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#1
Computer power cycles every 3-5 seconds
Hey all,
My computer decided to shut down on me in the middle of playing a game a couple of weeks ago. Hardware shut down - no warning, nothing. This is always worrisome, but it was even worse because when I went to turn it back on, it failed to post, stayed on for a couple seconds, then shut itself down. It repeated this cycle many times until I simply turned the power off on the PSU. I turned the power back on and it continued this cycle. Finally I just turned the power on the PSU off and left for the day. When I returned, I was able to boot the machine normally.
About a week after that, I was once again playing EVE and the thing shut down on me and did the whole power cycle thing again. Remembering the fix from before, I turned the PSU off and left for the day. However, when I got back home, the problem persisted.
Currently, I am unable to get the computer to post on a regular basis with anything more than a single stick of ram (though it doesn't matter which stick and even then it's about a 25% chance). This includes removal of GPU, PCI cards, and HDD. Sometimes it WILL POST, but the Hard Drives are not detected, then then machine shuts down after about 30 seconds or so and returns to the power cycle mode.
I cannot boot from my hard drive in my buddy's computer, but it is a much older AMD based system that originally had a 230w psu. I can however access it as a slave disk.
I just replaced the PSU less than a year ago, and the graphics card about 18 months ago (an upgrade from an x1950pro, which blew the 550w PSU I had at the time).
I'm not entirely sure what the problem is - is the CPU temp sensor freaking out and shutting the machine down? Did the power supply go kaplooey (or about to)? Is my southbridge bad and causing all of the above (this is my #1 guess, as HDD's and PCI cards all cause major fail)?
How can I test these things? I have a solid year of EE under me and another couple of practical EE experience, so I might be able to actually find an electrical issue if it's suggested.