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My desktop computer suddenly stopped working today. When it happened, the fuse in the house was also knocked off. After switching it back on, I tried to turn the computer back on but nothing happened - no fan started spinning, no led lighted on, no sparks, no noise - nothing.

Because of the fuse knock-off, my first suspicion was PSU failure so I read up a bit on signs of this because I've only experienced PSU failure and it was long ago, so I don't remeber the symptoms of it. I found out that signs might be - amongst others - significantly increased boot time and random lockups during normal load.

I've experienced both of these, though I assumed the slow boot time to be because of my HDD being old. Random lockups though were kind of different from what I've read - I read that people experiencing such issues could only get their computers back to work after a lockup by powering it off manually and then powering it back on. For me, lockups meant that Windows was kind of "hang up", the cursor was moving, but no interaction really happened - hovering an icon of a running program on the taskbar didn't show up the peek image of it, window switching didn't work, couldn't minimize, maximize or close a program and such things. Then after a couple of seconds, it started working normally.

Visible or smellable signs were not present, no molten or blow-off capacitors on the motherboard, no unusual smell.

I haven't added any new hardware for almost a year, and the system have been perfectly functional until now, and the PSU power should be more than enough for my system. (It's a Corsair CX600 (Watts) PSU running a 2nd gen Core i5 2400 CPU, ASUS GF GTX 750 TI (OC) graphics card, ASUS P8H77-V LE Mobo, 4x2 gigs of Corsair XMS3 1600MHz RAM, single hdd.

So please tell your thoughts, is my suspicion right about the PSU failing, or do you think it's something else.

Thank you.

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  • how much time between switching on computer to house breaker trip? a lamp plugged in to AC near computer can show this. if fast it is a short in the PSU (which may be caused by another problem so a new PSU might eventually fail). if slow. it might be the mainboard. if slow, does the lamp dim even slightly? what AC voltage do you have? PSU failure is the most common
    – Skaperen
    Commented Apr 13, 2015 at 9:03
  • i once built two identical computers. the identical PSUs failed about a week apart.
    – Skaperen
    Commented Apr 13, 2015 at 9:05
  • likely your system has a virus that was keeping it loaded with work and power usage
    – Skaperen
    Commented Apr 13, 2015 at 9:08
  • "how much time between switching on computer to house breaker trip? a lamp plugged in to AC near computer can show this." I don't completely understand what you mean here. How much time it takes for a lamp to light up if i plug it into the same power source as the computer? If so, it's immediate and works perfectly (no dim but normal light). The power source has surge protection. Voltage - I don't know, I don't have equipment to check it. About virus I'm sure I don't have any, and I didn't experience noisy fans or heavy CPU load unless I was doing some demanding task.
    – Balázs
    Commented Apr 13, 2015 at 9:15
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    No idea where Skaperen is getting the virus idea from. In any case, if nothing happens when you push the power button, it's clearly a hardware problem at some level. Your power supply might have an internal fuse that is blown; if you feel like voiding your warranty you can open it up and take a look. Otherwise, try a different power supply, a different wall outlet, a different motherboard, etc.
    – Russell Uhl
    Commented Apr 13, 2015 at 17:29

1 Answer 1

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It was a power supply failure.

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  • 1
    It would be a good idea to expand upon this. If possible, add details of precisely what went wrong with the PSU or how you traced the problem to the PSU.
    – bwDraco
    Commented Jun 21, 2015 at 22:51

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