Technical problems with new computer...

Hey all, I recently put together a new computer and, while it worked fine for a while, it seems that I've got a problem of some sort now.

Simply put, it won't boot all of a sudden. When I push the power button, instead of the usual bit of hard drive noise and a quiet fan whirr, I get a loud whooshing sound as of a fan running flat out and nothing comes up on the screen.

Opening the case, I believe I have determined that the whooshing sound is the video card fan running at top speed. That would make me wonder if the video card has died, except for the fact that none of my peripherals light up - no light under my mouse or on my speakers. That makes me suspicious of a motherboard failure.

I did have one possible precursor issue. A couple of weeks ago, it hard crashed in the middle of a game with the same loud whooshing sound. I forced it to power down by holding in the switch and it afterwards booted just fine. I don't know if it would be related, but I figured I'd mention it here.

My specs are exactly as we eventually decided on in this thread. Does anyone have any suggestions for diagnosing this problem?

[edit: If I do need to return something, the deadline for newegg to replace or refund it will be friday... so help would be appreciated soonish.]

[edit edit: Ok, I dunno what to think now. I remembered that the motherboard has leds on it, so I tried to turn it on one more time to see if they flashed or anything - and the darn thing booted. I'm still worried, because I doubt it would just do this randomly if there wasn't still something wrong in there somewhere. Still open to suggestions...]

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@MuonNeutrino
Student, Gamer, Altaholic, and future Astronomer.

This is what it means to be a tank!

From your description it does sound like the video card failed (or some other piece). By any chance do you have some other card you could swap with it, to confirm that it is indeed the problem part?

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Any beeps? Does the computer shut itself back off after the whooshing?

You might also check the thermal compound and seating of the CPU cooler.

When a computer first boots, it typically revs the system fans and then halts if it gets a thermal fault on the CPU.

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double check all of your front panel connections, specifically the power and reset. also ensure the power connector to the mobo is in nice and tight too. the other thing i would suggest is getting the PS tested. you can take it to any pc show and they have a dongle to test it with. good luck.

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No beeps, this case doesn't have a built in speaker so there wouldn't be any beeps regardless. The computer doesn't shut itself back off, it just sits there whooshing away until I force it back off by holding in the power button.

Double checking the connections is probably a good idea. I'm sure that there isn't anything completely disconnected as I'm actually using the computer right now (it eventually did boot up on the nth try), but I guess there could be something loose or intermittent. Unfortunately, I don't have any other video cards laying around to test with.

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@MuonNeutrino
Student, Gamer, Altaholic, and future Astronomer.

This is what it means to be a tank!

Sounds like a processor problem. If the processor is completely fried and you turn on the computer then the hard drive won't work but it's possible that power will be fed to the video card putting it's fan at max speed. That's exactly what happened to an old Dell XPS I had. Since you built it yourself it's possible you didn't get the cpu seated correctly although that's very difficult to do. It's also possible that you didn't apply the thermal paste correctly so you might want to use a temperature monitoring program to watch it's temp.

But since it booted up again the most likely answer is that the power connection to the cpu (most cpus have a separate power connection right next to the chip that is marked cpu) is bad or loose.

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Don't count your weasels before they pop dink!

I've been monitoring temperatures through the day (including some gaming) and the highest the processor's gotten has been 49C. Vid card's gotten up to 67C. Hard drive's been absolutely constant at 37C, and the other two temperature leads (which I presume are generic motherboard temperatures) haven't gotten above 50C. So I don't think overheating is the problem.

At this point I think I'll just see if it does the same thing tomorrow when I turn it on, and if so, go inside and look for loose connections.

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@MuonNeutrino
Student, Gamer, Altaholic, and future Astronomer.

This is what it means to be a tank!

Those temperatures are just fine so yeah, as long as it's working I guess that's good. Odds are it was just a loose connection that was jogged back into place when you opened the case. But I would check all the connections before booting up again. Better safe than sorry. A loose connection can arc which wouldn't likely damage the device but could damage the connectors.

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Don't count your weasels before they pop dink!

Keep an eye out for something inside the case possibly shorting the motherboard.

If you have a Friday deadline to RMA it, it might not be worth the risk if your CPU or motherboard is inching its way towards self-immolation.

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1) Make sure all your power cables are seated securely to both the mb and the video card

2) Make sure your RAM is seated securely

3) Make sure the video card is seated securely

(especially the VGA - often the long connection point sits down into the socket but the smaller connection point isn't pressed all the way in)

4) Make sure that the backside of the motherboard isn't making contact with your mb tray and is only touching the standoffs

(this can happen pretty easily with some support backplates and backplate screws if they aren't screwed in all the way flush)

It really does sound like a bad connection, or a short somewhere.

Are all of your fans spinning - especially the CPU heatsink fan?

Have you overclocked anything? If so, go back into bios and reset to default settings.

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Well, it happened again. It settled down for quite a while, but it's back to not booting with the exact same symptoms as the first post - and unlike last time, it's been like this for several days and hasn't cleared itself up. I already opened the case and checked all of the cables and didn't find anything loose. All the fans still work and I'm not trying to overclock anything.

At this point I'm guessing it's a component failure of some kind. At first I suspected the video card since it's the video card fan that's spinning at hyper speed and making that noise. I tested this by turning it on and waiting a few minutes such that, if it was actually booting and just nothing was getting to the screen, it'd be waiting at the login screen. However, typing in my password at that point failed to produce the login sound from the speakers I left on, so I'm fairly confident that it's not booting at all. My current guess is that the motherboard must have died.

With the understanding that I don't have any other computers available to swap components into for testing, does anyone have any ideas on how to diagnose this more precisely? If it's a component failure I'd certainly prefer it to have been the motherboard rather than the video card as that'd be much cheaper to replace, but I certainly don't want to buy a new one and then have that not fix the problem. Anyone have any ideas?

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@MuonNeutrino
Student, Gamer, Altaholic, and future Astronomer.

This is what it means to be a tank!

I'm currently trying to fix a computer at work with a similar issue. All signs (on my machine) seem to point to bad memory.

http://www.memtest86.com/

Download the CD image, burn it to a disc, and try booting to that instead.

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Frankly it sounds to me like you may need to take it to a shop and see if they can diagnose the bad part. They should be able to swap parts and test bits in isolation to see what is failing. The other obvioulsy cheaper alternative would be to find a sympathetic friend with a comparable machine who doesn't mind you doing a bit of 'experimenting' to achieve the same effect. And worse(ish) case, keep in mind that you should have manufacturer warranties on all your parts so even if the newegg deadline passes, you still have other avenues of recourse once you know for sure what is wrong. Anyways on the off chance it is a loose connection causing an intermittant fault, I'd actually suggest you basically go through and unplug/disconnect everything you can and then methodically and slowly reconnect/replug everything back together to make sure they are all solid. I suggest this in part as I have seen what absolutely seemed like solid connections to all observation prove to be otherwise and problems vanish upon reseating a card, memory, cable, etc.

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