Few questions

[Zeek]

How can you tell when motherboard is going bad?
How can you tell when a hard drive is failing?
How can you tell if Power supply is going bad?

Ive been getting some random shutdowns and a second later a restart. Its a full no power kind of shutdown but then restarts after. i unplugged the power button from the motherboard to see if it was a faulty wire with the power button. and just recently my comp shutdown and turned back on.

i believe its one of the 3 because i do constant scans of my comp for viruses and i know it doesnt overheat.

[Jä×]

Motherboard... well it normally just dies.. no real warning.

Harddrive... normally speeds start to drop and windows starts reporting I/O errors, R/W errors and sector errors.

Power supplies... well say you're browsing the net... all good... but if you launch a game and instantly bluescreen a few seconds into it? Either GPU, Drivers, or PSU

Random power downs and restarts points towards the power supply normally.

[Zeek]

Yeah i replaced my power supply yesterday. gonna give it a while to see if it still does the shutdown restart. if not then im all set

went from a 450 watt to a 600 watt

[Jä×]

450watt is very low... modern GPUs require at least a 550watt. So hopefully it was that.

[McSkittles]

450 watts?

I'd need your build specs to give you a definite, but I'm just going to take a shot in the dark and say you should at least have a 600 to run the GPU and everything else with no problems

[Zeek]

could of been 550 but my dad said 450 so i could be wrong. the comp was built bout 2-3? years ago.

[Zeek]

im guessing its the motherboard. shutoff again. no warning just a power off and restart

[BFM_Ðragons]

is it blue screening or just literally shutting down? then nothing?

[Zeek]

it loses power then restarts right after. No blue screen so its not a HD failurs

[BFM_Ðragons]

It sounds like it's shorting out may sound silly but double check all the power connections make sure there all ok might be something silly like one of them being busted also check the connection to the hard drive both of them as I had a comp where the connection was iffy and it kept doing the same

[MrMxyzptlk]

You haven't ruled out heat problems as far as I can see.

If the CPU cooler has come loose or "degreased itself" (yes, it happens...) it could be instantly overheating and auto-shutting-down to prevent frying your CPU chip....

This happens most often in "home builds," but can happen in "store-bought" units sometimes as well.

[Jä×]

^First post said it wasn't overheating, but eh.

Normally if the computer overheated and the failsafe killed it... it shouldn't power back on after until it cooled down. Typically.

[Zeek]

What program should i use to monitor my computer temp? I have used Coretemp b4 but im not sure how to read it.

[Jä×]

Speedfan is free and reads most motherboards.

[MrMxyzptlk]

^First post said it wasn't overheating, but eh.

Normally if the computer overheated and the failsafe killed it... it shouldn't power back on after until it cooled down. Typically.

I said the CPU is overheating, not the computer.  Totally different scenarios and symptoms.

In those cases the machine can start up (usually NOT make it anywhere close to booting Windows, often not even BIOS,) then can instantly power-down/restart, quickly overheat the chip again and shut down again... and again, and again, and....

I've actually seen a computer where someone let it keep trying over and over and over again and literally melted the solder of the chip's pins! (Which is a WAY bigger problem at that point!  )  The inside of the case never even got warm.


Ditto on the Speedfan recommendation, but be forewarned that - due to the huge variation in board manufacturers/models - it may not display correct values for some of the items it displays.