The Case of the Mysterious Power Cycling Issue

This is another viewer's broken gaming PC, and this one's freaking huge. I don't know what the point of this is because most of the space in here is totally unused, but it is what it is. Apparently, this thing turns on and off over and over again. That kind of quick power cycling can be a number of things. I know that the owner initially thought it was a power supply issue, which, it's a pretty good assumption. If you're getting just random power on power off situations, it could be the PSU, though without proper testing equipment, you're kind of just shooting in the dark.

He swapped this out for a newer Seasonic unit and still had the same issue, and that's what's in here now, this updated PSU. The remainder of the build is actually quite old. This is a P55 EVGA motherboard, which means we're on the very, very first iteration of the Core i3, Core i5, Core i7 family. I believe it's a Core i5 like 820 in here or something, I can't remember the SKU. But it's a very old chip, multiple generations, but we're on what, 12th Gen Intel right now? And that's a big difference.

The system utilizes DDR3 and does feel as though each of these DIMMs is properly inserted. I think what I'm gonna do is pull all of them out and swap to just a single DDR3 module that I have on hand that I know works, and that'll rule out a potential memory issue. By the way, his front panel looked all right, looked like it was wired correctly. So I don't think this is the case of the system just resetting itself over and over. Only bringing that up because we ran into that on a previous Fix of Flop episode.

This seems, yeah, seems okay. Nonetheless, we're gonna detach it, and we'll just power the system on by jumping the two power switch pins. At this point, if the system powers on, it means that one of the smaller connections is to blame. That's usually a good thing, because if you were running a business and you had to call up your client and say, "Well, it looks like we found out what was wrong with the system."

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enThis here, oh my gosh,(*Greg, go back to the Gym)is another viewer's broken gaming PC,(*Greg no more muscle?)and this one's freaking huge.I don't know what the point of this is(Neither do we Greg...)because most of the space in here is totally unused,but it is what it is.Apparently this thing turns on and offover and over and over again.And that kind of quick power cyclingcan be a number of things.I know that the owner initially thoughtit was a power supply issue,which, it's a pretty good assumption.If you're getting just random power on power off situations,it could be the PSU,though without proper testing equipment,you're kind of just shooting in the dark.He swapped this out for a newer Seasonic unitand still had the same issue,and that's what's in here now, this updated PSU.The remainder of the build is actually quite old.This is a P55 EVGA motherboard,which means we're on the very, very first iterationof the Core i3, Core i5, Core i7 family.I believe it's a Core i5 like 820 in here or something,I can't remember the SKU.But it's a very old chip, multiple generations,but we're on what, 12th Gen Intel right now?And so if you date that back, yeah, it's like early 2000s.So I'm worried because I don't know if I have componentson hand to swap out with this hardware.I'm hoping that it's something very simplethat doesn't require hardware swaps,but I of course will be willing to do thatif it comes to it.I took this on and I'm ready for the challenge.Hopefully we don't have to outright replaceeverything in here.Yes, it is an older system,but it does get used quite a bit,and I'm ready to get this guy back up and running.So let's see what we can do here.Stick around, stay with me.If you're looking for an all-in-one cybersecurity solution,check out Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office,formerly Acronis True Image.They specialize in data backupas well as anti-malware solutionsfrom data protection to threat prevention.So let's set up a hypothetical.Let's say you've got a huge stashof important documents stored on your local machine,and you're looking for a cloud-based backup solution.Acronis has you covered.And now let's say you have an itch to protect said datafrom attacks while it sits online, as you should.Acronis has you covered there as well,and you can easily restore information to new hardwarein the event of a disaster.Their goal was to simplify the experience for the end userby unifying two otherwise standalone paid solutions,saving both money and hassle.You'll