New motherboard, new HDD, but something is still wrong...

[mclarenfan86]

Hi. I have a friend who had an Albatron PX865PE7C Pro with a Samsung 160 GB HDD. A couple weeks ago he was  having trouble with it randomly shutting off and freezing. We tried replacing the power supply with some old ones, but they didn't help. So we kept the original that seemed to be working fine. Upon putting it back in, the computer would not turn on at all. The CPU fan would turn a few times, but that is all. We tested the power supply on a different machine and it seemed to work fine. We have since replaced the motherboard with a Gigabyte 8I865GME-775-RH and a new 160 GB HDD. The install was fine, but when we first turned it on, it ran ok for about 10 seconds, then shut off again. The motherboard sounded a single short beep, which according to the manual means that everything is fine. Every time we try to turn it on, it runs for about 5-10 seconds, and we can't even access the BIOS. We tried a different power supply from a friends computer that we knew worked, and the same results. Any advice on what could be wrong? Is it possible the CPU could have been damaged and would there be any tell-tale signs of the damaged CPU? We were very careful not to touch or damage it during the install, and it was running fine before this catastrophe. Any advice would be greatly appriciated.

[Flip81]

Sounds more like a heat issue than power supply, especially if the problem recurred when you switched to other PSUs.

Here's a quick suggestion.  Open up the case and point a fan at the CPU, if the computer boots normally and loads the OS then you've found your issue.  Report what happens and we'll know where to go from there.

[Flip81]

Then again, if it was only 5-10 seconds it could be something else.  Like a bad CPU as you suggest.  Have you tried using the CPU/RAM in a different machine?

[JXY]

If the pc only runs for 5/10 secs then i doubt it's an overheating issue. still COULD be though...

i think it might be a virus. Can you boot in safe mode?

[patio]

The most common causes i've seen for this are either the CPU/Fan combo is not seated properly or you are missing one or more of the MBoard standoffs that are needed,,,

[Flip81]

JXY:  that is true, but remember that it can auto-turn off quickly (5-10 seconds) if it is not being properly cooled.  The first time it happened I assume it was after it had been running for a while.  Just a thought.

mclarenfan86:  what was your friend doing the first time this happened?  Was he playing a game?  surfing the internet?? 

[mclarenfan86]

Well, with the old motherboard, I'm not sure what he was doing the first time it started happening. As far as I know, it was completely at random. He'd leave it running, just idling at the desktop, he would go to class, come back and it would be frozen or off. Since we put the new mobo and hdd in, we haven't been able to install an OS. We can't even get that far. We're going to apply some new thermal paste to the cpu, because the paste that was on there was hard as a rock, and probably not doing anything. We'll try that and see what happens.

[patio]

That old residue needs to be carefully removed or the new thermal paste will do no good at all.
Use a razor blade for the bulk of it and then use swabs with a small amount of isopropyl alcohol for the rest.
Allow it to dry thoroughly before applying the new compound.
Arctic Silver's website has excellent instructions on this process...