Any ideas on a friend's problem?

richy85 · 26 Feb 2021 at 06:56

So my friend rang me last night, his PC just shut down on him and won't turn on again.
He says if he leaves it for a bit and pushes power button things spring to life for a fraction of a second then turn off again.
Said that light/RGB comes on on the graphics card and the power light on motherboard comes on but that's about it.

He's tried moving ram and gfx card around but still no joy.

I'm thinking motherboard but could PSU or CPU also be possible?

I know it's hard to diagnose something just by going off a description but just trying to rule things out.

Cheers

The_Arbiter · 26 Feb 2021 at 07:48

I think you know as well as anyone else, just have to eliminate each part one at a time sadly if all has been reseated already.

Blue160 · 26 Feb 2021 at 08:32

I’d try swapping out the PSU first.

Tetras · 26 Feb 2021 at 12:26

Motherboard would be my first guess (especially if it's very old), but PSU is suspect too. CPU deaths are quite rare.

daveham · 2 Mar 2021 at 23:54

Take everything down to the minimum. 1 stick of ram, no graphics card if he/she has onboard graphics unplug hard drives and anything else and see if it will boot into bios.

ExoMale · 3 Mar 2021 at 12:18

before taking it all apart, try the single ram in each slot option and get another psu with enough power and plug that in without removing the old one, but dont try both options at the same time. if either of those solve the problem then you will know what to replace. another thing you could try and even before the psu route is to disconnect the boot drive and try launch it as with a failing hard drive you can get those sort of issues or even by a corrupted OS.