Sunday, June 29, 2008

Computer just shuts off suddenly, no noise, no beep

My computer is setup such that it is connected to my living room's LCD. And I have been watching video on it ever since. I've had an ugly computer case for a long time, and I think it is time to move to a new silverstone case to add that little something missing in my living room. After relocating the guts of my machine, I find that my new machine is shutting down very randomly. It is not a restart, it's just a sudden shut down which left my computer in a state of ON but not functioning, ON but fan not working, ON but power supply fan stopped.
First suggestion of such problem is usually overheat. I tried cleaning the CPU fan/ heat sink, operating while the case is opened, also taking the hard disk out of the box to cool it down. All of the above doesn't work.
Then I start to think whether it is a power supply issue. The silverstone case has a front LCD display which draws power from the computer. My system might be on the boarder line of voltage requirement, and when it is under load it draws over the limit of my powersupply, thus killing the system. However this doesn't seem to be the problem.
I then decide that it might be a piece of hardware that is not connected properly to the motherboard when I moved it. I tried reconnecting every cable. I took out all the RAM, took out the video card, tightened every screw, but still no result.
I then suspect that the power supply is providing bad shape of power to the computer, unfortunately I don't have an extra power supply at home to test that. I took out the power supply then I turn my computer on, and viola, it is working fine.
There are a few possible outcome of this problem,
1. I still haven't fixed it.
2. The power supply is overheating
3. Parts of the power supply is hanging loose, therefore when I change the orientation of the placement of the power supply, it works. (I rotated it 90 degrees with respect to the horizon)


I will replace the power supply with a better one, and hopefully it will solve my problem.