PS failure takes out CPU?

[oecist]

Hello,

My old 300W (Antec Aria) power supply died last week after making various squeals, whines and noises. I had bought the case/PS before the rest of the parts and it was always underpowered causing it to be unstable (at the time I thought it was because of running Win MCE) - sometimes the DVD-R wouldn't boot / loading times were extremely long and frequent crashes.

AMD Barton Athlon X2 3800+
MSI K8NGM2-FID
ASUS 7800GT
ENU 0404

I brought new case/PS (Coolermaster Elite 331/450W PS) but it won't boot at all - at turn on the fans spin for a second and then a relay in the PS switches everything off. PS tests good, and CPU was not removed during changeover (heatsink and fan were however - maybe ES discharge? Properly reinstalled with compound) If I remove 4 pin CPU power connector (for testing voltage) all fans work and no shutdown.

So, I surmise either MoBo or CPU failure - any other ideas? Which part to replace first?

 

[floppybootstomp]

If I had to gamble, I'd say the motherboard but there's no real way of telling without substitution.

That's a socket 939 board using DDR memory. 939 boards and CPU's are a little thin on the ground now as are boards that support DDR memory so you may have to consider buying a new board/CPU/memory.

The good news is that as your graphics card is pci-e you won't have to buy a new graphics card and memory is cheap atm.

My first thought when reading your post was that your CPU cooler wasn't seated properly but you state it's been re-fitted correctly so that rules that likelihood out.

 

[Waynos_Face]

I had a similar problem when building a PC for a friend, he wanted an aftermarket cooler on his cpu, i installed the cpu and retail heatsink and it worked fine, i then installed the aftermarket cooler (Thermalrite) and it did the same thing yoour are describing, it powered up for 2 seconds turned off, tried again and turned off.

It turns out that the retail cooler needed 0.6amps to run and the Thermalrite needed 0.8amps, the 4 pin motherboard connection from the PSU was not designed to handle this, so i had to seperate the wires on the 4 pin heatsink.

The fan controller (yellow cable) was plugged into the motherboard and i used a 3 pin to molex connector to power the heatsink, this solved the problem.

So what i should of asked at the start is do you have a retail or aftermarket cooler on your cpu?

Hope this helps.

 

[oecist]

Thanks floppybootstomp and Waynos-Face.

Was rather hoping to avoid that entire replacement scenario - I guess I'll the fan change first (I doubt this is the problem however as I moved from a 300W to 450W PS and it's not a killer big fan...) Then I'll price it out and see what to do.....aiming at buying a dual boot Powerbook later in the year, so want to take the least expensive route for this computer! Will report back later and tell you the prognosis...