HELP

[WorriedBratVT]

Heya, so, as a preface, I'm a vtuber. I have non-professional experience with building and upgrading gaming/streaming rigs. Keyword:non-professional. This build has been a long and wild ride. I have ADHD, so bear with me if this thread is all over the place. 

 

I started with a refurb Lenovo think center m92, which I upgraded the ram on and barely skirted by for my streaming needs. 

 

I have been planning an upgrade, working from this computer as a base which I transferred the components into a larger tower a few months ago to accomodate my upgrades. Everything was working fine. On a side note, I haven't done a build in several years, so I had to relearn a lot of the newer stuff. No big deal. 

 

So, I upgrade the psu as the old one was only 150 watt, I upgrade the cpu,  and add a graphics card. Everything I'm buying is refurb. And yes, I've verified everything is compatible. I've done both the no post troubleshooting in this forum as well as toms hardware except for resetting the battery on the mobo. 

 

When I initially did the install, I had everything pulled out and ready while I waited for the cpu. I was sent the wrong cpu by accident, so I had to wait to be sent a new one. As my livelihood is in my ability to stream regularly, I decided to put the old cpu back in while I waited for the replacement so I could continue to stream as all I was waiting for at this point was the cpu. Unfortunately when I did this, I seated it just slightly off and bent the pins on the motherboard. Had to order a new motherboard. 

 

Another week passes while I wait, and mind you, I hadn't yet had a chance to test or troubleshoot anything at this point. 

 

I get the new motherboard, and the correct cpu. I put it all together. But it wouldn't post. So I did the entire troubleshooting list numerous times, including swapping out to the old cpu, and determined the issue was somewhere *waves vaguely around the cpu*. By that I mean, both cpus were fine, no pins were bent on the motherboard, but neither cpu was working for some reason. 

 

So I'm confused and in a panic, cuz so far I haven't been streaming for a total of three weeks and being without a pc is driving me insane, and I dont have the extra cash to take it to a tech. I've already dropped 1300 at this point and mad at myself for not just buying a prebuilt. I guess it was my pride. 

 

 I look for a mobo speaker, and can't find the one I know I have, so I order a new one last night to try to figure out where the problem is. 

 

Then when I wake up today, it dawns on me that maybe the cpu isnt getting power. So I swap out to my old psu, but realize it isn't compatible with the new mobo. Instead of ordering adapters, I figure, okay, the speaker will be here in a few days, so I will just check that when the speaker gets here. So I put the old power supply back in and turn it on to verify everything is back together correctly and that I'm where I was before. 

 

The breaker trips. 

 

I check the breaker, and it didn't trip the fuse box. Which tells me it's an issue I have regularly in this old apartment that my landlord refuses to fix. There is one wall where all the outlets like to just randomly shut off for a few hours when they are under too much load. I have a quality surge protector which also didn't trip, so I'm like okay, I'll just go to a different outlet and try it again. 

 

But now, instead of simply not posting, the system fans cycle. Previously, everything would power on and work, but I wouldn't post. 

 

Cpu fan stays on. Hard drive light is on, graphics card is on, and I hear the usual whirring. But the system fans power on and then cycle immediately back off. 

 

So now I'm just terrified to touch it at this point. I'm not even sure if the speaker will help now and I'm angry at my impatience. 

 

Did I fry something when that outlet tripped? Is it possible that if this is a short in the psu leading to the cpu that something else shorted in the psu?

 

Im panicked now. How bad IS this?

[emosun]

Add a tldr

[MadAnt250]

10 minutes ago, WorriedBratVT said:

cpu

Listen... You typed all this out but did not exactly tell us the details of what parts you have.

[Zalosath]

11 minutes ago, WorriedBratVT said:

--SNIP--

Okay - sounds pretty bad, computers huh?

 

I would wait for your buzzer, chances are it will still give you a code that you can post here to get some advice. If your PSU was a good standard then it will have hopefully protected the rest of your components against a surge - hopefully, but by the sounds of it, your PSU is now broken.

 

Just as a word of advice, I would not recommend getting adapters for a PSU, unless it's sold by the same company that makes the power supply and even then it can be a bad idea, they could be mismatched and make things significantly worse.

 

The troubleshoot list does say to do a BIOS update, so just to confirm, definitely do that if you haven't, albeit, wait until you get your buzzer for further testing. 

 

I think the chance of your components being affected is low but obviously not non-existent, so just be careful what you do from here, and treat each component with care, especially the PSU.

 

And obviously best of luck to you, hope it all turns out good. 

[Needfuldoer]

9 minutes ago, WorriedBratVT said:

There is one wall where all the outlets like to just randomly shut off for a few hours when they are under too much load.

Get in your landlord's ear about this and don't back off until they at least investigate. Best case, it's a shared wall and your outlets are tied in with your neighbor's circuit, so when they trip their breaker your outlets are down for the count until they reset it. Worst case, you've got a loose electrical connection somewhere, which has the potential to cause an electrical fire.

 

As for your PCs, pull the motherboard back out and check to make sure you don't have any extra standoffs that are accidentally grounding random things to the chassis.

[WorriedBratVT]

15 minutes ago, Zalosath said:

Okay - sounds pretty bad, computers huh?

 

I would wait for your buzzer, chances are it will still give you a code that you can post here to get some advice. If your PSU was a good standard then it will have hopefully protected the rest of your components against a surge - hopefully, but by the sounds of it, your PSU is now broken.

 

Just as a word of advice, I would not recommend getting adapters for a PSU, unless it's sold by the same company that makes the power supply and even then it can be a bad idea, they could be mismatched and make things significantly worse.

