New Build - Power Supply Keeps Turning On & Off

New Build - Power Supply Keeps Turning On & Off every few seconds (I cannot see the Power Supply Fan turning.)

I just upgrading a PC with a new motherboard & RAM

Gigabyte Mini-ITX Motherboard with Integrated Intel Atom D-? CPU
2 X 2 GB DDR3 Memory

350 Watt Power Supply
20 Pin Main ATX Power Connected
4 Pin CPU Auxilliary Power Connected
Front Case USB Cable Connected (1st Onboard USB Connector)
Internal USB Card Reader Connected (2nd Onboard USB Connector)
IDE DVD-RW Connected to end of IDE Cable (Cable Select Jumper Setting)

Front Panel Connectors Connected:

Power
Reset
HD LED Acitivity

IDE hard drive is not yet connected (Jumper is already set to Cable Select.).

My Plan: Before connecting the hard drive, I was planning to first power up the PC, go into the BIOS to make sure the hardware was detected and then boot a Linux Operating System from a USB Flash Drive to get an idea if the new motherboard and other hardware was working properly.

I can swap out the Power Supply tomorrow to see if that is the problem.

Please offer some Troubleshooting tips to try if the Power Supply change-out tomorrow does not clear up the problem.

Thanks in Advance.

 

VERY likely just a bad Power Supply. The only other thing I would look at is to make sure that the front panel connectors are plugged to the correct jumper pins. If by saying that you cannot see the fan turning you mean that it is not turning rather than it is just not visible then that is definitely the problem. The fan should start spinning up immediately.

 

You need to make sure you don't have an extra standoff or other foreign object under the motherboard, shorting out circuits. Cases are designed to support many different motherboards, and typically have more mounting holes than the motherboard. So a common mistake is to screw in extra standoffs.

 

The PC seems to be working OK now, but I am very suspicious. The PC's owner has ordered a new Power Supply.

I am in the process of backing up a large amount of data from the IDE hard drive to a USB 2.0 Flash Drive using Parted Magic (on a bootable USB Flash Drive made with YUMI).

When using the F12 boot Menu Key there is a significant time lag before getting the boot menu. Also it seems to take longer than what I am used to seeing before the IDE DVD Burner, RAM & IDE Hard Drive show up as being detected. However, I have no previous experience with Mini-ITX Motherboards. So I do not know if these longer time lags are normal.

 

"Seems to be" is not really good enough. I would wait until the new one comes in before further troubleshooting.

 

Whether or not that is the issue, good suggestion, I should have thought of it as well.

 

Yes, that seems more likely than a brand new PSU already broken.

 

So take the bloody thing back!, Why you have even discussed it here, instead of immediately taking it back to where you bought it, I have no idea If I even witnessed this for more that a moment, I would have gotten my money back or a replacement.It sounds like a DOA PSU, I sugest you do the same

 

Ummm, he already said the PC owner ordered a new PSU.

 

Well, after changing the PSU the PC already boots and doesn't turn off. How about testing the memories and the HD?

 

The owner of the PC went on vacation this week and will be back next week.

The PC owner also ordered a new hard drive (500 GB WD Enterprise Grade SATA 300) to replace the old IDE hard drive. I told him that this hard drive changeout should give him 'some' boost in performance.

The PSU seems to be working OK now. I plan to not do anything more with the PC until he gets back and the Power Supply gets changed out.

The PC owner has already went through the Windows XP re-activation with Microsoft.

The only remaining problem that I have seen with the PC is the onboard NIC not starting. The NIC drivers installed OK. I also did a repair install of the NIC drivers. I tried removing the NIC from Windows and restarting the PC, but the onboard NIC would not start. I have seen a lot of comments on the web about this version of the Realtek NIC having some issues like the one that I am seeing.

When the PC owner gets back next week, I plan to check the motherboard BIOS version. If the BIOS is not up-to-date, I will flash the BIOS. Another option is to download the latest Realtek NIC driver from Realtek's website rather than the latest one from Gigabyte's website. Some people reported that the latest driver from Realtek's website fixed the issue of the NIC not starting in Windows.

 

Don't count on it being noticeable - not with all the other changes going on. Boot times may improve a little when a whole bunch of data is being read in, but BY FAR, once the computer finishes booting, most of the data transfer is occurring between the RAM, the CPU, the graphics solution, and the NIC. Only less important stuff is sloughed off to the slow Page File after that. And even then, those reads and writes occur in the background, where you will not notice them. Unless this is a file server, or used for playing the latest is serious games, drive performance does not play a very significant role in overall computer performance. As long as I have an abundance of free disk space, RAM, graphics, and CPU horsepower are much more important.

