Mysterious System Shutdown

[Keith]

I'm putting this out for my brother. He's having problems with his
system shutting down. It happens a few seconds after booting, and he
can't even get into the BIOS!

Motherboard
BFG Tech BFG680i SLi LGA 775 NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI ATX Intel

CPU
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe 2.4GHz 4M shared L2 Cache LGA 775 65W
Dual-Core Processor

Power Supply
Thermaltake Toughpower W0104RU ATX12V / EPS12V 650W Power Supply

Memory
Corsair XMS2 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual
Channel Kit Desktop Memory - Retail

Hard Drives
Two Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST3320620AS (Perpendicular Recording
Technology) 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

Graphics
Two BFG Tech BFGR76256GTOCE GeForce 7600GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI
Express x16 SLI Supported Video Card - Retail

He sent the motherboard back for a replacement, but no help... Any ideas?

Thanks,

Keith

 

[Dustin Harper]

Make sure your CPU isn't getting too hot. Make sure that the heatsink is
making good contact, and you are using the right amount of thermal paste and
all fans are running.

The power supply looks suffiecent, so that shouldn't be a problem.

 

[Keith L]

Make sure your CPU isn't getting too hot. Make sure that the heatsink
is making good contact, and you are using the right amount of thermal
paste and all fans are running.

The power supply looks suffiecent, so that shouldn't be a problem.

That was the first thing he thought of... Remember what I wrote before
-- The Motherboard/CPU/Heatsink can be ice cold, but will shut down 3
seconds from power-up! I think we're looking for a non-obvious
solution, thanks.

 

[Dustin Harper]

What about a sticky power button? Try removing everything and putting it on
a test bench, just the MB, CPU, heatsink, RAM, video and power supply. Could
be a short somewhere. Also, try removing all but one stick of RAM.

Sometimes the obvious isn't so obvious to some people. Thanks.

 

[Charles May]

I'm sure this is not it since another motherboard was brought in and it's
still doing it but a friend of mine had an almost exact problem where he
would start it and after about 5 seconds it would shut down. We first
removed the power button from the motherboard and used a screwdriver to
start it thinking that the button was keeping contact and causing it to shut
off. After swapping out numerous components, he discovered that the 4 pin
power connector was actuall put in wrong. Don't ask me how he did it but he
did and luckily when he pulled it and turned it to the proper alignment he
hasn't had a problem since.

Just thought I would throw that in for something to check.

Charlie