PC problem

**ilscuro** · 18th March 2011

I purchased a PC second hand recently, with the intention of playing games, it's an intel core 2 quad, 4 gig of memory, 500 gig sata hard drive and has a NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT graphics card.

Right the problem i'm having with it is, it turns itself off(reboots) sometimes within a few seconds of startup, sometimes within a few minutes, and does this ad infinitum, i'm convinced that it's the power supply, it has a cheapo 650w power supply installed, but before i buy a better, more powerful power supply i thought i'd ask on here, whether you think the PSU is the problem

Thanks for looking in.

**pattikins** · 18th March 2011

Have you turned off the automatic restart in windows - the problem could be a number of things- overheating gpu/cpu, bad memory...although I think the PSU, as you say, is the likely cause of the system reboots.

**ilscuro** · 18th March 2011

Hi mate thanks for reply i've tried usual swap memory out, disconnect everything, without success, do you really think it might be 'overheating gpu/cpu' if it's turning off within a few seconds of me turning it on?

**pattikins** · 18th March 2011

it depends, i.e., is the HS&F seated properly? likewise with GPU - is it connected & seated.

if you stop the automatic reboots you should get a system message & that will give you more to go on.
http://www.tunexp.com/tips/maintain_...h_auto-reboot/

Have you also tried to boot with just the basics - mobo, memory & vga (on-board would be better - or summat less demanding the 8800 GT card)

**burner1** · 18th March 2011

If possible, I would try another decent PSU of at least 600W. Unbranded ones can sometimes be well below their so called rating due to lack of seperate or stable rail power as well as quoting maximum short surge power rating as it's general selling point.

**DejaVu** · 18th March 2011

I would suspect RAM, is it seated correctly? Check everything is seated.

Also check the CPU and Paste (always do this with any 2nd hand PC), although if it was getting hot it would last a minute or so then switch off.

Other than that, it is pointing towards the PSU, that being said, a 'Cheapo PSU @ 650W' should still at least power it, unless knackered. You could try a different Graphics card as well.

Easiest way is the faithful way. The process of elimination. Take things out til the computer stays on. I prefer to start from the ground up.

Run minimal and add bits til the error shows itself!