[nigelinooo]

hello and thank you again for helping me with the broken PSU on my computer. now a new problem came up, not on mine, but my sister's comp.

my immediate instinct told me to get a new PSU since her computer is about 3 yrs old or so, i was assuming the PSU wore out by now. And you can guess, since I am here, the new PSU did not work. The indicator light on the motherboard doesn't even light up. So I'm assuming it's the motherboard? I don't want to go with my gut feeling again and run off with a new mobo. [I might've thrown out a perfectly fine PSU ) I don't know how to test for the defective part so if you people can help me

Specs:

ASUS P4S533
512mb DDR 333
Intel P4 2.4 GHz
MSI G4Ti4200
Maxtor 80 GB
LG CDRW 32x

[Advertisements]

Usually when an LED on the board doesn't light up (assuming your PSU is properly plugged in as some boards require two connectors), it doesn't look good. As usually the LED remains lit when the rest of the board is dead, it's kind of like the last thing to go.

Let's check the obvious: Does the PSU have an on/off switch on the back?

Otherwise, disconnect everything from the board (bar front panel connectors) and take out all the expansion cards (modems, etc). Now try again, just in case something on there was taking too much juice up.

[Neil Jones]

Usually when an LED on the board doesn't light up (assuming your PSU is properly plugged in as some boards require two connectors), it doesn't look good. As usually the LED remains lit when the rest of the board is dead, it's kind of like the last thing to go.

Let's check the obvious: Does the PSU have an on/off switch on the back?

Otherwise, disconnect everything from the board (bar front panel connectors) and take out all the expansion cards (modems, etc). Now try again, just in case something on there was taking too much juice up.

[nigelinooo]

eek, ok removed everything.. just mobo conencted to the PSU.. yes i made all the encessary connection (20-pin, and the 4-pin one) from PSU to the mobo.. removed the ATX connectors, and still no LED.. does this mean what i think it means? =(

[Neil Jones]

Of course it could be possible that the actual LED itself has just gone, though these things are usually wired up in such a way so as to prove power is actually going far enough around the board to power it. And in some cases are better quality than the rest of the board

Assuming of course that the front panel connectors are wired correctly and that you haven't done something silly like connect it to the front panel lights by mistake then you could well have a faulty board.

Next things to try: Find somebody else with a board that works and takes that processor and that memory. Swap them over.

Idea being that if you put that processor and memory into the other board (which then boots with them and runs okay) then you know there's nothing wrong with either of them and that the only thing left has to be the board.

Fortunately motherboards are relatively cheap these days so will be quite painless in the money department.

Edited by Neil Jones, 09 October 2005 - 04:48 AM.