Brand new gaming PC won't start

[Fhraaze]

Hey everyone,

I am a noobie here on MG, and I've done some research on this issue on the forums here but I still want to get some of your opinions on the subject. So last night I received the final peice of my gaming PC puzzle came in and I installed it and everything worked wonderfully.

Here are my PC specs:
i7-3770K 3.5ghz
CoolerMaster Hyper 212 Evo Gaming Cooling Fan
Asus P8Z77-V LX Intel Z77 Chipset DDR3 ATX Mainboard
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 2GB
16gb Corsair Vengenance Ram (4x4gb)
120gb SSD Hard Drive
2 1tb Hard Drives (Raid 0)
800 Watt Power Supply
5 case fans (2 top, two at the Hard drives, one below graphics card)

I think that's everything important, but feel free to throw me a question if I forgot. So here is the series of events that happend to me last night.

Uninstalled the drivers for my GTX550ti, uninstalled the GTX550ti physically, installed the GTX 680 physically, then installed the GTX 680 drivers.

Everything at this point is running great, I start up Battlefield 3, put the graphics on ULTRA and I'm getting around 100-120 fps. So I go play a match and then all of a sudden my game crashes and I have to do a task manager force quit to actually get the game to stop running on windows. I restart the game and lower the graphics to medium and I'm getting around 160-200 fps. Play a match and the PC just shuts off . I did not measure the temps, but I wish I had to give you an idea of what they were running at. This series of events happens 2 or 3 more times and on the final time the PC will not boot back up. It will not even try to power up.

I am thinking my PSU took a dirt nap, but I am not positive. The motherboard led light glows when the power switch in the back is on, but that's it. When I press the power button to power the computer on, one light on the case flashes, but that is it and nothing happens.

Again I can not turn the PC on to measure any temps so yeah....I am thinking my PSU wasn't enough for my monsterous PC build and just folded under the preasure, but I could be wrong.

Hope you guys can shed some light on this situation for me.

[DavidGP]

Hi

Just a couple of quick main questions:

1. what drive is your main OS drive, the SSD or HDDs in raid0?
2. What Windows version and Service Pack are you using and is it 32bit or 64bit?
3. In Event Viewer at the exact time of a crash is their any error warning either in the Application or System logs and if so what? can just copy and paste them into a notepad file and attach them as per HOW TO: Attach Items To Your Post for us to review.


I think my first option would be to do a new clean uninstall of the Nvidia drivers using the below guide,

Download and install the Chipset driver HERE for your motherboard again and reboot.

Download and install Driver Sweeper (BUT do not run it yet) download the latest Nvidia driver HERE for your graphic card BUT dont install yet.

Use Add/Remove and unsinstall your Nvidia Graphics Driver, then reboot into Safe Mode (F8 at boot) and then run Driver Sweeper to remove any Nvidia Graphics and Physx drivers it finds in the list.


Then install latest Nvidia Driver you downloaded earlier and once installed if not prompted to reboot, reboot into normal mode.

Then see how you get on.

[Fhraaze]

Thanks for the reply David,

My OS is on my SSD and I am running Windows 7 Home Edition 64 bit. I would love to look at the event viewer to see if there is any sort of error or what not, but I can not even boot my PC.

I forgot to note this, the computer finally gave up after I restarted and I was simply re-installing Battlefield 3. I was not playing when the final poop out happend.

Unless there is another way to do all the things you listed without being able to power on my PC? Lol.

[DavidGP]

Ah yeah I posted in haste not remembering to comment on that bit on non-booting sorry!

Do you have a spare PSU from another PC or friend? just if its a lower powered one, just install bare bones hardware like SSD, Graphics and leave all the other HDDs and DVDs un connected.

As you have a motherboard light, you are getting power, I would also if not done already as weird that just rebooting you loose the ability to boot, so check all connections again and as above unconnect the extra hardware, also take the motherboard battery out and wait 10mins and then see if you can boot, if it does enter the BIOS straight away and check date and times, plus 1st boot device is your SSD.

then if we can get some life we can do my earlier stuff and I wish we could boot a PC without power would be so easy

[gloozit]

Awesome card. Makes my GTX470 look obsolete.

Your problem could be several things, but you need to up and running to be sure.
Go through and check all of your connections. Re-seat them, just to be sure.
Pull your RAM and try one stick, then restarting, until you tried all of them.
Take a step backward, put the old video card back in or if you have onboard video, try that, but you would have to go into BIOS and change the setting for video, after pulling the card. Maybe it is the card, itself, not the PSU.
You said you get one light on the board. Is this a board with troubleshooting LED's? No other LED notifications? Are you getting any beeps, when you push the power button? Nothing but an LED that basically is telling you there is some power to the board? What about fans? Do any spin up?