HD performance (being mechanical) will always be a bottleneck compared to data transfer between RAM and the CPU. And while 4Gb of RAM is not considered a lot these days (8Gb is the "sweetspot" - with 64-bit Windows 7), 4Gb is still enough to minimize banging on the slow hard drive (by constantly hitting the Page File). Assuming both the old and new drives run at 7200RPM, the differences between a slow and fast drive are still in the few to 10s of milliseconds. If the old drive is 5400RPM, then maybe a few 100ms - those are 10ths of a 1 second. And again, those delays are only while reading and writing to the drive - which in reality, takes up a very small percentage of your computer's time. Once booted, only less important stuff is sloughed off to the slow Page File. Tiny cookies and temporary Internet files, even when you save a document, the OS shoves those r/w tasks into the background, where you will not notice them.

Even with SSDs, you will certainly boot much faster, and all your programs will almost pop open, compared to HDs, but once loaded, then you are back to almost everything happening in RAM again. And SSDs (and the bus they run through) can't touch RAM speeds - yet.

 

I had a similar problem with a gigabyte mobo and it was bios related. When it happens to not initialize boot in the bios and check if it is displayed (on mine it disappeared from the settings when it happened). If it's not a cmos reset will fix it.

Panagiotis

 

I gathered that already, but the Point I'm making is that theres no question of a discusion, it's faulty, so it goes back, end of, unless the retailer refused to replace it

 

Well, I guess it depends on what "owner ordered a new PSU" really means. It could mean he submitted an RMA and the new one is on the way, but the still needs to go back. Or it could mean he ordered a 2nd. Either way, this is a new build so I agree, the bad should be returned for a refund or replacement.

I personally think having a known good spare PSU on hand can be a real life (or at least time) saver at times - plus spare supplies are great for testing fans and drive motors.

That would be a bummer, and if that were the case, I would like to know what retailer that was. I have never had Newegg refuse a return - even when the product just "was not what I wanted".

 

He ordered a 2nd power supply (I think that he said a Corsair System Builder, ~400+ watts.). The 1st one was a "new" but about 5 years old power supply which I had provided to him. About 5 years ago I purchased a new PC ATX Case which came with a power supply that I did not want. I purchased a higher wattage name brand power supply to replace the 350 watt generic power supply which came with the new Case. The 350 watt generic power supply has been in a storage box for about 5 years.

I got concerned about no having a "spare" power supply so I ordered for myself a Seasonic 620 watt power supply. My oldest PC (6 years old) has a Rosewill 550 watt power supply. I am thinking about replacing the old Rosewill Power Supply with the Seasonic Power Supply. I would then keep the Roswill 550 watt Power Supply as a "spare".

 

Were you able to put the network working?

 

I hear you!

And I too have several "brand new", but years-old, things too.

 

No, I will wait until the owner returns next week.

I plan to check the BIOS version. If the BIOS version is not the latest, I will flash the BIOS. If the BIOS version is the latest, I will reset the CMOS. I may update the onboard NIC driver with the latest driver from Realtek's web site. The latest Realtek driver is a later version than the latest NIC driver available on the Gigabyte software downloads web page.

After the above, I plan to copy his EIDE hard drive to his new SATA300 hard drive.

 

Personally, I would stick with Gigabyte's version. They could have tweaked it. If there was a problem, they would have updated it.

If integrated, I go with the integrator.

 

I will check the current BIOS version next week. Five (5) BIOS versions are listed for download (F1 through F5). BIOS version F3 has this comment: Improve LAN compatibility

 

Probably a good idea. I have updated Realtek NIC drivers in the past and lost my internet connection as a result.

 

We cannot assume motherboard makers do not modify the drivers for the board's integrated devices they outsourced (NIC, integrated graphics, sound, etc.) to 3rd party makers!

Graphics cards makers do it all the time. This is a main reason these 17 GTX 570 graphics cards have different specs (not counting RAM) even though they use the exact same GPU. This is why I recommend getting driver updates from the card (or motherboard) maker, and not NVIDIA or AMD/ATI.

 

I successfully copied over the existing 160 GB EIDE hard drive to the New 500 GB SATA300 hard drive today. With the Operating System on the New 500 GB SATA300 hard drive, the PC seems to be noticeably faster now.

The PC Owner decided to keep the existing Power Supply in the PC and hold the New Power Supply as a 'Spare'.

The strange thing is that with the Operating System on the New 500 GB SATA300 hard drive, the problem with the Realtek NIC not starting does not exist anymore.

 

That is a bit odd, but gremlins do exist in electronics. In my old radio days, we called it "FM" - not for frequency modulation, but for a certain type of magic!