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PC won't start after power outage.
iowa
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I woke up one morning and saw that my apt complex had lost power and now the pc won't boot. It was plugged into a power strip so I thought it should have been surge protected. The monitor is plugged into the same strip and is working fine.
reading online it looks like it's either something wrong with the mobo or the PSU. which one is more likely and how can I tell?
I opened up the case and I think I read that the PSU is the gray box near the lower left bottom fan is this true and how hard is it to remove. also how much are PSUs and what should I look for if i get a new one. can I do this myself? fun fact: the first time I tried to install RAM by myself I had to take it to a store to get it fixed booya
halp halp
reading online it looks like it's either something wrong with the mobo or the PSU. which one is more likely and how can I tell?
I opened up the case and I think I read that the PSU is the gray box near the lower left bottom fan is this true and how hard is it to remove. also how much are PSUs and what should I look for if i get a new one. can I do this myself? fun fact: the first time I tried to install RAM by myself I had to take it to a store to get it fixed booya
halp halp
iowa on
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Removing is pretty simple. You remove all the power cords going to HDDs, CDs, motherboards, possibly video cards. Then you remove a few screws on the back of the case and take it out.
Also, that series of Dell has eh internals as far as quality goes.
New build time yay!
Give us a budget...
dang.
what are those capacitors supposed to look like?
son of a bitch. what did I do wrong here. It was plugged into a power strip. does a surge protector just stop working if its old or something.
well it was time for a new build. Is there any way i'll be able to retrieve some things from the hard drive of that one? how do i go about removing that.
ill be getting 500 dollars soon but will be saving at least a grand until I start the new build. That thing wasn't even able to run darksiders 2 let alone bioshock infinite which i really want to play.
thanks for the help guys. i remember playin starcraft with you back in the day bendery
If you look at some of the other capacitors on the motherboard, you can see they have the flat aluminium top plate, with the cross stamped into it? That's what they're supposed to look like.
Popping the hard drive out is generally a case of un-plugging the two cables in the back of it, and then undoing four small philips head screws, two either side of the hard drive enclosure.
$500 is a good start, with that kind of money it's possible to put together a tower that can do most anything except gaming until the addition of a video card.
Or newer non-AAA games.
First, when you say 'won't boot' do you mean won't turn on or do you mean it will turn on but won't load Windows. There's a very big difference. If it won't turn on then keep reading.
It's true that those capacitors are burst, but that's no guarantee that your motherboard has failed. The power supplies on those Dell Inspirons (yes I can identify it from the picture, I have many experience points) are complete shit. You should run out to your nearest Best Buy or other electronics retailer and pick up a new power supply. Any wattage should be fine as those Dells don't need much. Hook it up and try it out, I'd be willing to bet it comes back to life for you. Worst case is it still won't start up and you can return the power supply for a refund.
Be sure not to get this power supply at a local small business. Those guys can't just repackage and resell the parts people return the way a big box store can. Doing this at a small business is literally taking food from the owner's family.
While it's nice to have a sick graphics card, you really don't need to view everything in the best graphics available when on a tight budget. I have a 1GB GDDR5 that only cost me $125. I plan to Crossfire it later this year, which will add more bang to it. Yes, nVidia has some absolutely amazing cards, and yes there is more support for them, but they tend to cost a lot more than ATI. I (like the OP) don't have the sort of money where $350 for a card is chump change. I don't play everything at max graphics, but it still look pretty to me. I'll say it again: tight budget.
Also, RAM is ridiculously cheap, so stock up on that. 16GB is an easy investment.
SIDE NOTE: I get a ton of deals by buying things at the right time over the course of a month. Check out DealNews. It's updated daily and I've saved hundreds on upgrade and replacement parts. For example, they have a 2GB GDDR5 Radeon HD 7850 card listed right now for $165 (with free BioShock Infinite). I know that's a bit much for a $500 budget, but damn that's a good price for that type of card.
This is demonstrably false. AMD is behind in pretty much every significant benchmark. They are simply being buried by Intel's R&D budget right now.
That said, AMD chips are a viable option for people on a budget who aren't trying to build a top-of-the-line screamer of a system.
16GB of RAM is pretty much worthless for most people. Current games will never take advantage of that much. Cheap as RAM is, $100 for 16GB compared to $50 for 8GB is an unnecessary luxury for someone trying to save money; that extra $50 could be better spent elsewhere.
And I could be very wrong on this, but those "significant benchmark(s)" aren't really noticed until you hit the higher tier machines anyways. I've played on other Intel rigs that had basically the same specs as my AMD machine and I didn't really notice a difference, not to mention that mine cost much less than theirs.
And I agree that 16GB of RAM is a bit excessive, but I got it for a great deal: $75. That was hard to pass up
but for right now
do they sell cases with more than 2 slots for RAM or whatever so i can use the ram from the old computer.
also are there such things as cases with 2 slots for hard drives so I can put the old hard drive in there too along with a bigger one.
otherwise i have an external hard drive i guess I can transfer everything from it to if im not too stupid to properly do such a thing
Most regular sized motherboards (ATX form factor) will have four RAM slots.
However, if you use mismatched RAM (that is, RAM running at different speeds) the whole kit and kaboodle will run at the speed of the slowest one of the bunch. For that reason, I wouldn't bother re-using RAM from a circa 2007 computer. It will almost certainly be slower than any RAM you get now and just hold it back. Like I said above, no game currently on the market could possibly take advantage of more than 8GB of RAM, and if you're just building a general purpose machine and don't intend any serious gaming you can get by with 4GB for now easily. So don't worry too much about stuffing in RAM.
Virtually any mid-sized or full-sized tower case will have bays for like, 5-6 hard drives at least.
-A 120GB SSD with my OS and core programs on it.
-A 500GB SSD dedicated entirely to games.
-A 500GB platter HDD which was my old games drive and right now is just being used to store miscellaneous incidental stuff
-A 2TB platter HDD for all of my documents and media (may need to be replaced soon as it has been acting weird of late)
I suspect you have DDR2 RAM, which is incompatible with current motherboards, and is old and slow anyway. So a 2x4 GB set of RAM will fulfill all your Earthly needs.