I couldn't find what i was looking for, the amperage needed to run that card.
Not all high wattage PSU's supply the higher amps needed for some of these cards. Mine needs a minimum of 38 amps. And by the looks of your rig, the PSU is the cheapest to replace, but you don't want to replace it, if it isn't the problem.
Here is a list of certified PSU's for that card: http://www.geforce.com/hardware/tech...power-supplies

Sorry, I don't have more ideas at the moment, but someone else will get what I missed.
Good luck and I hope it is a cheap fix.

I took so long, looking for your cards amperage, DavidGP posted some of the same tips.

[Fhraaze]

Originally Posted by DavidGP

Ah yeah I posted in haste not remembering to comment on that bit on non-booting sorry!

Do you have a spare PSU from another PC or friend? just if its a lower powered one, just install bare bones hardware like SSD, Graphics and leave all the other HDDs and DVDs un connected.

As you have a motherboard light, you are getting power, I would also if not done already as weird that just rebooting you loose the ability to boot, so check all connections again and as above unconnect the extra hardware, also take the motherboard battery out and wait 10mins and then see if you can boot, if it does enter the BIOS straight away and check date and times, plus 1st boot device is your SSD.

then if we can get some life we can do my earlier stuff and I wish we could boot a PC without power would be so easy

I wish I did have a spare PC but the only other PC I have access to is my work PC, and I do not think they would take kindly to me using it for the tests .

I am going to try the battery on the motherboard tonight, Thanks for all ur help.

[Fhraaze]

Originally Posted by gloozit

Awesome card. Makes my GTX470 look obsolete.

Your problem could be several things, but you need to up and running to be sure.
Go through and check all of your connections. Re-seat them, just to be sure.
Pull your RAM and try one stick, then restarting, until you tried all of them.
Take a step backward, put the old video card back in or if you have onboard video, try that, but you would have to go into BIOS and change the setting for video, after pulling the card. Maybe it is the card, itself, not the PSU.
You said you get one light on the board. Is this a board with troubleshooting LED's? No other LED notifications? Are you getting any beeps, when you push the power button? Nothing but an LED that basically is telling you there is some power to the board? What about fans? Do any spin up?

I couldn't find what i was looking for, the amperage needed to run that card.
Not all high wattage PSU's supply the higher amps needed for some of these cards. Mine needs a minimum of 38 amps. And by the looks of your rig, the PSU is the cheapest to replace, but you don't want to replace it, if it isn't the problem.
Here is a list of certified PSU's for that card: http://www.geforce.com/hardware/tech...power-supplies

Sorry, I don't have more ideas at the moment, but someone else will get what I missed.
Good luck and I hope it is a cheap fix.

I took so long, looking for your cards amperage, DavidGP posted some of the same tips.

Thanks for all the helpful tips. I do not know why I did not think about going backwards (frustration most likely) and re-installing the old GPU and testing that. But when I get home tonight I am going to break it down like you listed and try that.

I'm going to look at my motherboard book when I get home from work and see if it lists any information about the leds and if they are notification leds.

Also thank you for the list of certified PSU's for my card. Like you said, replacing the PSU on my rig is the cheapest and I have a warrenty on my CPU and GPU so I am not too worried about them either, just want to get this thing back up and running!

[Fhraaze]

Originally Posted by gloozit

Awesome card. Makes my GTX470 look obsolete.

Thank you, from the few minutes I was able to use the card I really enjoyed it! I totally reccomend it!

[gloozit]

Frustration is a trouble shooting killer.
Think of this as a car engine, they need gas, air and spark.
You need to boot.
So the BIOS settings, bad RAM, loose connections, a bad drive, a bad PSU, GPU, or CPU or motherboard can all stop the boot from happening.
You just have to find Waldo
That pretty much covers it but probably doesn't help much. Possibly you have a friend, who wouldn't mind swapping out a PSU for a short while or a local mom and pop shop that can do a cheap psu test for you?

[sexyandy81]

I am thinking of 2 possibilities here.

Number 1 - It could be the power supply that might have ceased to power your computer.

Number 2 - This is known to happen, It could be your internal hard drives that has overpowered your motherboard. I heard from family members that they had 1 1tb hard drive internal installed and it overpowered the motherboard

That's all I can think of at the moment. Hope this helps

[the mekanic]

If you are familiar with the use of a multi-meter, you can test the PSU by jumping the "PSUon(green wire)/COM" pins with a short piece of small gauge wire. Once it is powered on, you can test each pin to ensure it is working properly. When viewing the chart, Ctrl +/- are good hotkeys for zooming in, and out.

[LTLSU]

It sure sounds like an underpowered 12 volt rail with that psu. The GTX 680 alone needs 38 amps on the 12 v. The i7 3770 will push that minimum requirement further. Overclocking either will require more power to the 12 v (12 volt rail almost exclusively powers gpu, cpu and mobo these days)

Its not about stated psu wattage its about the quality of the particular psu and how many amps are available via its 12 volt rail.

Psu's:

http://www.eggxpert.com/forums/thread/323050.aspx