SPCR

My Antec He-440 has faithfully served for 3 to 4 years of 24/7 operation (mainly sleep). I am trying to diagnose a hardware problem and wondered if the PSU could be a "sneeky" culprit. My system is much like Chris Thomson's Core2 build (posted on SPCR).

I do not get monitor, keyboard, and (guessing) wireless mouse.

Upon boot-up, I get mobo LED lights, case mounted fans (incl. PSU), and a search for the floppy. I don't think the HDD starts. CD tray opens. I've tested all the easily removed hardware (graphics, HDD, memory sticks, new mobo battery). Am doing everything possible to avoid tearing the whole thing down to test cpu, and mobo; have one of those humongous Ninja cpu cooler towers; and, the test board is a cruddy mess--inherited.

Can a bad PSU do the above things?

Thanks for your help,

do you have another PSU you can try in your system?

not sure if how probably it is for a PSU to fail in one spot but not another.

However - this sounds like the PUS has been slowly dying over a long peroid of time, and in the process taking out other bits and pieces of your system.
If that is the case, then another PSU, or even a new PSU may not solve the problem.


One thing that puzzles me -- you said the CD tray opens. does it open automaticly on startup? or you just tested that to make sure it works?

Hi, Kittle.

The CD/DV tray opens. There was no read spin-up when I tried to boot from it.

The PSU question was more: 'Is this possible?" before saying it's good and going to the board and cpu tests.

It's unnerving to stumble about blind and with no sense of touch (no monitor or keyboard).

hbm55 wrote:The PSU question was more: 'Is this possible?" before saying it's good and going to the board and cpu tests.

It's unnerving to stumble about blind and with no sense of touch (no monitor or keyboard).

Yes its possible.

Has this problem been going on a while?(possible slowly dying PSU)
Or did it suddenly happen one day (possible power surge)

There was no warning of a system breakdown.

I will dig around for a spare PSU and try that before breaking down the cpu and mother board.

Thanks, Kittle.

The problem was the PSU!

I finally stripped everything down, removed and reinstalled the mobo (after redoing the cpu and heat-sink--one of those Ninja monsters). Added one memory stick powered the cpu, board, graphics card, and soft switch.

Played for awhile until the mobo LED went dark.

Put in a new Antec 380 Earthwatts and repeated the above setup. It posts, so am hooking up everything now.

I assume (surmise) the old psu had enough juice to power some lighter hardware and just continued to degenerate. It was a NEO He-430. Ran for 3 years.