Broken pc - diagnosing which hardware is faulty

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Despite buying a new pc to replace my faulty one I don't want to just bin it.

The problem that I couldn't resolve was it restarted on a regular basis. While in Windows 7 I got a BSOD and when booting from my Zorin partition it just restarts.

As I've checked things like hard drive and RAM and elimiated those as a problem, Is it easy to tell if it's either the PSU, Motherboard, graphics card or something else?

I don't really want to use hardware out of my new machine to run tests I don't know if there is anything else I can do other than by replacements and hope the first piece I replace is the guilty party.

Any ideas greatly received.
 
Thanks again Neil. I'll set up the old pc and disable the auto reboot to see if the Blue screen gives me any clues. I'll post up my findings.
 
If it were restarting with a BSOD then the above advice should help. If it wasn't showing a BSOD and just booting up again then that sounds to me like a power supply issue. You could just disconnect the power supply from the new computer and connect it to the old motherboard. If it runs fine then you know what the issue is - easy to reconnect so no needed to change components around etc.
 
If its just restarting then the psu is the most likely cause but it could also be the motherboard or video card.
If its the motherboard or video card it might be the capacitors which have failed and if you know what to look for you can spot them. See http://www.badcaps.net/pages.php?vid=5
 
Some ideas...

Is your cooling fan still seated on the CPU properly.
Try re-seating the graphics card in the PCI slot (unlikely to be the issue, but worth a shot).
If you have a spare / cheap graphics card available that would be the next easiest thing to swap out.
Followed by the PSU.

If you still have no luck then that leaves the CPU or motherboard. Your call on if it is worth saving at this point!
 
When you say you checked RAM did you just run a memory check or did you reseat the RAM as well. I had BSOD which threw up all kinds of codes and the memory check ran OK. It eventually turned out to be a RAM module which was not seated properly - easy to do just to eliminate that as a problem.
 
Suvv said:
When you say you checked RAM did you just run a memory check or did you reseat the RAM as well. I had BSOD which threw up all kinds of codes and the memory check ran OK. It eventually turned out to be a RAM module which was not seated properly - easy to do just to eliminate that as a problem.
Click to expand...

THat's actually a very good point. Best way to test the RAM running the machine with just one stick of RAM in turn.

I've had a RAM stick that passed a RAM test but was causing the PC to blue screen randomly.
 
Just a quick update. I still haven't estbalished what's causing it. I've now ordered a psu checking thingy to see if it's the psu.

Thanks to everyone for their suggestions. I've actually unpluuged every piece of hardware from the motherboard and plugged back in. I've also reseated the graphics card and Memory sticks. I'll give the 1 stick test ago to see if that resolves it.

I do have a new HD5770 graphics card but don't want to risk damaging it if it's something else as it site in my new i5 2500k pc.
 
I've just had a PSU go. The onboard network and a couple of USB ports went everything else worked fine. Plug a PCI-e network card in and everything works apart from the thing won't cold boot with the network cable in. I thought it was the mobo that had gone. Ordered another and exactly the same symptoms. Plugged in another PSU and it worked!

I've just ordered a replacement AND a spare PSU just in case ;)
 
In my experience, you pays your money and takes your choice.

Either start renewing the cheapest, or start with PSU first (sometimes that is the cheapest!).

I hope you get on better with your PSU tester than I did, a proper waste of money that was!
 
Although don't buy a "cheap" PSU - make sure you get a good quality one!
 
DarkGhost said:
Although don't buy a "cheap" PSU - make sure you get a good quality one!
Click to expand...
The PSU that went for me was a SilverSTone Nightjar 400W silent fanless PSU (although I did have a very slow moving fan pushing air through it). £100 to you sir... I replaced it with a Seasonic 460W silent fanless PSU at £116.

Cost isn't necessarily a good indicator...
 
DarkGhost said:
Although don't buy a "cheap" PSU - make sure you get a good quality one!
Click to expand...

Been building PCs for decades and only had a couple of failures out of around 35 builds.

Most of these were using cases with built-in PSU's with costs ranging from £20 to £35.

When I built my latest PC, I succumbed to the view, in here, that modular and quality was best.

Never have I had so much hassle building a PC in my life!
 
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