also get a heavy dose of peace of mindwhile you're at it.And it's very easy to get started.Click the sponsor link belowand choose a cyber protection plan that meets your needs,ranging up to five computersand five terabytes of cloud storage.Acronis does the rest,everything from backup to threat prevention and restoration.Use our 30% discount code, SALAZAR2022, no spaces,S-A-L-A-Z-A-R-2-0-2-2,and give Acronis Cyber Protect Home Office a shot today.Hey there, my name's Greg, and this is Fix or Flop.If you're new to this playlist,what we do is reach out to folksin and around Orlando, Florida,and offer to fix their computers for free,or at least attempt to.The only things I ask are that the viewers be okaywith us filming these processesand that they of course meet to drop them offand pick them back up again.You have to be local.If you are not local, your submission will be ignored.We don't wanna deal with shipping of any kind.Can you imagine shipping a system like this?Even domestically, if you ship it properly,with the proper insurance and the proper packaging,it'll cost you well over $100, and at that pointyou might as well just take it to a repair shopbecause they'll probably charge you a bit lessthan what it would cost to ship both waysto me and back to you again.Hey, how you doing?So this case was replaced.At one point, it was a lot smaller chassis.I believe the owner of this picked this up from a friendfor like 20 bucks,so despite it being very large and mostly unnecessary,I mean, at least he got it for a good deal.And the only other thing upgraded in hereis a graphics card, which I believe is a 1660,or 1660 Super, somewhere in that ballpark.Everything else is stock and pretty darn old.So with that outta the way,let's get straight into the troubleshooting process.You guys know by this point,we need to power the system onand attempt to replicate the issue described by the owner,in this case, again, remember,just the power on power off power cycling problem.So I expect that we'll see some lights,some fan spinning for a split second or two,and then everything should shut back off again.I know that one point I told you guysI was gonna have this portable monitor linkedin the description,and I never included itbecause I couldn't find this thing for sale anymore.This is a PX160 from Pixio.If you troubleshoot hardware on a semi-daily basis,I do recommend you get one of these.It's just easier than lugging a fat monitor around,and best of all, you can just kind of tuck it away.It's thinner than a laptop,so you can bring it with you anywhere you go.So this is something I do recommend.Just search for portable monitors.Decent reviews on Amazon, you'll probably be okay.The power switch at the rear and power button is somewhere.Geez, I gotta walk all the way around this thing.All right. Moment of truth.Ooh.It just completely-Wow.It just doesn't wanna stay on.So it's as the owner described,power's on and then right back off again.Ugh, I am really not looking forward to this one.I wonder with this sound card sitting so closeto the graphics card,I just wanna make sure that this isn't shorting anything.It doesn't look like it is.A few of the solder points have just a bit longer stemsthan I would like.But, hmm.I think, let's see.We can try clearing the CMOS first.So we'll do that.We do have a dedicated button at the rear of this board,which is pretty cool 'cause it's an older board.And then we can also make sure that RAM is seated correctly,although I doubt these two thingsare causing the power cycling we're seeing here,it is worth just getting those outta the waybecause they take seconds to perform.So here's our Reset CMOS button,and it's a bit recessed inside there,so I'm gonna use a SIM tray removal tool.I'm gonna hold this down for about 10 to 20 secondswith the system fully powered off.This will utilize the onboard batteryand should clear the CMOS.Although, again, I doubt this will fix the issue,it's just one of those things that's so easy to do,I think it'd be a sin not to check ahead of time.This system utilizes DDR3,and it does feel as though each of these DIMMsis properly inserted.I think what I'm gonna do is pull all of them out,and I'll swap to just a single DDR3 modulethat I have on hand that I know worksand that'll rule out a potential memory issue.By the way, his front panel looked all right,looked like it was wired correctly.So I don't think this is the caseof the system just resetting itself over and over.Only bringing that up because we ran into thaton a previous Fix of Flop episode.This seems, yeah, seems okay.Nonetheless, we're gonna detach it,and we'll just power the system onby jumping the two power switch pins.Now, at this point, if the system powers on,it means that one of the smaller connections is to blame.That's usually a good thing,because if you were running a businessand you had to call up your client and say,\"Hey, unfortunately we gotta replace the motherboard.