Power button works once, mobo weirdness

Computer Forum General Hardware
1

Hello everyone, and if you are out to help me out, thank you so much.

My desktop computer is a huge machine that I built and cost me way too much money for what I really use it for, but it was a lesson worth learning. It has a q6600 and an Asus P5K Deluxe, 2gb ram (forget brand at moment), an 8800gtx (shouldve waited) with the huge thermaltake heatsink and fan for it. It is only a… 450 or 550w psu which might be part of the problem. Which is…

The machine will power on, and then yay hoorah all is well. But upon powering off, it will not turn on again. Inner leds will turn on and things start to whirr for about a second and then it stops. Further presses result in nothing. In order to power it on I have to reach around and turn off the psu, wait for the mobo led to go out, then turn things on again. I opened it up to clean it a few days ago, and upon depleting the can of compressed air, the machine would turn on and off just like it should. I brought it back in to my room and within a few on and offs it was back to its old ways.

So that’s problem number one. Problem number two is motherboard related, I think. I have never been able to overclock the ram or the cpu, both of which I wanted to do, conservatively. I figured, fair enough, it’s fast w/e. But it seems liuke I can’t change any bios settings at all. The boot device priority defaults to floppy, hd, cdrom. Whenever I want to boot up a new Ubuntu or soemthing, I have to go into bios settings, change it, it will then reboot but the screen wont receive anything and I have to turn it off, then when it reboots up again it says overclocking failed! with options of return to menu or return to defaults and continue, and if I choose the latter it somehow boots into the cd drive. What a mess! I’ve done bios updates. Do I just have a bad motherboard? Is my power supply not powerful enough?

Thank you so much and I apologize for being on the rather wordy side.

2

What one needs to know about…the difference between Quality PSUs as opposed Poor quality units…and the effects of heat on your computer.

Poor quality units…are tested at a set temperature…from this their rating is determined… for most this No. is 25 degrees Celsius…which falls short of the temperature that most computers are capable of achieving.

Given that a PSU will actually lose 2-5 watts per one degree of heat above the 25 Degree Celsius testing temperature…coupled with the fact that computers tend to run at 10 degrees higher than room temperature… In the summer time when the room temperature can easily reach 80 degrees F… your computer will be running at 33 Degrees C. or 90 Degrees F.

So the…math can make…your 500 watt power supply into a 460 watt unit.

In addition to this…what needs to be taken into account is that each degree that your computer components are operating at…under powered…adds more heat to the equation.

Consider also…the possibility…that ratings given by the manufacturer of single components…such as graphics cards…need to be treated with skepticism… Manufacturers may minimize support issues and under rate the power required…in order to make a larger profit.

Power supplies convert voltages from wall outlets to lower levels used by the PC… During this conversion, some power is lost as heat… The poorer the quality of the PSU The higher the voltage that is required to produce the preferred results. Resulting in more heat that the PSU has to deal with

Therefore heat is the computers enemy…The hotter the temperature your PSU is forced to run at…the poorer the supply of power the rest of the components will receive…which has been known to lead to such things as crashes, freezing, rebooting, BSOD’s, and video distortion, as well as partial and complete failure of other components.

The fact is very few PSU’s are capable of producing the wattage that the companies advertise.

Quality units…are tested at very high temperatures…The efficiency rating of the PSU determines how much extra power must be put into the power supply to run the PC. A high quality PSU can help reduce the noise and heat generated within a computer system. The higher the efficiency rating the less heat the PSU has to deal with…Also the higher the quality of the PSU the higher the temperature that it can…safely… run your computer at…which reduces the need to run your computer at such low temperatures…that are hard to achieve.

A quality PSU of the right wattage…for your computer…can easily give you two or more more years of service

A quality PSU of wattage… higher than required…for your computer…can give you room for future expansion…

For a very good comprehension of recommended brand names, wattage, and models in listed categories…Plus much more…check out this link. Power Supply Information and Selection - Tech Support Forum

3

i tried something else out. it worked much better when plugged directly into the wall than when plugged into my power strip. maybe the amount of power it has direct access to is part of it.

4

rule the power switch out by shorting the two power switch pins located on the motherboards control panel.

for your motherboard issues are you using IDE drives or Sata?

5

im using sata hd and dvd burner

how do i do that thing on the mobo?

6

where you connected your power switch jumper on your motherboard disconnect it and then use a flat head screw driver and touch the two power switch pins.

btw: have you got the latest bios update for your motherboard?

7

what does that do?

8

that will rule the power switch out, because in some cases if you have a faulty switch that can cause the computer to turn on and off.