GPU fan no longer spins; PC won't POST

Jellylesg

2[H]4U
Joined
Jan 15, 2010
Messages
2,283
So my computer's been acting up for a while, been unable to play any games more challenging than Worms or Plants vs Zombies or it crashes with a mosaic pattern and skipping audio, as well as locking up for 10-20 seconds at a time whilst playing games or watching video files.

Example: http://filevo.com/7tg1fwfrjmyn.html

Everest and Core Temp report(ed) no temperatures out of the ordinary. Three passes of Memtest86+ show no errors, and a 7 hour Spinrite diagnostic shows no issues with either HDD. Tried several drivers for anything that uses them, beta, latest stable release and previous known stable drivers - video card and audio card.

Took everything out, reseated, dusted the PSU thoroughly thinking that maybe it was old and clogged and straining to supply the video card. Got a great deal of dust out, reseated everything else, tidied cables and went to boot up. The GPU fan no longer spins no matter what combination of power cables I use (the PSU has a 6+2 arrangement rather than 8 pin) and with an additional 6-pin cable as it was before the light on the 280 shows as green but still I get no video output or POST.

Tried an old X800XL which spins up and everything seems fine, but there's still no output to the monitors. Tried both in either PCI-E slot with no luck. Removed motherboard battery to reset the BIOS - no luck. Reset the CMOS using the jumper on the board - no luck.

Really just looking for any ideas or inspiration. Everything was handled carefully and as much static discharged before handling each component as possible. Everything was rested on the case side panels etc for what little that's worth. I know it was acting out beforehand, but that's probably because the machine's been running almost constantly for 3 years, and very hard.

I really don't think something could have gone catastrophically wrong with any component while it was sitting outside the case or being out back in, so I'm thinking I've just done something very stupid somewhere along the way and not realised, like neglected to plug the 12v ATX in or something.

Specs:

PSU: Enermax Infiniti 720w
GPU: BFG GTX280 OC
CPU: Q6600 G0
HSF: Thermaltake IFX-14 + 2x120mm
Motherboard: Asus P5N32-E SLi Plus
RAM: OCZ Gold 2x2GB DDR2 6400+
OS HDD: Samsung Spinpoint 501LJ
Sound card: Auzen X-Fi Prelude

Thanks in advance for any help.
 
Try doing a barebones test as described post #3 of the stickied "Basic Troubleshooting Guide" if you haven't already.
 
Yeah, I tried using only the CPU with one fan on the HSF running, the video card and one stick of RAM. No dice.
 
Managed to get the CMOS reset in bare bones and then with all components connected. went through POST without a problem and then got a "Disk boot failure" message. Can't get it to POST again reliably - it's worked twice so far but going back to the conditions where it worked doesn't seem to help; it allows me to reset the CMOS when it feels like it, it seems.

I thought it was my wireless keyboard not working properly when resetting the CMOS as I needed to hit/hold DEL, but with a wired one it's still temperamental.
 
I'm betting it's the motherboard. That particular mobo was always finicky IIRC.
 
Worth checking with a new battery, you think, or would that be futile? I expect I'd get a message if there was a problem with that, but this motherboard's always been a bit do-the-minimum.
 
Got it to POST again with a different SATA cable, after trying two different new CR2023 cells, which didn't seem to make any difference.

Still getting the "disk boot failure, insert system disk" error on a CMOS jumper reset boot. Given how difficult it's been to get to even reset the CMOS I'm reluctant to switch the machine off now to wire up the optical drive, in case I'm unable to get back to this point for another two days.

Thanks for the help so far, any little insight to get me over this final hurdle would be awesome.
 
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