\"It's gonna cost you 200 bucksif you want the same one you've got in here,cause they don't make these anymore,or it's gonna cost you 400 bucksto upgrade the platform completelybecause you'll need a new CPU as a result and new memory,because I assume it's gonna be running on DDR4 at least,not DDR3 here.So that's just bad news.I'm in doubt about this.I don't think it's gonna work.Make sure we've got, okay.Power on there and let's jump the pins.Same thing.I know you guys can't tell probably from therebecause the fans aren't spinning,but this system is powering on for a split second,turning right back off again.So that means it's one of our main components.It's either the power supply, the motherboard,the CPU or the graphics card,which is not what I was hoping for.Now, we're gonna detach the graphics card.This will rule out a fairly expensive aspect of the build.I'm more concerned about-I should probably unscrew it.I'm more concerned about the platform though,because again, I don't have replacement partsfor stuff this old,and I don't just want to completely upgrade the platform.I don't have too many full platform upgrades lying around.So whatever needs to be replaced,I will probably have to order on eBay,which means that the system will be down for several days,which is never a good thing,especially when you wanna, you know, get back to gaming.Right?But that didn't fix it.I guess that's a good thing,because this is one of the more expensive thingsin the build,but still, it means we have to dive deeper.I swapped power supplies to see if that was the issue.I doubted it again, but it's still power cycling.So yeah. What can you do?Sorry, little one.So this CPU is, first let's remove this CPU cooler.I notice the cooler itself isn't getting very hotand it's just likely that the CPU's not initializingbecause the system's staying on for like a split second,but swapping the CPU out is a bit easier to dothan swapping the motherboard.So that's why we're gonna go with this first.Holy crap, this cooler is sketchy.So this chip is a Core i5, ooh, 760.Okay, what did I say? 820 earlier?I was way off.Yeah, Core i5 760.I don't think I have a replacement for that.So at this point,I'm gonna have to order a replacement platform.Basically I need a motherboard and a CPUbecause we don't know which oneis causing the power cycling,and if it turns out that the CPU I orderedto replace this doesn't fix the issue,well, I'm still out a motherboardand it would be nice to have one of these on handfor future troubleshooting anyway.So we'll go ahead and order both.By the way, in case you're wondering,the socket for this board looks pretty darn cleanconsidering its age.I don't see any bent pins. I don't see any missing pins.Yeah, no reason to suspect the socket is the issue here.Same goes for the CPU. It's in really clean shape.The contact points are all very clean.I don't see any scuffs, any smudges,anything that would prevent the system from posting.So I've placed an offer on a Gigabyte LGA 1156 motherboard.This one does have USB 3.I don't think that his current AVG board does.This also ships with a Core i3 550,so I figured that'd be nicejust to have an extra chip on hand.And I offered him 55 bucks.He has it listed for $64.99, so maybe he'll take that.We'll have 23 hours to wait.And then I also ordered a standalone CPU, a core i5 760.It's an exact replacement for his chip.So if his CPU ends up being the culprit,we can very easily replace it,just yeah, one for one, no difference there.And this was only 10 bucks.These are super old.Nobody really goes after these anymore,so I think 10 bucks is fine.Three days later.We finally have what we need, I hope, to fix this system.The first is the CPU.Now this is an exact replacement for his Core i5 SKU,and then I also found a pretty decent deal on a platform.This comes with a motherboard,which of course is one of the things I suspect is bad.Also comes with another CPU. and I believe also some DDR3.So, yeah.I'm really hoping that what is in these packagesis able to fix the problembecause this is pretty much all we've got left.We narrowed it down to the motherboard or the CPU.It's not his RAM, it's not his power supply, not his case.It's really, this is it.It's the core components here, and if these don't work,well, we're kind of screwedand