Computer savvy people. Couple simple questions....

I have a computer that a friend (I know longer talk with) built me about 10 years ago. He built it with most of the parts from newegg.com and over built it for my needs in case I wanted to do some kind of gaming and all. We used it as a desk computer for years at home to do simple internet browsing and I ran AutoCad off of while in school. It started having issues turning on. It would turn on sometimes, then not, then would again randomly over a few months. Well it finally stopped turning in. A friend said to check the power supply by just buying another and hooking it up (suggested Amazon then return if it doesn't fix it). I took some pics to show our IT guy at work, but wanted some possibly non-biased opinions. Do you think it's a possibility to be the power supply as well? I think it's possible and am willing to try it. A contributing factor to all of this is that we're planning on selling everything after it's fixed or even not fixed....including the keyboard, monitor, and tower. Here are some pics of the tower. Let me know what yall think I could sell it for once fixed and/or not fixed. Suggestions for power supply welcome too(hopefully affordable options since I'm not keeping). I have removed the hard drive and will probably keep since I've understood that you cant really delete a hard drive, but have to usually run a program on it to overwrite it multiple times with some random 1s and 0s. Any questions/comments welcome.

 

Depending on how much the power supply is...it's worth a try. Even if overbuilt, it's still a 10 year old machine and likely not dumping tons of money into.

 

If it's not turning on, the power supply is probably the culprit. Is there a Bestbuy near you? Often times you can take it there and they can trouble shoot it for you for pretty cheap. Especially if you are wanting to sell after. They can wipe and reset to factor settings.
Just another option to think about.

 

Hate to be that guy but if your plan is to sell it then just get rid of it is my suggestion. The power supply will cost more than what you’ll get for the whole computer.

The thing is very old and you might get $50. The operating systems that thing can support are no longer supported by Windows.

Nvidia 9600 GSO
DDR2 ram
LGA775 socket

 

I think it very well could be the power supply as a computer I built years ago did the exact same thing and it ended up being the PSU. The funny thing is that the one that failed in mine was an OCZ as well . Anyway, that's a good and relatively cheap place to start. I also echo what @Kelvin said, however. If you're gonna sell it then maybe just sell it as-is. Good luck!

 

Yes it's the power supply.
You're not going to get a lot for it, if anything.
I e-cycle machines in better shape. Blow it out, get all that dust out of it. If you want to, get some cheap ram and max it out. Might be able to put Win10 on it but I differ to others if the old hard ware has driver support or not. I'm not into that side of things anymore.

And really, they started putting temperature gauges on these things?

 

You'd get more money for a car that'll crank won't ya?
New power supply and you might break even.

 

Your better off recycling it. A 10 year old pc is not worth fixing or upgrading.

 

9600 GSO came out in 08. Probably older than his IT guy has been in the business.

 

One Rasberry Pi has the same capacity now.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/products/raspberry-pi-4-model-b/

 

Recycle it

 

Redo your own version of the printer scene in office space with it and put a 2020 twist to it for us!?!?

 

Good point, much preferred. I did that with a small home printer a few months ago hahaha

 

You're gonna think I'm nuts, but if you want to know for darn sure if it's the power supply, you can do this:

1. Remove power from the power supply. (Unplug the power cord.)
2. Unplug ALL of the plugs coming from the power supply to the motherboard (noting where they are), DVD/CD drives, etc., so the power supply is isolated.

(This is the part where people usually crap their pants. LOL)

3. Find one of those 'coated' paperclips (plastic coating on it).
4. Take the biggest plug (the one to the right of the fan in the 3rd picture), bend the paperclip into a "U" shape, insert one end into one of the black wires, and the other into the green wire.
4. Plug power back into the power supply.

What this does:

You're essentially jumpering the power supply 'on' by connecting the green wire with one of the black wires. It's not at all a high voltage, though as with anything, caution is always recommended. But yeah, if you do this and it *STILL* doesn't turn on, with the power supply completely isolated, obviously it's bad. If it DOES turn on, then the motherboard itself may be bad.

 

I"ve stuck a hard drive in a freezer once to recover data but a paper clip in a power supply? How about a volt meter?

 

True, but this isn't a car . It's like comparing a car that only goes 20mph with a new Tundra.

 

I'm liking/listening/enjoying ALL comments. Unfortunately for my computer, I'm leaning towards office space and finishing off with a beretta 9mm

 

I'm just here for the video of that.

 

Yep, done it literally 100's of times. (Both the freezer hard drive trick and the paperclip trick.) It's all but impossible to screw up and you're dealing with a whopping +5V. Besides, the point of it isn't to test the voltage; it's to jumper the P/S on without it being attached to anything to see if the P/S is the issue, or something else (e.g., motherboard short or something).

 

I would bet it is the power supply as well. They can be sensitive to power spikes and tend to fail first/second if the hard drive doesn't beat it to it. The machine is in need of a good vacuum and compressed air .

+1 on recycling it vs. selling it. You may be able to part it for more money. You did the correct thing taking out the old hard drive. Besides overwriting it several times, the other option is to degauss it, but that requires a special machine.

For around $100 you could bring it back to a good web surfing computer. Buy 8gb ram on ebay, and an SSD and power supply on Amazon. Windows 10 should install on it as the minimum specs are 1gb ram, 1ghz processor, and 20gb space on the hard drive. I've done many ram/SSD upgrades on old computers, and it brought them back to life for what they were used for (remote desktop or web surfing or MS Office). The SSDs make a huge difference.

 

Recycle it

 

Even if someone gave you a power supply to swap in, it still wouldn't be worth it to put the time in it to fix it. Its time to let it go.
I wouldn't even give it away.

Go into the light.....

 

10 year old computer not worth anything?! Mine is about 8 years old and all I've upgraded is the video card. It would be nice to have a solid state hard drive and Windows 10 but it still runs pretty much all the games I want to play.

 

So after lots of thought (about 3 mins worth and a quick text to the wife), I think we're going to go ahead and either do the office space re-enactment on it, or shoot it up and try to get some slow motion shots on it with our phones. I think I'm leaning towards shooting it since the outside case is metal and may be a pain to beat in with a bat and/or fists/feet. haha

 

Yeah, I just did this with my 10 year old build. Over the years I upgraded the proc, added ram, then more recently picked up a SSD and newer video card. Works great for what I need to do with it (even runs games decent on moderate settings) but I know it wouldn't be worth shit if I tried to sell it.

Not that I'm trying to talk @Fotnot out of shooting it up...

 

Make sure you record it and post it here once done.

 

Unfortunately, I have to agree, PC tech evolves so quickly, this machine is considered obsolete. It may be best to retire it.

For a socket 775, it's probably at best a Core 2 Quad processor. Max supported memory will probably by in the 8 to 16Gb ballpark. It will probably run Win 10 but still a risk with driver support, etc. Gigabyte shows first manual published early 2009, and only offers drivers up through Win 7.

You might inspect the capacitors on the motherboard really close to see if any have puffed up, from the ones I can see in the photo, they seem ok, but there may be more obscured by wiring. Also, you might even try pulling the EVGA video card temporarily to see if it will power up without it. I've seem my fair share of bad caps on motherboards and video cards, especially EVGA in that time period.

 

LCA775 has Core i5 and i7 options out there, though I'm sure they're hard to find nowadays. But even if you could find one, the price wouldn't be worth the upgrade.

 

Best for that particular Gigabyte M/B is Core 2 Extreme