If your PC isn’t booting, double check that the main 24-pin ATX cable is plugged into your motherboard. On most modern PSUs, the four extra pins detach from the main connector. Also be sure that you’ve plugged the appropriate PSU cables to your motherboard’s 4-pin or 8-pin CPU connector. We’ll assume you already checked that your system is plugged in and that the power supply’s switch is in the correct position. Beyond that, here are five reasons why your freshly assembled PC might not boot.
If you’re able to get into the BIOS, go in there and dial things down Xpadder, or revert to stock settings to see if that does trick. I had an older Gigabyte motherboard that was finicky with overclocked settings and would play dead any time I shut it off. The only recourse was to clear the CMOS so that the factory settings would be reapplied.
Some motherboards have a button that makes this easy, others require fiddling with a jumper. Consult your motherboard manual on how to do this on your specific mobo. One of the signs that your RAM is to blame for a non-booting PC is one or more seemingly random blue screen of death errors that preempted your system’s permanently powered off state. If you have access to a spare PC with compatible DIMM slots, you can test your RAM using Memtest86+, an older but popular diagnostic. While time consuming, it’s best to test one module at a time, as it’s unlikely that multiple modules suddenly went bad. In theory, a dead CMOS battery shouldn’t prevent your PC from booting, it should mainly just mess with the time. CMOS batteries typically last a long time, but if you have an older PC that is being stubborn, it only costs a few bucks to buy a new one and swap it out with the potentially dead one.
The Book Smugglers
You can do this by removing the computer’s side panel and – with the power removed – making sure everything is still seated properly. For the most part, that means inspecting the video card, sound card if you have one, memory chips, and all the power and data cables. A fundamental rule of troubleshooting is to eliminate as many variables as possible.
After you do this, and assuming it solves the problem, hop into the BIOS to make sure none of the settings have been changed. You should also check your PC’s power cable, by swapping for another one and trying again. Once you’ve ruled out the power cable, CMOS battery, and switch, and if you’re comfortable using a multimeter, you should test the power supply. If your PC is a desktop computer and doesn’t start, check that it’s not the plug socket at fault by plugging it into a different socket. If that doesn’t work, it could be that the power supply in your PC has failed. Before you do that, make sure that it is the power supply. If you can, remove the case and check that the power button is connected properly – a faulty button is much easier to fix than a power supply.
So if you’ve tried the previous solutions and it’s still unclear what’s going on, disconnect everything that isn’t absolutely essential from your computer. That generally means removing the printer cable, scanner, webcam, and anything else connected to the computer. Now, try booting the computer with just the power cord, monitor, mouse, and keyboard. Some computer motherboards issue a set of beeps at startup. A single beep may signal that all is well, while a long, continuous tone could point to the power supply experiencing a critical fault. If the computer that won’t work is a laptop and you recently ran the computer out of juice, then it’s not unusual for it to fail to start even if it’s now plugged into wall power. Plug the laptop in and let the battery charge for at least a half-hour.
- I’m not saying that driver size has no impact on sound quality.
- I do radio voice work by day, and write by day and night.
- Heck, knowing the driver size is even less useful than the claimed frequency response range that’s so often printed on headphone boxes.
- The M50X has enclosures, pads, and tuning designed for a slightly aggressive sculpted response.
- Also, I still totally like knowing what size the drivers are in all of my headphones because I’m a horrible hypocrite.
Phone Calling
There is a certain satisfaction that comes with building a PC from the ground up with parts you personally researched and selected, and potentially saved up a long time for. Some builds are easier than others—assembling a complex and custom water cooling loop is decidedly more difficult than slapping the stock air cooler into place and plugging in the preinstalled case fans.
Bookhounds Ya
It doesn’t matter though, pressing the power button for the first time and seeing the system you carefully crafted suddenly spring to life is a euphoric moment. However, it can also be maddeningly frustrating if things don’t go quite as planned.