My computer decided to bite the dust this morning

So, there was a specific reason why I wasn't around today. My computer decided it would bite the dust this morning. Not sure what happened, but she wouldn't turn on. No mobo light so that was a very bad sign.

I'm on a laptop right now so I'm not sure whether it was the PSU going out or the mobo possibly going bad. Come to think of it, she's had problems recently.

:( R.I.P.

Was it an old computer, or what? What were the specs?

Sorry to hear that. I'd be interested in knowing what kind of a computer it was, as well, especially how old it was.

I know my computer's close to 12 years old now (one of the first wave of Windows XP systems), so I've been fearing the day when it finally decides to pack it in.

In all seriousness, though, that has to suck. I had a laptop die on me a year or so ago. Sad day.

Are you able to get important files out of your hard drive, or has that crapped out too? I'm also interested in knowing the specifications of the computer and its age; its untimely death might have just been due to its antiquity.

She's only two and a half years old, so she's not that old. I suspect the rest of my parts are fine, anyway.

Motherboard: Asus M4A87TD (USB 3.0)
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium x64
CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 940 @3.0 GHz (Black Edition Deneb)
RAM: Mushkin 2GB DDR3-SDRAM PC3-12800 x4 (8 GB)
Video: Zotac GeForce GTS 250 @512MB memory
Sound: Via HD audio

Do you get a post from the mobo? Have you reset the cmos battery? Could it just be the power switch? Do you have access to an old CPU you could test with?

Were you playing around with any settings beforehand or did it simply just die out of the blue?

Also I doubt it's a faulty PSU those things are resilient, a CPU will die long before PSU does.

Sorry for the delay, been busy with Pokemon rom hacking with my laptop.

No post from the mobo, I would usually get one every morning. It just wouldn't turn on. I checked the power switch on the PSU, no luck either way. I only have one CPU. I tried reinserting the cmos battery, nothing happened. I wasn't fiddling with any settings, so it just died out of the blue.

Vendak said:

Also I doubt it's a faulty PSU those things are resilient, a CPU will die long before PSU does.

Click to expand...

Actually, that's not the case at all. CPU failure rates are VERY VERY LOW. Unless you're overclocking wrongly and pumping too much voltage through it for an extended period of time, they just don't die (even then, they tend to degrade, rather than die outright - you can turn a motherboard on without a CPU, it will just beep and fail to POST)

PSUs on the other hand, especially consider the number of low-quality/budget models, fail fairly often. In my experience (during 3 years as a PC repair tech), PSUs are a high-failure-rate item (as are HDDs, memory) and I have seen ONE bad CPU, which was on a system in a highly polluted-air environment, where the air was slowly corroding components - so it's not even a normal failure. To clarify further, that CPU did not die outright, it just wasn't stable at stock speed (200MHz under was fine).

If it won't turn on AT ALL (no noise, no fans, no lights), then it's probably 85% likely to be the PSU and 15% the motherboard. There are... questionably-safe ways of testing if the PSU will turn on by hotwiring two specific pins on the 24-pin plug, but the safest way (for you, not the parts) is to borrow or buy a new PSU and try it. Even if the mobo is dead, the PSU fan should kick in, so it's almost certainly the PSU.

Of course, in the event that the PSU blew catastrophically, it could have taken out other components. Not that common, but keep it in mind during troubleshooting. Good luck!