twisty on 23/7/2016 at 14:57
Over the past couple of days my PC switched off twice unexpectedly -- when only browsing the internet on the first time and editing a word doc on the second occassion. On both occasions my wife complained about a burning smell but I was unable to smell it or find any physically damaged components on my machine. Since the second outage I am now unable to turn on my PC at all.
I have swapped out the power cable and have replaced the power board with a new one to no avail. On my motherboard there isn't any light showing anymore however I can still see a light from my LAN cable as well as a light on the video card. I have also tried to turn my pc on by using the power button on my motherboard and have cleared the cmos.
Am wondering if this is likely to be an issue with my motherboard, power supply or something else?
Al_B on 23/7/2016 at 17:43
I would normally be most suspicious of the power supply for these type of situations - you're able to get standby power at least from your description but the main power output may be fried. You mention replacing the power "board" in your computer - what do you mean by that?
Al_B on 23/7/2016 at 19:39
Ah, understood. I'd definitely suspect the power supply in the computer then.
twisty on 23/7/2016 at 20:48
Ok, I'll give it a shot. I think I have a spare power supply somewhere, or will take out my current one and try it on a PC at my parent's house before I fork out for a new one.
twisty on 24/7/2016 at 07:49
Thanks, it was the power supply :).
I ended up buying a 520W fanless power supply (SilverStone Nightjar SST-NJ520) which is completely silent and a nice change from the Corsair. I didn't know that there were such things as fanless PSUs.
Al_B on 24/7/2016 at 09:28
Glad you got it back up and running and it wasn't anything more painful than the PSU. It's been a while since I looked into PSUs but I have seen fanless ones being recommended for HTPCs and similar situations where you want to have ambient noise as quiet as possible. If you're going to overclock your PC or go for power hungry graphics card(s) I'd recommend changing to an actively cooled one but for general use you should be fine.
twisty on 24/7/2016 at 10:58
I've got a GTX970 and the PSU manufacturer claims that it is suitable for up to a Titan X so it should hopefully keep me going for a while as even with the 4 SSDs I think that 520W will be ample.
