PSU making whining noise and PC won't boot.

Just now after a restart, my PC won't boot anymore. The motherboard doesn't light up.

The power switch on the PSU lights up but when its set to on theres a loud sharp whine coming from the PSU which goes away if you switch it to off.

This has happened all of a sudden and was working fine before the restart.

Anyone know if the PSU is broken?

Yea sounds like it, sound almost like the same poblem im having execpt my motherboard lights up but a werid noise does come from the PSU.

Can I be sure that its the PSU (without a multimeter) and that its not the motherboard or something else?

Sure.

Disconnect the PSU from the board and peripherals and jumper the green and black wires of the ATX connector to get it to power on.

It could very well be that there's something hooked up to the PSU that's shorting it out.

The light on the switch at the back of the PSU still lights up when you switch it to on, could that mean its something else causing the problem other than the PSU?

How do you jumper the green and black leads together?

Also is there a posibility that the drives were damaged?

You can use a paperclip or a short lenth of small diameter wire or my personal fave a twist tie as a jumper. On the wire or twist tie just strip the insulator (or the paper in the case of the twist tie) back a bit at each end and stick one end in the green plug and the other in the black.

Is there a chance that other components are damaged?

Yes, I've seen damaged PCI cards hang a PC not allowing it to post.

Hmm, but since the machine won't even power on at all, can I rule that out?

Does the PSU power up when you jumper it? If so strip everything but the ram and CPU from the mobo and try powering it up. If it powers up and gives an error beep (due to no video) shut it down and pop in the vid card. If you're running SLI just put in one. Power it up again and see if it posts.

Keep doing this until you add the piece that's preventing it from posting. If it won't power up at all then you need to try the CPU in another mobo, if that won't power up try another CPU in the first mobo.

It's all a process of elimination.

If you can get your hands on an Ultra-X Post Card it'll power up a mobo with no CPU (Or a dead one) or even a dead mobo and tell you what the problem really is. At close to $1000 (last time I checked) it's not something everyone is likely to have but if a local PC shop has one you might consider taking it in and having them find out what's wrong if you're unable to.

Orr said:

Hmm, but since the machine won't even power on at all, can I rule that out?

Click to expand...

Of course not.

You have the PSU plugged in, so it's getting 110V from the wall. You flip the switch on the back so that light lights up and the PSU starts switching AC to DC for +5VSB which is what the light on most motherboards is, but the power supply itself isn't going to "turn on" until the motherboard TELLS IT to turn on. That's where the green to black comes in.

If the mobo or something plugged into the mobo or something plugged into the power supply has a short, etc. of course the PSU isn't going to "turn on."

I was afraid of that, theres a shril whine coming from thye PSU and since the switch light at the back is lighting up, would that lead to it being more likely that the motherboard or a component is causing the problem?

Also, when I disconnect the PSU from everything and switch it on, the switch light comes on and the PSU still makes the loud high pitched whine sound.

Orr said:

Also, when I disconnect the PSU from everything and switch it on, the switch light comes on and the PSU still makes the loud high pitched whine sound.

Click to expand...

If that's the case, then perhaps the problem IS the PSU. It should make any kind of whine. Certainly if NOTHING is plugged into it at all.

95% sure it's a dead PSU

Well I've ordered a new Antec Neo550W PSU and will try with that. I will RMA the HIPER one and keep it as a spare.

What I'm worried about is that other components were damaged as well.

Well received my Antec Neo HE550 today, set it up and everything is working fine so it was indeed the HIPER PSU that failed.

I rang them and they gave me an RMA number to send it back. Anyone been through their RMA process before?

hehe if jonny knew it was a Hiper from the get-go he may very well have said it was the psu, no questions asked

I kid, I kid

Fellas,

Revising an old thread for simple record keeping purposes.

I started my build with an SFX 600W PSU and an Asus Maximum VII Impact. I put it together a month ago, it booted and i loaded windows. I then boxed it all up and waited for my NCASE (WHICH HASN'T FREAKING COME IN THE MAIL YET YOU BASTARDS")

i had a free weekend and decided to install more programs and stuff so i put it back together and sure enough i heard a whining noise, very faint, coming from the PSU. The motherboard lights turn on when the PSU is plugged into the wall but when i jump the motherboard, the PSU makes a whine noise.

I followed the procedure listed here and unplugged everything from the psu. With the PSU plugged into the wall and nothing else, i tried to jump it and heard the whining noise again. Any time i took the jumper off, the whining noise stopped. Going to order a new PSU and see what happens. Should i fear that i damaged my mobo by any chance?



*UPDATE*


Got my new PSU in the mail. Same result. I then decided to suck it up and pull the PSU out from my current rig, it booted fine. I was in disbelief that i got two dead PSU's so i investigated further. Turns out i had a PCI power cable running to the CPU. BIG OOPS AMIRIGHT?!?!?! I moved the cable to the right stop on the PSU and it booted completely fine. So hopefully if anyone else experiences this, DONT CONFUSE THE CPU and GPU power cables! I've built 4 PC's in the past and this is the first time my dumbass has done such a thing haha. Best of luck to all.

FIrst off, don't necropost. Make a new thread, and link back to this one if you want.

Second off, you did create a short circuit on the PSU. The top row for CPU connectors has 4 12v pins, while the PCI-E connector has 3 12v and 1 ground. You were shorting out those 12v with the ground.

However, they should have been keyed differently and been impossible to plug in. Did you force it in or something?

Tsumi said:

FIrst off, don't necropost. Make a new thread, and link back to this one if you want.

Second off, you did create a short circuit on the PSU. The top row for CPU connectors has 4 12v pins, while the PCI-E connector has 3 12v and 1 ground. You were shorting out those 12v with the ground.

However, they should have been keyed differently and been impossible to plug in. Did you force it in or something?

Click to expand...

1. I revived the thread so as to contain the information onto one page. Sorry if that violates the forum rules.

2. I did not notice any abnormal use of force. I literally just pushed it in same with all the other PSU's i worked with.