The old computer is not turning on anymore.
The old computer is not turning on anymore.
You have an old gaming rig built with an Asus P8Z68 v-pro mobile graphics card and a 650W cooler, but after returning from the holidays yesterday it won't turn on at all (it worked before). The DVD drive stopped working recently and seemed to have trouble starting once, though it did power up earlier. Now nothing works—lights are on but no activity. I unplugged the DVD drive and tried again without success. I also cleaned the power connection and pulled out the PSU power plug, then restarted, but only a little fan spun before it failed. I found a YouTube suggestion about using a paper clip in the power plug or shorting with a screwdriver. There’s also a red power button and an orange reset button on the motherboard—will switching to one of those override the main power button? Any advice would be appreciated.
I have an older gaming setup built with an Asus P8Z68 v-pro mobile motherboard and a 650W cooler, but after returning from the holidays yesterday, it won’t turn on. (It’s been functioning well for many years.)
When sharing a troubleshooting thread, it’s important to provide complete system details. Please list your build specifications in the following order:
CPU:
CPU cooler:
Motherboard:
RAM:
Storage: SSD/HDD:
GPU:
Power Supply:
Chassis:
Operating System:
Monitor:
Include the age of the power supply, along with its make and model. Also, note the current BIOS version for your motherboard.
You’re using an Asus Z68 platform, which allows the board to utilize the integrated graphics from your processor. Remove any discrete GPU if you have one and check if the system boots and displays the OS GUI.
I found a YouTube video suggesting using a paper clip in the power plug or shorting it with a screwdriver. That’s not reliable. The paperclip test only confirms the PSU powers up, but doesn’t reveal its actual output capacity under load.
Also, there’s a red power button and an orange reset button on your motherboard. Will replacing these with the main power button affect its behavior?
Yes, the surface-mounted buttons are meant for convenience during breadboarding or bench work, making it unnecessary to wear up the front panel power and reset buttons found in a case.
This setup includes an Asus P8z68v Pro, an Intel i5 2500k processor, Hyper X 8GB RAM, an Asus 960 GTX graphics card, a 250GB SSD, a Cooler Master Extreme Power 650W cooler, and the DVD drive failure appears to line up with these components.
Consider trying a different power supply unit. PSUs can experience cap failures that introduce significant ripple into the DC power. Motors like the one driving the DVD tray are particularly sensitive to this issue. The motherboard’s smoothing caps can handle some noise, but there’s a limit. I noticed a loud bang and flash when I powered on an office PC, yet it operated normally throughout the day. After shutdown, it wouldn’t restart because one of the PSU caps had blown—likely causing excessive ripple that prevented proper stabilization to send a power-on signal.
My previous Asus B85M-E motherboard ceased functioning earlier this week. The system starts up and produces beep codes indicating issues with the RAM or GPU, depending on the website accessed.
I've experimented with 12 different DIMMs, replaced and reused the CR2032 battery several times, swapped the CPU, tried various iGPUs and additional GPU cards, changed the PSU, but none of these steps resolved the problem. I'm unable to access the BIOS and feel it's not worth continuing, so I'll dispose of it.
For your setup, disconnect all components from the motherboard except the PSU, monitor, keyboard, and mouse. This includes unplugging the DVD drive and any hard drives or SSDs. You might have a chance. Then consider replacing the CMOS battery, RAM, PSU, GPU, and CPU one at a time if you have spares. Re-seating the CPU could help, and inspecting the CPU socket for bent pins with a magnifying glass might be useful.
It's likely your board is outdated, similar to my situation. I'm browsing eBay for an affordable used replacement, but it doesn't matter much and I don't want to spend much. It was useful for testing GPU cards and RAM.