My dad recently bought a new PC and gave me the old PC that I built for him. Ever since I put it together it's had issues booting. The mobo clip for the CPU gave me a really hard time and I did end up denting the heatsink on the CPU a little bit, but I don't know if that's merely cosmetic or could actually be the cause of the problem. It tends to turn itself off after a while, but sometimes it stays booting but nothing ever comes up and there are no POST beeps. When it does boot up it works mostly fine (the odd hang here and there, but nothing major). Could the CPU be the problem or is something else likely such as a dodgy mobo standoff or something? Honestly, I haven't looked into the issue at all, I am just looking for a little direction before I go to town on it! Thanks.
I'd be stripping it out and running it out of the case with minimal components to see if I could eliminate certain items.
Check CPU temps? Look for BIOS upgrades? Disable stuff int he BIOS that you don't need like Floppy drive controllers/onboard graphics etc
I did a BIOS upgrade two or three weeks ago in the hopes of fixing the issue. I just got done taking the PC apart and running it out of the case. It didn't seem to make any difference, but then I reapplied thermal paste to the CPU and heatsink and for the last 5 or so boot ups it's worked every time. I didn't consider disabling stuff I don't need in the BIOS, so thank you for that suggestion, I will definitely do that. I'll keep using it and see if the problem continues happening or not for the next couple of days and I will monitor the temps to see what's going on there.
I haven't had loads of time to check, but it definitely hasn't fixed the issues. It crashed on the "Starting Windows" splash and turned itself off so I had to repair windows. It then booted up Windows fine so I had a look at temps, but nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary, about 33C or so idle. One weird thing I did notice, is massive CPU spikes on ocassion even though the system is idling. This is pretty much a brand new installation of Windows, so there shouldn't be any sort of malicious software or anything hogging any resources. Here's a quick pic of the CPU usage: During those spikes, temperature rose to about 42c, which still isn't something I'd worry about. The specs of the PC are as follows: CPU: Intel Core i3 2100 s1155 Mobo: MSI H61M-P23 (B3) Intel H61 DD GPU: Radeon 5850, I think Sapphire RAM:4GB TW3X4G1333C9A XMS3 CLASSIC PSU: 500W CMaster Elite Power
