Background: Older Gateway PC Power supply has been replaced within the last 18mos its a corsair cx430. Last night it just shut down on my wife I powered it down and let it sit till this morning. When I powered it up fans came on it went through start up as normal ran fine for about 10min than just shut down Now it will not start up at all. indicator lights on front panel and motherboard come on fans do not.

Where I'm at: I put a multimeter on the leads if I understand correctly I'm supposed to have 3.3v on orange 5.0v on red and 12v on yellow. I'm getting 100.4v on orange?, 7v on red, 0v on yellow I'm supposed to test with the computer running but I cant get it to that point.

I'm thinking its the power supply again but the readings I got are weirding me out (100.4v) and making me think I'm missing something anyone have any ideas. please keep it as simple as possible I'm not a computer guy.

 

When it comes to this im a dumb ass but one of my lap tops would get hot and just shut off and all kinds of crazy shit and i was looking in the bottom and the fans had so much dust on them they could not run , took an air hose on about 20 psi and blew them out and works fine. Infact i blow it out about every 3 months now and still going strong.

 

I had a desktop that would start doing that every 6 months and it was because it was overheating due to dust. I would have to clean the processor fan and heat sink.

 

Being a Gateway, and the fact that I've replaced probably 100 motherboards in piece of shit Gateways in the last two years, that's my vote. Luckily their shitty motherboards use a common screw arrangement so swapping out for another one is easy if that ends up being the problem.

 

I blew everthing out and its a smoke free home the fans spin smooth by hand. Other than the indicator lights it shows no sign of getting any power. I'm guessing that the 12v would control the fans and I'm seeing 0v at the 12v wire. If that is in fact a 12v wire. We also have no A/c and the themastat has been over 90 in here a few times last week so I'm sure they were working their ass off. I also made sure there was goop between the fan case and heat sink.


How can I test the motherboard?

 

Check the board for swelled or leaking capacitors. Other than that someone else might have a way to test one.

 

On a Gateway you will see capacitors leaking brown gunk out the tops. If the tops of the capacitors have a + sign formed into the sheet metal cap on top they will almost be guaranteed to be leaking. If the cap has a K looking stamp in the top then they should be fine. Another good test is to pull the RAM out and see if you get any beep codes or anything. If you don't get any beeps for missing memory, then it's not even trying to post. Gateways take regular old power supplies, so a replacement from a local store shouldn't cost much and if you make sure of their return policy might be an easy way to troubleshoot.

 

I will check it out.

 

Well new power supply fixed it!!! Even better it was under warranty

 

Glad to hear it. I've got another Gateway at work with a bad motherboard right now, and one sitting beside me at home with the same thing.

 

Than Im guessing that will be next to go HAHA. I backed everything up to an external HD so Im ready to get a new computer when the time comes.