we have to start back over again.But we're gonna test these outta the box firsttogether to make sure they work,and then we'll start swapping one at a time into his rig.We'll set it back up and hopefully we can get a post.Let's see here. Come on.Oh yeah. Very, very pretty Core i5.This is a 760, so yeah, very old.This was also packaged very nicely.so shout out to the seller on eBay.Now let's get the motherboard box open.I'm not even sure why I'm using a scalpel for this,it's fairly easy to get into.I say that, and this thing is like super glued shut.So okay.Not the original box. Not too worried about that.It looked like it was packaged decently.I have no complaints there.Don't expect it will be the causeof this platform not working,if it doesn't end up being the case.Lots of packing tape though.That is kind of annoying.I'm getting there eventually.This is why I save my boxes.It's just, if you don't have the product box anymore,it just makes packaging very annoying.And, yeah, well we get SATA cables too, that's cool.How many more layers of bubble wrap are there?There we go. Finally.Wrong way.Aha, aha.And one more-Ooh, yeah.So it looks like the board was cleaned as well.That's nice.I'll give you a good look of it there, and yeah, impressive.It's not dark.The PCB is blue instead of black,as was the case on his EVGA board.But hey, it works right?And this is a Core i3 550 in here,So it's definitely not the one we're gonna swap with hisbecause, well, this is a downgrade,but it is nice to have an extra chip like this on handin case we need to troubleshoot more platformsthat are older in the future.So let's test the platform as it is.We'll also test the new Core i5,It's not new, but new to us,make sure that these both workand then we'll swap one at a time to see which is to blame.Again, we were placing bets in the last video,which do you think is to blame?Is it either the motherboard or the CPU, or is it both?That we're gonna find out.So with the new Core i5 in, the new motherboard,and these are both old components, but new to us,we're gonna power on board and jump the two power pins.Looks like the fan is trying to spin, but it's not.Okay, it did post though.Do we have, oh, there it goes.Loading operating system, boot disk, blah, blah, blah.Okay. Yeah.We have no boot disk attached. That's why.Okay. So yeah, we get a post.That's a great start.And now we can pick which one we wanna swap out first.It's gonna be easier to swap the CPUs.Judging by the serial numbers on these chips,it looks like the owner's i5 is a tad bit older.Let's see,I'm gonna use my Thermal Grizzly Carbonaut pad here.Just makes swapping out very straightforward.And we're gonna set these push pins.That's about right there.Okay. And here we go.I think this is gonna work.I saw a small light here.This little debug LEDs,CPU cooler fan is twitching as it was before.And yes, it is working just fine.Okay, so that means it's probably his motherboardthat is bad,but we'll know for sure in this next test.So now it is his original board and our newer Core i5 CPU,the one that we just bought on eBaythat we know works because we tested it.So let's connect our GT 710,last thing here is the 24 pin,just a single stick of DDR3 will do.And let's give it a shot, I think we've got power.Yeah, we have a dedicated power button, so that's cool.Alrighty.Now, if this works,I'm gonna be awfully confused,because well, it shouldn't work because the CPU is fine.What else would've prevented us from posting?A few moments later.Yeah, so, it's just powering on and off,over and over and over again,which sounds awfully familiar, right?That's the same symptom we saw in part oneof this little Fix or Flop series here.It just, it wouldn't post,it wouldn't stay on long enough to post.So that means his motherboard is toast.I don't see, like I said before,I don't see any physical damage on the board.This could be something internal,there's multiple layers of this PCB,so there could be something insidethat it's just not adding up,maybe broken traces or what have you,but all I can say is I know this board doesn't work.It refuses to post with any CPU in it,including ones that we have verifiedare working in other platforms.So at this point what we're gonna dois replace this motherboardwith the one that we purchased for him.And I got it for a pretty decent deal,I mean, considering it's a very old motherboard,I think I paid like $40 or something like that for it.So it's really not that bad.And that included a CPU as well,and got that shipped here in about a week.So we'll swap these out and we'll call it.We're gonna give his chip some fresh thermal