Recent content by redfish

I think I learned how to fry a motherboard. I plugged it in with the power-on pin shorted, turned on the power supply, and turned on the motherboard. Worked the first time; second time, something went pop on the board and I smelled burning plastic. I done messed up.

How do I test for that? I don't have one right now but I might be able to borrow one from my lab.

I have this thing lying on a cardboard box on my floor. The only things connected to each other are the motherboard, power supply, RAM, CPU, and CPU cooler. No difference from fully assembled computer. The power supply's fan flares and stops along with the motherboard-controlled fans and lights...

I'm gonna let it sit for a while and take a nap in case I can get that random power on, but I'll give that a shot if I can't get it to power on. I'm just a little hesitant since I'm at school and don't have any of my gear with me.

So. I hear a click sound coming from what I thought was the motherboard after I turn off the PSU, but only when I've tried to boot. When I turn the P/S on and off again I don't hear it. Along with the click, the light turns off suddenly after a few seconds, as opposed to fading out when I...

It's doing it again... Ran fine until now cause I never turned it off. Update: I popped open the back panel and it powered on; I then turned it back off to change a PSU setting and now it won't turn on again. This is gonna take all day if it just takes a random number of tries to work.

Update: no clue what was happening before, but I just tried again after waiting for a bit and it turned on just fine. Fixed the monitor issue by swapping DVI and VGA cables. I'll post if it has problems turning on again.

Hey guys. Back again with yet another hardware issue. Here's what happened: I just moved out of college for vacation and brought my rig with me. I set it up in my old desk at home and powered it on; the second monitor worked fine, but the primary monitor wasn't detecting a signal so I turned it...

Hm. That seems plausible. Unfortunately I'm guessing that would mean that the damage to the motherboards is irreversible... Is there any way to test that theory?

Only problem with that explanation is that it happened a second time without anyone touching the PC

Sorry if this has passed the zombie thread limit, I'm too exasperated to do the math. I replaced the motherboard with an ASUS a few days after the last post, and it ran just fine until just now. I went out for a little while and left my computer running; when I came back, it was off, and when I...

Tried holding up the mobo off the case and turning it on, with and without gpu/ram plugged in. No difference. Is this definitely a motherboard problem?

I don't have another video card, unfortunately... And yes, that is the diagnostic speaker that I have plugged in to the motherboard. It's been dead silent no matter what I do. In that test though I was listening to the actual computer speakers to see if windows was starting.

So I turned the speakers on, no chime. Pulled out the gpu, pried out the battery, popped it back in and no change. I then pulled out the gpu and both memory sticks and tried to turn it on, and not a peep from the diagnostic speaker. Is there any chance the problem might be the battery?

Unfortunately, no. If the speaker isn't beeping, does that mean it's not making it to boot?