hey there.

I have a problem. I was playing doom3 the other day and all of a sudden my pc just turned itself off, not shutdown, just like someone had turned the power switch off. Now, when I go to turn it back on, nothing happens, nothing starts up, nout.

When i flick the power switch at the back of the pc, the lights at the front flash once but thats all. I have several USB devices plugged into the back of the pc and they all light up (mouse, keyboard, ADSL modem) but the computer will not start still.

I opened the cover up when I turned the power on, the fans rotate for like 2secs, but thats it, still nothing.

has anyone got any ideas what the problem might be??

I did notice that after a while of the PC being on for a while, it did get a bit noisy, think its the fans being loud, could the fan of gone by any chance??

Any help would be greatly appreciated

Thankyou

Welcome to SAF!

The heatsink fan could have gone out. If so, hopefully, your system shut down before it was damaged.

It could be many other things as well. I mention the heatsink fan 1st because of the noise you were hearing.

Post your system specs.

Do you have another system available that you could use to test individual components?

hey thanx for the welcome

my system specs are:
P4 DDR SKt478 A26P-ML8 Motherboard
Internal IDE cable 40w/40w IDC 2 Drive
Pentium IV 3.0GHZ 800 Processor FPGA
Windows Xp home
Barracuda 160GB 2mb cache 7200RPM HDD
512MB pc2700 184pin DDR DIMM memory

The PC was custom built (by a company) so I hope that means something. I not too hot on PC's overall, I mean I can do upgrades and stuff but im no whiz

I also have a AGP Nvidia 6800 XFX graphics card, which I installed myself, and that works fine. Althought I followed the install instructions of it to a tee, could that be a possible reason why my PC is down??

I have a spare PC, which Im on now, but as for testing the components, I wouldnt know where to start, sorry

Hope this helps at all

How long ago did you buy it? Is it still under warranty?

What kind of power supply (PSU) do you have? If it is 300W or less, the new card could have done it in. If it is not under warranty, I would start with the heatsink fan. You may also want to look into a power supply tester (about $15).

I doubt it is a bad component (memory, video card, etc) because you are not getting any beep codes.

Yeah it's still under warranty, I bought it last July, the guy (at the warranty place) said i could be the heatsink fan too.

The PSU i have is a Suntek 300W, model: ST-300BLP

I would get it fixed on the warranty, but he said I have to wait 5weeks min cause of their workload, and I need it fixed ASAP, cause everything I need is on that PC

So, you reckon its the heatsink fan??

I've included some pics if that helps at all??

I would not take "5 weeks" as an answer. What good is thewarranty? Seems like their way of not honoring it. Who can you report them to? We have the Better Business Bureau in the US.

If you dont get anywhere, make them give you a new heatsink fan/ paste to check. You can install it yourself (but why should you pay for the part).

If not, check the PSU - 300 is kind of weak for that system.

Hey thanx for your help. They just rang and said that an engineer would be coming out on the 13th May (which is a friday lol) to fix the problem. So i guess thats better than nothing eh? :S

I'll let you know what happens, but cheers again

Please do post an update.

FYI - the pics you posted are a bit too large for the forum. SInce they cant help anyone diagnose (except for the specs), I will remove.