PC Boot Probs - Mobo Shorting?

[bayflats]

Hi All,
I have been having a lot of probs with my PC with it suddenly just shutting off. My GPU was causing so I replaced that. PC was fine for a few days then suddenly boom - all off and reboot. After which it stayed alive for between one and five minutes. All the temps seemed fine on CPUZ and GPUZ. Finally I decided to strip the whole thing down and check for any shorts.

Only prob I don't really know what I am looking for. There were no obvious exposed wires, loose screws or other marks. So right now I have cleaned dust and reseating the mobo, ram and gpu. I took some pics of the screw holes as they looked a little dodgy.

Any other ideas? Thanks.

 

[Blaylock]

Are you overclocked at the moment?

Can you post your FULL system like in my sig?

How many sticks of RAM are you running?

 

[Johan45]

Also try a different power supply if you have one available or you could borrow.

 

[redduc900]

Try assembling the board outside of the case, w/ it sitting on a non-conductive surface, and not mounted to a MB tray.

 

[bayflats]

Blaylock - I am writing this from my phone. For some reason it didn't add my sig. I am not OC at all. X58 sabertooth, i7-950, 3x2gb ram, win 8.1, dell 2408 and 2007, r9-270x, corsair hx850 psu

Johan - I don't have access to another psu unf. That's my other big concern.

Reduc - ah that a great idea. Will try that.

 

[Blaylock]

OK, lets start with the obvious.

Reset the CMOS. See if the problem persists.

If yes, Unplug and pull all RAM except one stick. See if problem persists.

 

[LoganG]

I agree with redduc900, try that and post back.

 

[Diggrr]

I know it sounds silly, but make sure that all the motherboard standoff's have a matching hole in the motherboard. (the stand offs are the brass posts that the screws fasten into, behind the motherboard).
I've seen an extra one cause intermittent problems several times before...

 

[Blaylock]

Nice call diggr. That'd do it too.

 

[bayflats]

I have a HAF922 case which has mounting screws for both itx and mini itx boards. As such there are one or maybe two screws that do not correspond to the itx board i have and so sit below the board. Is there a way to check if those screws are touching the board? But if that was the case then the shorts would occur all the time no? I have had this setup for around 3yrs and only in the last 3 months has it been playing up. Also in terms of testing... sometimes it would shut off 10 times in a row and sometimes work ok for weeks on end.

I have cleaned everything out, reseated the mobo, cleaned up the wiring and cleared CMOS. The board is in the case right now but should the prob occur again then I will remove and rebuild outside the case as suggested.

I have attached a photo of what one of the mounting screw holes looks like. Is it OK?

Tks

 

[ShrimpBrime]

Test the power supply.

 

[Blaylock]

That screw hole looks ok. It's not an electrical connection perse'. Sounds like either your PSU is dying or you have a bad stick of ram in there.

Just for bleeps and giggles. How old is your surge protector? I've had a faulty one cause this before with other electronics.

 

[bayflats]

Hi, so I reset CMOS as suggested and have taken 2 sticks of ram out to test the third on a particular slot. The PC just died on me, so I will be switching that out for another stick, in another slot. I thought triple channel memory needed to go in 'sets' of 3?

I am getting my hands on a friends PSU and will test that out. I had tested my PSU a little back with a MM and got stable results, but I never tested it on load. I have tried looking for videos on the matter. How does the process differ from using a paper clip (which I cant do as its all live)?

My surge protector power strip is..... nope I just have a power strip no surge protection which is now around 2yrs old. I live in Hong Kong and I have never heard or experienced any power abnormalities - but yes I should get one.

Thanks

 

[Johan45]

Here's a link to some testing guides http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=403837

 

[bayflats]

Many thanks. I have a trip coming up so it will be a couple weeks before I can test this out.
Will post back.

 

[bayflats]

Hi All. So after a vacation and sometime of stable use from the PC I started getting the same issues again of it randomly restarting. As suggested earlier in the thread I took everything out of the case and rebuilt the PC outside (on top of the mobo box). Again it was fine for a little while (a week) and then its started doing the same thing again. I have checked the wires and there is no fraying or anything touching parts of the mobo. So can we rule out shorting for sure?

I still havent got my hands on another PSU. Is that now the main suspect?

Tks

 

[Blaylock]

Have you tested the RAM yet? I would run Memtest86+ to make sure you don't have a bad memory stick before replacing the PSU. If the memory checks out than it's most likely the PSU.

 

[bayflats]

Hi Blaylock,

Thanks for the response. I was actually away on a work project so wasnt near the PC for a little while. I have tested the RAM sticks in all the slots and its still causing random restarts. However something interesting happened when I returned home and switched the PC on.

My boot drive is a OCZ Vertex 3 SSD and all of a sudden the BIOS couldnt see it. As it happens I have an old Windows on one of my hard drives and that kicked in allowing me to get into Windows. The wife also reported that she got some wierd "Missing boot files" error which then randomly disappeared when she restarted the machine. At the moment the SSD power is on and I have checked the cables and the SATA ports on the mobo, so the only remaining culprit is that the SSD is dead. Is there anything else I can do to try and get the SSD to return to life as it does have a decent amount of info that I need to get back.

I am wondering if this was the problem all along. Maybe the random resets were due to the SSD slowly dying rathet than RAM or PSU. Is this plausible?

 

[Arbiter Odie]

Huh. Vertex 3's were notorious for randomly disconnecting themselves from the sata controller while in use. I wonder if yours was doing that. It actually happened to anandtech.

 

[bayflats]

Funny, there is actually a post on the OCZ forum with the exact same complaint that I have... just going through those suggestions now...