.

 

From the behaviour you described the system is stuck in a boot loop. Try clearing the CMOS for the board and see if it will boot. If that doesn't help try reseating the CPU in the socket.

[worldisablaze]

12 minutes ago, Spotty said:

From the behaviour you described the system is stuck in a boot loop. Try clearing the CMOS for the board and see if it will boot. If that doesn't help try reseating the CPU in the socket.

I have reseatted the CPU once already but that didn't seem to help. I haven't tried to clear CMOS but embaressed to say i never have haha. I know how to move the jumper to the correct pins, do i need to power on the system after i put the jumper on 2-3? Or does the CMOS just reset while the board is unpowered?

Edit: nevermind found the answer

[Spotty]

1 minute ago, worldisablaze said:

I have reseatted the CPU once already but that didn't seem to help. I haven't tried to clear CMOS but embaressed to say i never have haha. I know how to move the jumper to the correct pins, do i need to power on the system after i put the jumper on 2-3? Or does the CMOS just reset while the board is unpowered?

Should be able to do it when it's off since it's powered by the CMOS battery, but honestly I've never tried using the jumper before I've always just removed the battery.

[worldisablaze]

I literally cant find a CMOS battery on this board idk if im blind or not, so im going with plugging in cpu and 24 pin power and using the jumper for 5 mins. I'll have to see what that does.

 

Edit: Found the CMOS battery, i didn't realize on MITX boards that it wasn't socketed onto the board, the battery is glued to the back of the USB ports behind the i/o shield, then connected to the board with wires.

[worldisablaze]

Spotty, you deserve a raise. After clearing CMOS it booted just fine, thank you so much for the help. I wish i would have asked for help sooner, now the 2hr journey of rebuilding in the Node. Thanks again, I seriously thought i had a dead board.