paste,get his cooler and memory situated,and we'll reinstall the new platform into his case.I actually was planning on upgrading this case, by the way.But while we were waiting for parts to arrive,I ended up giving away the casethat I was gonna swap this one out with to someone else.So not a huge deal.At least his system works again, yeah?Always a bit tricky doing this standing up,but for the sake of YouTube, we can pull it off.All right. That looks pretty darn good there.Get our sound card and graphics cards installed.Let's see, one after another there.And we'll finish basic wiring, including this 24 pin here.Right, and here we are.Looks pretty dang good.I know that the blue motherboard PCB is a bit off-putting,considering he's coming from a black one.Really nothing I could do about that.I tried finding decent, right,affordable motherboards like this.I did find one exact replacement for his EVGA board,but it was like a hundred dollars.And that's just, that's not what-I'm doing this for free anyway,so this is coming outta pocket.And this made the most sensebecause we know this is still compatible.There's no overclocking involved here.And the motherboard looked to be in decent shape.So we're gonna give this thing a shot.We're gonna power it on with everything connected,and hope, cross our fingers for a post.This is for all the marbles.Let's see.Power's up right away. Looking good.Fans at the top and the rear are spinning.CPU cooler always takes a few seconds.I've also got the storage drives connected here,so we should actually post,or beyond that we should get into an operating system.Oh, the suspense.Please work. We've been through too much here.There it goes. Okay.So that's a post. That is phenomenal news.And oh, we're gonna boot into something.I don't actually know.Yes, hard disk drive zero, loading operating system.Yes, that's it. Okay.So we are ready to go folks.Dead motherboard.God, that is one of the worst things to diagnosebecause you have to disassembleand get through everything else.You have to dig through the mudto find out whether or not the motherboard is to blame,but that was it.Swapping that out alone fixed our issues.Everything else in here is all original from his system,including his graphics card, sound card,all of his memory and his CPU, power supply, storage drives.We're good to go.And just a quick recap, with his original board,I don't see any physical defects.I'm sure whatever is to blameis either maybe in the chip setor maybe there's just a layer in the PCBthat we can't see where something is broken.It just, you never really know.We could check under the VRM heatsink hereand see what's going on.You can see all of our pins look to bein the same directions.I don't see any odd flickering of lightindicating the pin is bent outta shape.So yeah, this is beyond repair, at least for me,given the tools I have in this office.Replacing the motherboard was the quickest solution,and it worked.I wish I could tell you a bit moreabout why this P55 motherboard is bad,but again, I just don't have the tooling here to properly-I mean, I can probe everywhereand maybe I stumble upon something,but at the end of the day, there's a defect with this board.And I think it has to domaybe with power delivery or the chip set,which is why it keeps powering on and off so quickly.If it was a like super serious problem,maybe there was just like a big chunk of the board missingor what have you, it probably wouldn't power on at all.So the fact that it is powering on,at least for a split second,tells me that this might be saving,but it's such an old board.I'll keep it.I'll probably send it in somewhere.Maybe send it to EVGA and see if they can figure outwhat is wrong with it.But his system is working.That was the whole goal of this, and I'm, yeah.Apart from the fact that his system is super bigin this huge case,I'm very happy to see it up and running again.He needs to downsize a bit.That's what I would do, but yeah, I'm happy elsewhere.Were you right?Did you think it was the motherboardor did you think it was the CPU?Let me know in the comment section below.If you guys enjoyed watching this video,give it a thumbs up, consider subscribing,and stay tuned for the next video.By the way, if you have a broken systemand you live in or around Orlando, Florida,send me an inquiry.I was gonna say send me an email,but you're supposed to submit an inquiry.It's in the video description how to do that.We'll take pictures, your description,and you might be chosen to have your system featuredhere on the channel.Thanks so much for watching.My name is Greg.Thanks for learning with me.\n"