HAAPPYYY HALLOWEEN.

Today at school I brought in a gaming pc my friend gave to me because it broke on him, after some troubleshooting at my house I came to the conclusion that the Power Supply Unit (PSU) was shot. When I plugged it in for the first time and attempted to power it on, the lights flashed on for a second as the PSU made this clicking noise before short-circuiting and turning off instantly. After some investigation, I realized that the Debug Lights on the board were flashing, specifically the CPU and DRAM ones. I attempted to remove the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) and two of the three RAM sticks, still shorting. I attempted all 3 of the RAM sticks in all 4 different RAM slots and no combination fixed the issue, so I figured the issue wasn’t the RAM despite the debug lights getting to the DRAM light. Hoping the issue wasn’t the motherboard or Central Processing Unit (CPU), I assumed the power supply was shot, which was supported by its clicking.

This morning, I brought the computer to school to replace the PSU with another one lying around the class. I swapped the PSU’s out of my computer with no issues and to my delight, the computer turned on… for about a second longer than it did beforehand… still short-circuiting. The longer flash of light was a sign of hope though! The new PSU did not have the clicking noise either… obviously. During my time troubleshooting at my house I learned about the CMOS Battery that if removed resets the bios if corrupted to my knowledge, but I could not originally find it. While I was trying to figure out how to fix my new issue after solving the PSU problem, I found the CMOS Battery. I unplugged it and left it unplugged during lunch. After lunch, I plugged it back in and attempted to boot the computer and to my surprise… THE COMPUTER BOOTED!! The lights and fans were on, and it appeared to work beautifully. I put the computer back together completely and plugged it into a monitor before booting and to my surprise again… no picture, no display. I was confused.

Furthermore, I opened the computer back up to realize the GPU wasn’t even powered because the fans on it were not spinning. I replaced the graphics card, and luckily it powered but still no display from it. Someone in my class pointed out to be that the CPU and DRAM lights were still lighting up. I was even more confused and had no clue what to do from here, and eventually gave up. I have to assume that after the PSU kicked the bucket, not only did it corrupt the BIOS, but it took out hardware with it. The problem could be all 3 RAM sticks, the CPU, or the motherboard. My current guess is the motherboard, but really there is no way to know.

Here are some pictures of after I hooked up the PSU, I feel like I did a great job.