PC won't power on OCZ PSU help ><

Hi,

I recently built a PC for my friend.

Specs:

Samsung 1TB Spinpoint F3 SATA II 7200RPM 32M
OCZ ModXstream Pro 600W modular PSU
LiteON IHAS324 SATA DVD-RW 24X Black Retail
Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit OEM
Corsair CMX4GX3M2A1600C9 4GB (2x XMS3 2GB) PC-12800
Tenda W322P Wireless N PCI Adapter
Asus P7H55D-M EVO MB, Socket 1156, Intel H55 Chipset
LG E2340V 23"W Slim LED HDMI FULL HD 5ms
Intel Core i5 760 Processor LGA1156 2.8GHz 8MB Cache CPU
NZXT Vulcan Micro ATX Case
POV GTX 460 1G D5 2DVI/HDMI

He wanted a good graphics card so he choose a lower range PSU
OCZ ModXstream Pro 600W modular PSU

I checked the specs for a GTX 460 and said minimum 550W PSU and the OCZ claimed it had SLI support and had the PCI-E adapter to fit it. And an extra 1 pin connected to one of the PCI-E cables for a bigger graphics card I assume.

For the first couple days it was working but stutters such as the audio and video happened sometimes. He had to reset once in a game of starcraft 2 after the audio stutter. He said the video was kind of moving slow so maybe that was stuttering as well. So I came over and before I did anything he showed me a replay from starcraft 2. So it was working then.

I thought I would reconnect the HD audio cable into motherboard as it is tightly fit against the graphics card and wireless PCI internet card. I then turned the PSU upside down so the fan is facing down so the cables would have a better reach and were more ordered, since it was kinda messy.

Then I booted it up and it would go through the BIOS fine and start loading windows, the animation would go (win 7) and then it would hang and eventually power down. I put the Win 7 disc in thinking it may be because windows has a boot problem and it loaded up until it turned into the graphical screen and then hung. I tried the suggested windows recovery fix (forget the name, but the one after you power it down without shutting down) and it just hung again.

So I then thought it could be the PSU. Since it had booted before I turned the PSU back with the fan facing up (not far from the graphics card) like it was originally and now it will not turn on.

I am thinking that maybe the 600W wasn't enough to run the system or the PSU may be faulty. This was purchased about a week ago and it has warranty, what do you suggest?

Thanks for reading,

Welcome to the Seven Forums! Chooseyant

I'm not seeing anything that require more then a 550w to 600w supply in the specs you provided. That only sees one main hard drive and a single optical drive along with the aveaage 4gb of memory, 1gb video card, and nothing else that would tax a good working supply.

Since the supply is suspect and brand new the option to RMA the drive is wide open. The largest draw is generally during the intial startup going through the post tests followed by each new detection of hardwares as Windows loads. The supply may be lacking the needed regulation.

As far as OCZ that had once been one of the better makes but seems to have slipped a bit quality wise. After running a 700w GameXtreme model for a good 3yrs. the new build saw a second spare supply in use for 2 weeks before it tripped a 20A wall outlet and took a new board along with it!

That was an unused supply! You get a bad one every so often with any make while I elected to switch makes for the replacement board to follow. Don't change it with that supply if you have any doubts!

The other things to look at would be a weak bios chip or weak cap on the board or something not installed correctly while the immediate shutdown being seen would most likely be a bad supply or problem on the board as an alternate source of the problems being seen.

The last build here 3yrs. of age was seeing startup and immediate shutdowns until the second or third press on the power to finally see it startup normally. Or as it got worse it wouldn't even turn on! A replacement bios chip was located and waits for me to replace the board and have an assembler replace the bad chip with the new. Try a different supply to rule that out.

Thanks a lot, yeah, I am going to test it with my PSU when I get it over. I really hope it isn't anything I've done to screw up the motherboard. I wouldn't think anything has damaged the caps on the front but it did take me awhile to fit it in to the brackets and since it is a small case maybe scratched the back a little.

*UPDATE*

I tried my PSU in it and it would load to windows 7 animation then hang.

I then installed the original PSU in and it will now boot, but same thing.

I even installed another graphics card I had on hand to make sure and same thing.

Does this mean the motherboard is faulty? It is a brand new board and no damage whatsoever seems visible. My thoughts are to return it and then wait a month or some long duration to receive a new one and install it so my friend can finally have a working computer.

