Has my PSU or Motherboard failed?

I have a problem with my old rig, its no big deal cause I have another one I can use but I would like to fix the problem.

When I try turning it on, it powers for less than a second and loses power completely, I'm not sure whether it is the PSU or motherboard. I have checked everything and everything is plugged correctly.

It has a Corsair AX860 PSU which is a platinum Tier 1 PSU, what are the chances of one of these failing after only 2 years? I've been using it to power a 4790K + 2x OC 780Ti cards (this might have contributed to the issue). I watched some youtube vids about using a paper clip to test but I'm really not comfortable doing this without more information. Does this description sound like the PSU is dead?

Picking premium product doesn't guarantee you it won't fail, you could buy Titan X Pascal GPU or i7 6950X CPU and it could fail you the next month after you buy it.

Have you tried to remove one of the 780Ti's? you can also try to set the CPU to stock speed.

@PredatorRules: Yea I've tried removing both cards, the CPU isn't overclocked. Now when I press the power button it doesn't do anything. The good thing is Corsair has a 7 year warranty

the paper clip test doesn't harm the psu, just dont have the unit plugged to anything and ye it is possible for a premium quality psu to die after few years

It does sound like a PSU issue.

You could stick your PSU in from your newer rig and if runs fine that rules out the motherboard and confirms it's the PSU

Similar issue on my younger brothers computer years ago.

• Push the power button and fans would spin up for a second and stop. I told him it was one of two things:
• MB or PSU
• He got a replacement PSU and it didn't fix the issue. The MB was dead.

The paperclip test is easy to do. I went through the whole spiel 6+ months back when my computer wouldn't boot. Pull it all apart, test outside of the tower, paperclip test on PSU and I even tested 2 other good PSUs that I have on the computer and with the paperclip test....the MB was shot. It's hard to say with 100% certainty if the PSU or MB is bad. If you can, try testing the PSU from your working system on the spare one that's not powering on.

Solved the issue, tested the PSU and it turned out to be fine. The issue wasn't with the motherboard either.

Confession time: I run two ssds in raid 0, one of the ssds had the plastic bit where you connect the power cable snapped off (carelessness when I first built the computer). As you can imagine, the sata fell loose, I reconnected it while the PC was still turned on. I ended up shorting the HDD but the PSU or Mobo wern't damaged luckily lol. Anyway I removed the broken ssd and will just run it in single ssd. That was a close call. Thanks for all the suggestions.

I have an easy fix for all the problems. Resetting Cmos will restore all settings and configurations back to default. To reset the CMOS simply locate a round battery on your motherboard about the size of a quarter and pull it out then place it back in. Note you need to pull it out completely for a successful reset.

@gtr_update said:

I have an easy fix for all the problems. Resetting Cmos will restore all settings and configurations back to default. To reset the CMOS simply locate a round battery on your motherboard about the size of a quarter and pull it out then place it back in. Note you need to pull it out completely for a successful reset.

While your suggestion is nice and a good idea for some issues, but it's not something that will fix the problem the TC was having.

What you're suggesting would be like:

Someone says their car won't start when they turn the key. So I suggest for them to make sure they have gas in the fuel tank and if they do, the car will start.

Would the issue possibly be no gas in the fuel tank??? Maybe, but that doesn't mean adding gas will magically solve the problem. Maybe the problem is the starter has failed, the battery is dead, the fuel pump died, the alternator failed and now the battery holds no charge....the list of issues goes on.

Anyway, thankfully the TC figured out the issue and was able to get it resolved. It's also nice that he posted what was wrong and how he fixed it, should someone else have a similar issue.

@neatfeatguy: It does relate. Something could have happened with the system and configs may have been changed. If you reset them it will fix allot of problems. Computers are 0s and 1s true or false. if the statement is true then its a 1 signal cursing through the board. Their not perfect and errors like this do occur and Iv'e seen people fix it with my methods. Same situation btw ^^^