 

The troubleshoot list does say to do a BIOS update, so just to confirm, definitely do that if you haven't, albeit, wait until you get your buzzer for further testing. 

 

I think the chance of your components being affected is low but obviously not non-existent, so just be careful what you do from here, and treat each component with care, especially the PSU.

 

And obviously best of luck to you, hope it all turns out good. 

Thank you, this is mostly what I was getting at. I was wondering the likelihood that something got fried when that outlet went out. It's a good psu, evga, and that was the one thing I bought new, so fingers crossed. 

 

As another poster suggested, I'm also going to check the posts on the mobo/tower. But at this point, I'm not touching anything until that speaker gets here. 

[WorriedBratVT]

56 minutes ago, Caroline said:

Prebuilts suck.

Completely normal landlord behaviour, unfortunately. Ok so, that shouldn't happen, trust me, outlets -or sockets- don't "randomly shut off", they must be wired to a self-reset circuit breaker, but why does it trip? could be bad wiring, a breaker that's not rated for the circuit or physical damage. Tell your landlord negligence causes fires, and that an apartment that's burnt to a crisp can't be rented.

Also breakers and fuses? sounds like a cheap improvement was done there in a hurry, because you either get fuses or breakers, not both, from what you're saying a safety inspector would have a feast in that apartment.

Pretty sure that's against any serious electrical code, it's ought to be.

 

 

About the PC itself, not knowing what mobo and CPU you're using limits my guesses, power cycling could be caused by an incompatible CPU due to an outdated BIOS, it was a normal issue with 1st gen AM4 boards and newer Ryzen CPUs.

Yeah, the landlord here is terrible, and I can't really afford the risk of any trouble it may cause to raise a fuss about it unfortunately. I wish there was more I could do about it other than making my landlord angry over raising a fuss. These apartments are old af, and basically falling apart. 

 

As for the cpu, I know it's compatible, and it's not a bios issue. I already troubleshooted all of that on both boards and both the original cpu as well as the new one. I also started having the same issue with the previous cpu on the old board before I bent the pins on that board, and at that point the only thing I had changed was the psu. I was mid troubleshoot on that board when I bent the pins. So, logical deduction here was that the cpu simply wasn't getting power. It's just unfortunate that it took me forever to figure that out. 

 

I'm just not touching it at this point til I get the speaker and can get a code. I'm too frustrated and don't want to make a mistake. And if I'm being honest, knowing at this point I may have messed up the psu after that weird surge moment in the outlet, I may just go ahead and replace the psu before I even do the speaker test just to be on the safe side, as I don't have anything else to test the psu in and I don't trust myself with the wiring to do those manual tests that I see some threads about. 

[WorriedBratVT]

Just an update on this:

 

First, the landlord finally sent out an electrician. They think a wire is loose on the circuit. They can't find where it's at until it trips again, so that's in limbo at the moment. 

 

Second, the mobo speaker came. The beeps are indicating something is wrong with either the psu or the mobo, it's the same code for both, so I'm replacing the psu first. That may be the original issue but there also may be something new entirely after that surge, so for the time being I'm just waiting for that to get here before I do any other troubleshooting. Hopefully if there's another issue the speaker can help me not be flying blind with this. I genuinely think that originally there was something going on where the cpu wasn't getting power, maybe a short in that specific wire, but we will see. With the way the wiring is in this apartment, I simply don't feel comfortable doing any manual tests like the paperclip test. 

 

As for the memory, I troubleshooted all of that. I made sure everything was seated properly, I made sure they were positioned based on the manual, and I tested each one individually as well to make sure there wasn't one or two of them that were no longer working. It's why I was so stumped on this. Everything appears to be working, including both cpus, and I even used the original cpu and mobo at one point to make sure there wasn't a bios update issue. This happened on both the original mobo and the new mobo, with both the original cpu and the new cpu. The only thing I can figure is that maybe the cpu wasn't getting power. Everything else was functioning, and the cpus aren't bad. 

[WorriedBratVT]

Okay, still no post. 

 

I got the new psu, that resolved the issue I was having after the power surge incident. 

 

Still no post though, nothing on the monitor. All the fans light up, everything seems to be functional, but nothing. 

 

So, I pulled everything out, reseated the grounding pins on the tower to make sure nothing was wrong there, and put it all back together. 

 

Still nothing. 

 

The mobo speaker isnt any help at this point. It's not giving me any beeps. Initially, that would have meant it was the psu. I literally just replaced that. 

 

I also have it bare bones rn. I don't have the graphics card in, running the hdmi through the onboard graphics so I know it's not an issue with the graphics card. 

 

I'm stumped. Should I try to reset the cmos? That's the only thing I haven't tried yet. 

 

I'll post the build info in a separate reply, just gotta get over to a new tab which I can't do on this phone. 

 

 

[WorriedBratVT]

Heres the build info..  

 

Psu: EVGA 100-N1-0400-L1 , 400 N1, 400W, 100-N1-0400-L1

 

Cpu: intel Core i7 i7-3770 3.40 GHz Processor - Socket H2 LGA-1155

 

Mobo: Gigabyte GA-B75M-D3H DP LGA1155 MAX-32GB DDR3 UATX PCIE16 LAN GBE

 

Ram and hard drive are carried over from what I had on the original pc that I upgraded from. 

 

Also worth noting if you missed this in the previous replies, I was having this same issue in the original motherboard with the original cpu. I only swapped out the motherboard when I bent the pins trying to reseat the cpu. I got impatient waiting on the new cpu and put the old one back in, which is when I started having the no post issue. Now I'm having the same issue with the new cpu on the new mobo. 

[WorriedBratVT]

I reset the cmos. 

Still nothing. 

I'm completely dumbfounded at this point.