RMA confuses me, I mean if they give you back a brand new product why can't the store give you a new one straight away and just restock the one they send back. In the past I've ended up just buying a new motherboard because I needed my computer, now, not 4 weeks.

If you are dealing with a defective board sometimes the vendor will ship a replacement out to you before even sending the first back depending on whether you are a regular customer. That happened when helping out a friend who received 3 bad boards in a row being the same make and model.

The vendor when contacted stated they likely had received a bad batch of boards at the time and the friend was advised to select a different model or go with a different make and model to get a new build running. Depending on where you order or buy from will depend on how the return and replacement takes to come in. Most are usually prompt once they get the bad board back in sending out a replacement.

With a different supply and card tested for this it seems you were able to rule the supply out. With any new build the first thing to have a good working supply to avoid anything like seeing a new board cooked! That was a setback seen here in late spring.

It's always a pain when your main system is down for any reason while the time and money on replacing hardwares is typically the worst. Hopefully the board is the only thing you will have to see replaced there.

Thanks man

You're welcome! I've been there a few times with setbacks. That's why I was hoping to have the old case onhand as a backup system as well as testing things there until the board let go "right when" how ironic the new case was first running! Wouldn't you know! :roflmao:"perfect timing"!

Don't let it get to you! It's going to happen at some point anyways. Let's hope this is all you need for now however.

To start troubleshooting this rather than just randomly sending parts back and forth.
IF the mobo has on-board video (yes, doubtful) then I would start with the following.....

If if yes, remove video card, otherwise leave it for now.
Remove all stick of RAM except one

Double check that all connections are in correctly, and make sure the CPU is seated properly
Make sure that the thermal paste is set correctly on the CPU, I have seen some HeatSinks with thermal paste already one there and a plastic or wax covering to protect it and people not remove that cover before putting it on and securing it to the CPU.

Then test it.

But this sounds more like a heat issue than anything else.

Since this is being seen with cold starts I doubt any temp problem is being seen. I had one board quite after the first few days on one build. Something simply let go!

The board in the last case was acting up in a simliar fashion or the fan and lights blink and spin for a few seconds indicating the bios chip! Sure enough a board tester pointed right at it! A bad dimm typically still allows Windows to arrive at the desktop while things will tend to crash not keep hanging at the logo screen. But as part of the process of elimination a run of memtest can never hurt.

Memtest has been done through the button on the board and clears fine.

Well that's just part of the process of elimination. No bad supply, video card, or dimms to report. And since this is seen right when first powering up on a new build you don't have too many other things to look at besides the one other item not considered so far being the hard drive.

If the drive is bad from the start that cause a number of issues as well as a bad cap on the board. If you can get up to the desktop to run the "chkdsk /r" command at the Start>Run or a command prompt.

A simple right click on the drive's icon to open the Tools tab you can check off the two options there for automatically fixing any errors found in the event of bad sectors or not realizing a bad install of Windows had been seen. That's also one other possible cause for startup issues since you already swapped out video cards ruling out one set of drivers.

For the drive besides the chkdsk tool a diagnostics tool like HDTune to run that by or going to the Samsuang support site to see if they provide something there would test that idea. Other then those two you would be back looking at the board again.

I sent it off, but if I didn't mention before I did try to boot from the Win 7 dvd and it would get to the install screen and hang. So I don't think it was the hard drive.

I'll post the resolution hopefully,

thanks for all the help Nighthawk and others.

You got a headache on your hands there no matter what it turns out to be for sure! Typically bad ram would stall the installer! during a regular OS installation. A weak cap on the board or bad bios chip would explain the not being able to handle the draw on power seen at post and starting up.

For a cap that would take a very close visual inspection of the board to note any cap that looked slightly deformed not smooth and even but bulged on the top and sides or any discolored area on the board like something got hot. Sometimes you can spot a leaky cap.

For the eprom problems would be seen as far as simply hitting the power button and nothing happens, fans and lights blink for so many seconds, or you could even be booted to the desktop and suddenly the system restarts on it's own while temps appear normal. A variety of odd ones!

Well, my friend took it back and they said it sound's like the CPU is overheating and said to buy some new thermal paste. The thing is though the thermal paste already on the stock intel fan is still stuck to the fan's base. And some of it is still on the CPU.

