If it is as drastic as a bad mainboard, you will want a new power supply for the new mainboard, anyway; given the symptoms described.
I'd start there. At worst you have a PS on hand. best al On Mon, 25 Feb 2013 23:42:45 +0800 Brian Weeden <[email protected]> wrote: > Was working on a paper this morning and suddenly my desktop computer > powered off by itself. This is a Q6600 machine that I built a few years > ago and has been in nearly constant use since then with little to no > trouble. It's been rock-sold and aside from upgrading the video card a > year ago I haven't had to touch it. > > I waited a few seconds, then hit the power button. It came back on briefly > and then shut off again, followed by the smell of overheated electronics. > > Disconnected the power and opened it up. Nothing was visibly smoking. > Took everything apart. Inspected the CPU and it appeared ok. Replaced > the thermal compound and re-seated the heatsink. Smell appeared to be > coming from the power supply but I can't be positive. > > Put the bare essentials backtogether (CPU, RAM, video card) and powered it > back on. Getting a variety of beep and error codes from the on-board > diagnostic unit. At first there was a 1 long, 3 short beep code for the > RAM . Reseated and it's gone. POST sequence was hanging on 8.7. (Check CPU > Voltage) and now it's hanging on 8.2. (Check Power Supply). > > I get the sense that perhaps the power supply went bad. However, I really > can't afford to be down on this system very long, so if I'm going to order > parts I want to do it as soon as possible and not go through a long > trouble-shooting process. > > Thoughts from the collective? Is it likely that if the power supply is > indeed the culprit that the damage was contained there? Or should I be > worried about the CPU, RAM, mobo, etc? > > > --------- > Brian -- Al Anger <[email protected]>
