pc power problem

[Smenj]

Hi all

 

My home built PC has been behaving oddly for a while when trying to power the system up. Power button at first gave no response. Turning the whole system off and then on at the wall "fixed" the problem and it'd start up. Now however it will "start" intermitttently after repeated on/off at the wall, and often will only give a brief flicker of power before turning off again. Then when it would boot through to Windows it'd power down without warning after 5-10 mins or so. I thought it was over heating CPU, so replaced the thermal paste between chip and heatsink. Same response (plus system seems to be happy at about 35C when I've managed to check it). Thought it might be the mobo so got a replacement. Same repsonse. Could it be the PSU? A knackered CPU? Or something else entirely?

 

The system is an AMD Athlon XP 1250+ running on an ASUS a7n8x-x board with 1.5GB Ram in three 512 sticks plus an ASUS 9600XT graphics card. There are 2 hard drives, one floppy, one CD, one DVD and the PSU and that's about it. System has been rock-steady for about 3 years before this and no recent (or not so recent) updates to hardware/software etc, other than a flattening of the primary HD and reload of Win XP Pro about 8 months or so, which went without a hitch.

 

Any help greatly appreciated

[zinglebarb]

if you checked the mobo it has to be the psu imo

[Plastic Nev]

I agree with Zinglebarb here and would even advise at the least borrowing a PSU if possible to prove the point. Until we are sure, I recommend not even trying again with the present PSU, it could fail catastrophically and damage other components if it is truly on the way out.

[Smenj]

Cheers guys

 

I found a replacement PSU on Fleabay for £15 so keeping my fingers crossed that'll do the trick

 

Your help's appreciated

[Plastic Nev]

Thanks for the update, and please let us know how you get on.

Nev.