PC won't boot. Won't even power up.

[Rob00GT]

OK, here are my specs because it's a complex machine.

Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe

AMD Athlon X2 4800+

2GB of Corsair DDR400 (2x1GB)

ATI All In Wonder X800XL PCI-E

Enermax Liberty 500W (Model ELT500AWT)

Power comes from an APC UPS rated at over 800 watts.

SATA Drives:

C: drive is a Maxtor 200GB SATA

Also have 4 Western Digital 250GB SATA drives in a RAID 5 array using the SiI 3114 onboard controller

IDE Drives:

Samsung dual layer DVD burner

Seagate 400GB

Two generic IDE removable drive trays (currently empty)

Now the problem. Over the last week I've been converting a lot of DVD files into the DivX mpeg4 format. This means that one core of my cpu has been at 100% for about a week solid. Divx Converter only uses one cpu regardless of how many are present. Well I finished today and my plan was to power down the pc to add a drive to one of the removable drive trays to make a copy of all my new Divx videos. I powered off the pc normally and everything seemed fine. Now when I press the power switch absolutely nothing happens. It's like it's unplugged.

I tried unplugging it. Switching the Enermax off and on. Resetting the CMOS jumper (I'm not overclocked, cpu is at factory settings.) did nothing. The only thing I can think of is maybe the power switch in my case is bad. The case is the oldest part of the whole machine. The cpu, Western Digital drives, and Enermax are all less than 2 months old.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

[Jeremy]

Remove your hardware from your case and place them either on the floor on on a nearby desk/table on anti-static wrap. Do a barebone setup. PSU, mobo, CPU, RAM, boot drive and video card. Take something small made of metal like a screwdriver and find the two pins on your motherboard that are used to power the mobo and thus the rest of your hardware. If this works then it's your actual power connector. If it doesn't work, try a different PSU. If that doesn't work then it's your motherboard. It's likely just the power connector or PSU. Anything else wouldn't cause it to do nothing. You'd get beep codes.

[nitroshift]

Well I finished today and my plan was to power down the pc to add a drive to one of the removable drive trays to make a copy of all my new Divx videos. I powered off the pc normally and everything seemed fine. Now when I press the power switch absolutely nothing happens. It's like it's unplugged.

Definitely the PSU. Maybe it can't handle the load (unlikely) or there was a shortcircuit causing the PSU to simply die.

[bonestonne]

you may want to also check the UPS...i've used a UPS before, and the issue with it was that it would switch itself to battery very often. on battery, it wouldn't start at all because it would have live input from the wall, and battery was reserved for when there was no power coming in. its worth a check, but if the PSU doesn't budge, its normally dead.

[Rob00GT]

Well I picked up a replacement power switch from Frys last night. Was only $3 and I could always use a spare. It didn't work. So I pulled out all my extra stuff and got it down to just the motherboard, video card, and a single hard drive. Still nothing. I pulled out the one month old Enermax power supply (that I paid $100 for to avoid this type of problem) and put in a spare one I picked up last year at a swap meet for $10 and it booted right up with no problems.

So I'm now running on an "X-Power 550W" power supply with all accessories now plugged back in. Needless to say I'll be looking for a refund or replacement on my Enermax. I'm pretty disappointed since my last PSU was also an Enermax and 6 years later it still runs great.

Thanks for your help.

Rob