Old Alienware Aurora R4 won't start

[Davidbunz]

Hi All, 

 

I have this old Alienware that had been running for years, recently I've noticed sometimes when performing certain tasks it would randomly freeze and the only way to recover is to force shut the PC and restart. That is until two days ago that the PC completely stopped from starting up. 

 

Specs:

GPU: Nvidia Geforce GTX 770

CPU: Intel i7-4930K

RAM: 16GB (4X4GB) 1600MHz DDR3

PSU: unknown brand that comes with the PC

Basically everything in this machine was the original that comes with this PC when it is first purchased, the only thing I've added was a Wifi card. I know this is an old machine and plan to replace with a new one shortly. But I still want to figure out which part had failed on me and want to at least turn it back on again. 

 

Current Situation:

At the moment when you press the 'power button' of the PC, it will have power running through the machine, with all fans running and lights on the power lights. But it displays no image to the monitors at all. It has no beeping or warning noise at all and just sit there in IDLE for ever. 

 

Things I've Tried:

• I've removed every USB connections and even the mouse and keyboard, currently the only connection is a power supply cable and display connection to single monitor. 
• I've tested the PSU using the built in Dell PSU BIST, the power supply has a green light and the fans are all running. 
• I've removed all the memory from this machine and tried to start that way, the motherboard has 2 BEEPING noise, which from my search on the manual, it indicates "No Memory", when I put it back in again, the BEEPING noise disappears. So I assume the motherboard at least still has the ability to check for those errors. 
• I've used a different memory stick from another working PC to put into this system. Still the same thing happens. No image on monitor, no warning sounds, just sit here with fan spinning forever.
• I've removed the CMOS cell battery and left it for few hours before putting it back in. 
• I know the BIOS is updated to the latest version, because few months ago I was curious and wanted to update the BIOS, but it showed that it was already the latest version.
• I've removed the hard drives from this PC to extract some of my important documents, that seems to be working fine on other PC.

Really running out of ideas, anyone has a good suggestion on where to look?

 

[jwwagner25]

maybe dead video card if you aren't getting display out. No splash screen, boot logo, nothing? I would guess video card. Considering the troubleshooting you've already done, for me, the next steps would have to include swapping out for different hardware - starting w/ graphics card. Can you try plugging straight into the motherboard, assuming the CPU has integrated option? 

[Davidbunz]

No boot logo, nothing on screen. I know the monitor works, because I've tried it on my laptop and I was able to use it as an extended display. 

 

Unfortunately, I can't connect straight through the motherboard, as this is not a option on this machine. I'll try test out the graphics card again tomorrow on a different PC.

[Davidbunz]

Update, tested the GPU on a different PC, worked perfectly...

[Peltius977]

On 6/13/2021 at 4:30 AM, Davidbunz said:

Update, tested the GPU on a different PC, worked perfectly...

Hi, I have the exact same issue with my R4 , did you fixed it ??

[Npi2]

Same here. Please did someone solve it???

On 11/23/2021 at 9:06 AM, Peltius977 said:

Hi, I have the exact same issue with my R4 , did you fixed it ??