Hi - My PC is dead. Shut it down fine on Saturday morning, but now the switch does nothing. :( The switch itself has been hooked up to a voltmeter and it is working. I have tried bridging the pins on the mobo too, and it seems to be dead. Power is getting in fine as well as there is an LED light on the mobo next to the pins for the LED lights on the front. Just won't fire up. :(

Mobo is an Asus M2N8-VMX, with an AMD dual core processor. Has been 100% reliable up to now as well.

In addition I have unscrewed the mobo from the case and it seems OK from behind and nothing would indicate what the issue is (and I am one of the least techie PC people around Changing a ram chip is about my limit )

Any ideas? I think I may need a new mobo, and if I do, can anyone recommend a good mobo to replace this asus, one preferably I can continue to use my processor as well? I'm not sure what chip it is, but I know the HDD uses a sata connection.

Thanks.

Could still be the PSU - I have a ton of 'dead' PCs at the moment that I'm trying out, and most of the time the power supply is to blame.

I also think its the power supply. The light being on is not really an indication that the supply is working. The supply outputs many different voltages, it could be the one thats powering the LED (+5v usually) is still working but the other +12v is blown.

I just added up how many PSUs are naff now - 5 so far :eek:

Hopefully can test the PSU.

If you have another (good quality, high power rating) PSU I'd stick that in.

What brand/spec is the existing PSU?

Could still be the PSU - I have a ton of 'dead' PCs at the moment that I'm trying out, and most of the time the power supply is to blame.

I'd agree. 9 times out of 10 it's the PSU.

Indeed, many cheap PSU's can struggle to even reach their rating and quality can be variable.

Well, after removing the PSU it had a tell tale stink from it, so have bought it's equivalent from PC World tonight. Prob not the cheapest @ just under £30, but I need this PC up and running. It's not power hungry though and I suspect the snow probably caused some local power issues which has cooked the PSU over the weekend. I will try to disconnect the PC from the mains when it's turned off in future.

I would try the PSU first - cheaper option too. Have you tried unplugging all drives and taking out the memory just to see if you can get it to beep? This is what I sometimes do to rule out a couple of things.

My brothers pc played up at the beginning of the year - would power off when maximising an application. Replaced the PSU with another 600W PSU second hand - fine for a week - then started playing up. Again diagnosed it back to the PSU. Bought a new one - problem sorted

Most of the power useage is by the CPU and the graphics card(s) these days. You do need a bit of slack for an optical drive when burning DVDs though.

Just to put things into perspective, I am getting a few things up and running again, and so far every single PC that died was due to a sh*te el-cheapo-nastio power supply. Fan failed, or just blown. In some cases I just had to get the machine going to see if anything useful was on them, and if not, chuck it out as they're too old to do anything useful with.

I generally recommend buying a branded PSU, and one that is comfortably loaded, so the temperatures stay low(ish). In the case of unbranded cheap(er) PSUs, check the continuous load it can take as often the max figures are insanely optimistic and at low temperatures that you will not hit in a real life normal case without extra fans etc to help keep them low.

Yep - PSU was duff. However, my switch was also duff as it still didn't work when I fitted the new PSU. So, now I have pulled the wires out for the switch and I have to "hotwire" the PC to turn it on! Like I care, at least it works!

can always connect up the reset switch instead

If you have a pic of the broken switch (or dimensions etc) I probably have one - slowly trying to get things going again here

It's a tiny square box about 1cm cube, And it's in the bin. I don't really care as I'll be driving this PC into the ground so hotwiring it is fine for me.

In that case, you could use the mains power on/off switch if you're lucky enough to have the 'power on after AC loss' or equivalent bios option, just set that to 'power on' or similar

You'd just shut it down as per normal, then flick off at the mains. When you flick the power back on, the PC will boot up