When I am installing the new thermal paste do I need to take this off? and if so how? I have never done that before since I have never had a problem with the stock fan / paste.

That's crock! When you first turn the system on and Windows hangs right away the system hasn't been on long enough for the cpu to overheat. Someone doesn't know what the real story is apparently. All they are is sales clerks!

As far as replacing the stock hsf that would have been the thought when first ordering and planning out the new build. For taxing loads and ocing things a 3rd party super cooler would have been one of the first things looked at. Plus you can still see Windows load up fully even when a cpu is cooking. Programs and the system will likely crash while that wouldn't preventa working install from booting up.

A bad cpu wouldn't even allow a post let alone see Windows hang at the logo screen. Presently while you couldn't expect the ideal temps that can be ruled out as the main cause. It sounds more like the place the board was bought from is simply trying to slide out of any refund or replacement there!

I was told the motherboard was actually tested so my only other idea is to format the hard drive and reinstall windows in my PC then hook the hard drive back up. Which I should have done before but ruled it out due to the fact that it would still stall on the windows installer screen.

And thank's again Night Hawk.

That would leave the drive itself as the next likely candidate to be having a problem if the board was found to be good provided they actually tested it. I have a few board testers onhand here since I often have to look over older systems.

There are only a couple of full system testers out there,,, PC Doctor and Ultra-X
There might be some others.

I personally am not a huge fan of either.
However, they can work. I have not used either in a very long time because I came to the conclusion a long time ago that under the majority of circumstances they were actually pretty useless and quite expensive.

I will agree that this is probably not an overheating issue. But, I have seen systems heat up and shutdown quick that were not put together right. Just saying.

Memtest has been done through the button on the board and clears fine.

Click to expand...

There is no button on any board that will do a proper test of memory. Unless it is a built in memtester that runs for no less than 6 to 8 hours. If you push a button and it runs some test and then says fine in about 5 seconds?
it can't test memory properly that fast
If you are referring to resetting the BIOS/CMOS and booting and it going through a memory Scan, that is not a Memory Test. It's jut s a memory scan, not a test.

You need to boot to the Windows disk and run a repair and/or search for the memory diags that are on that Install disk.

Or Go here and download the ISO and burn it. Run the test and hit "t" for the extended tests and run them for no less than 6 hours.
If you did not do this,, you did not test the memory properly.


However,,,,, in the OP first post....

Then I booted it up and it would go through the BIOS fine and start loading windows, the animation would go (win 7) and then it would hang and eventually power down.

Click to expand...

The eventually power down part,,, how long is the eventually? 30 seconds, 5 min??

If you are able to run Memtests for more than 10 min, then you do not have an Overheat problem, you may still have bad RAM so let the test finish...

If the test does not complete and the system still locks up and then shuts down?
That absolutely is an indication of a heat problem or a power issue.
The only time a PC will power itself off is due to over heat,,, or a power issue.

Otherwise,, if the memory tests fine and the system stays up and on
then it is either an OS problem, or Bad Hard Drive.

Which, I agree with NightHawk on and starting to lean towards also. Maybe.

The testers I was referring to are not software testers but actual hardware testers you install on the system. You have to look through a code chart once the testing is complete to see what the readout is pointing to. These plug into PCI slots or by way of a usb port or serial port depending which make and model.

not to get too far off topic.... but this is my experience with such....
They also have those as a part of PC-Doctor and Ultra-X.
If the software doesn't work, which can use the loop back cables and stuff
they also have the PCI tests and such to plug in to various slots, loop backs, etc.

PC-Doctors problem is they started requiring the Loop Back cables and USB keys and other garbage just to run the software to combat piracy. Problem was, you couldn't get the damn thing to run to test if a port was actually bad, or just a problem with the loop back crap. It was a very disappointing product in the end. It was very good back in the very old days.
But even the hardware testers for that product left a bit to be desired.

Ultra-X is ok, when it works, and their burn in software was good.

As far as pure hardware testers, I know there are some pretty good ones though.

I guess my point was, or the reason I mentioned it to begin with,, is this is probably what they might have used for testing. In other words, I question the reliability of the testing done. However, this can also depend on the versions being used as well.

Because, if you walk into the back rooms of most shops, that is probably what they are using.