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 05/06/2009 03:49:51 PM · #1
Hi

I know there are a few hardware experts here so I'll ask if anyone can give me their views.

I have a fairly old (4 years) but fast-at-the time water cooled PC that my wife uses; I'm now a Mac user. A couple months ago, the PC wouldn't switch on at all; when it did this once before, one of the SLI graphics card failed; pulling out the failed one allowed the computer to boot. I have changed the graphics card again but that hasn't worked. Nic has been using laptops but is getting fed up with that set-up.

When the machine is plugged in, I get a green light on the top (actually the bottom of the Mother board - since the board is inverted in the Lian Li case), but pushing the front button elicits a feint electrical contact noise but nothing else.

I do have a spare motherboard and a spare power supply but changing either or both in this water cooled machine is a complete pain because of the plumbing and the pump. I don't have a spare CPU or spare ram. There is a bunch of data on the hards drives - boot drive is unfortunately a striped array (all of my wife's work is on that volume); then there is a mirrored array for storage which unfortunately she didn't tend to use - since she keeps everything on the desktop!

I could buy a new PC but I'm not sure whether the type of RAID setup which comes with an ASUS A8N SLI Motherboard would be read by a later board. So a new computer might be a clean start rather than a data sparing solution - I'd rather buy a second Mac.

If you were going to try and repair it, where would you start, the Power Supply or the Motherboard?

Many thanks

Paul
 05/06/2009 03:53:09 PM · #2
Start with simple stuff. Take ram out and put it back. Disconnect and reconnect every connection you can find that does not involve plumbing. Then try switching power supply. You can even try to plug it in without fully installing it. See how that goes.
 05/06/2009 03:53:26 PM · #3
Can you swap the powersupply without installing it? That could potentially be the quickest and easiest diagnostic step. Does the motherboard come with any diagnostic codes? Like does the light blink in some sort of short/long to indicate a problem?
 05/06/2009 04:06:14 PM · #4
I'm not getting any light codes; I thought they only came up a bit later in the sequence when it tried to post. Other than the red light, no power gets to the system - no fans run. I think it sounds like a power supply but this is a second unit and a high end EnerMax(?) at that.

I've checked the ram is seated and I think I have taken it out and put it back in again before when it first broke but I will try again.

I think it is possible to run the power in from the other supply without installing it but with the multiple fans, the pumps, the optical drives, the fan controller, the four HDs and the motherboard connectors it is a long job. Does anybody know what the minimum connection might be just to test the power supply? I must remember to connect the pump though or risk frying the CPU.

Thanks for your quick responses.

Paul
 05/06/2009 04:23:01 PM · #5
Originally posted by paulbtlw:
I'm not getting any light codes; I thought they only came up a bit later in the sequence when it tried to post. Other than the red light, no power gets to the system - no fans run. I think it sounds like a power supply but this is a second unit and a high end EnerMax(?) at that.

I've checked the ram is seated and I think I have taken it out and put it back in again before when it first broke but I will try again.

I think it is possible to run the power in from the other supply without installing it but with the multiple fans, the pumps, the optical drives, the fan controller, the four HDs and the motherboard connectors it is a long job. Does anybody know what the minimum connection might be just to test the power supply? I must remember to connect the pump though or risk frying the CPU.

Thanks for your quick responses.

Paul


I doubt you'll fry your system by booting it up without your water cooler. That's just my speculation though. I'd start with motherboard, and the HD with your OS on it. Whatever your think the barebones heart of your system is. Don't worry about the optical drives and such. You are just testing to see if it boots with another power supply. If not, then it's not your PS.

Message edited by author 2009-05-06 16:23:31.
 05/06/2009 05:04:20 PM · #6
Originally posted by paulbtlw:
I could buy a new PC but I'm not sure whether the type of RAID setup which comes with an ASUS A8N SLI Motherboard would be read by a later board. So a new computer might be a clean start rather than a data sparing solution - I'd rather buy a second Mac.

I'm running three generations of Asus motherboards on various machines (one with a Phenom chipset, and older one which is an A8N-SLI Deluxe, and another running an older AMD Athlon) which all contain NVidia RAID chipsets. My NVidia RAID setups have so far been detected by all the motherboards, so I have been able to transfer a RAID array from one motherboard to the other. I can't verify that this will work with all Asus setups, nor whether this is true of the other RAID options available (like the SiS controllers) but my experience with these three boards seems to indicate that the NVidia RAID drivers have remained consistent across different motherboards.
 05/06/2009 05:14:51 PM · #7
That is very useful information - I might look for a bare bones system to slot the drives into; that'll be great.

All four of the drives are SATA drives - is that true of your set-up too?
 05/06/2009 07:23:26 PM · #8
I would bet it's the powersupply. I see that behavior alot, and only once was it the mainboard.

Bare minimum setup is the Mainboard and Hard drives, and in your case, probably the water pump. However you could probably skip the pump, and once it gets past the point where you can see it's going to boot, you can shut it back down, and your processor probably won't get that hot in the short time frame.
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