(sorry for long post)
My friend's got a Dell Optiplex GX270 that's lately been having issues. During use, whether playing games or just using the internet, the screen goes black and the system no longer responds. The problem is highly erratic and unpredictable, but the most common scenario occurs after about 15 minutes of use. The funny thing is, after the problem popped up initially, it went away on its own for about a month, but now it's back with a vengeance, he hasn't been able to use his computer for several weeks now.
When I checked out his machine I suspected that the issue was likely heat related; opening the case I found a lot of dust which I cleaned out to improve cooling. Memtest86+ turned up no errors.
When the computer crashes, it doesn't power off...you have to hold the power button down for 5 seconds to turn it off before you can reboot it. On this, I ruled out PSU death as I think the system would shut off entirely in that case.
Quick check on the internet revealed that this particular Dell is notorious for cap problems, that his issues are fairly consistent with that type of defect, and that I must have been living in a cave if I didn't know about it. I examined the board expecting to find blown up caps, but none of the ones I could get a good look at were obviously at fault. Unfortunately, the P4 heatsink obscures most of the caps that run along the side of the CPU socket, and I don't know how to get the heatsink off without breaking it, since it doesn't have any obvious release mechanism like a normal computer does.
I told him to just call Dell, tell them he has bad caps and ask for a new mobo. Since I had read that they were doling out new mobos pretty much "no questions asked" on the basis of the ubiquity of this issue, I was surprised when told me that the tech said that he didn't believe the caps were at fault, instead blaming it on a video card or monitor (wtf?) issue.
I figured video card problem was plausible although unlikely, since he got graphical artifacts sometimes in games right before a crash, even though the machine will crash regardless of whether or not the task being run is graphically intensive. I took out his Radeon 9800 and played with it in my machine for a while, and found it to have no problems. I would have put my X800 in his box to see if that worked out the issue, but I had my doubts that the GX270's stock 200ish watt (lol) PSU could handle it.
So, to the minds on this forum...what's the next step for me to find out what's really wrong with this thing? It's easy to just blame the caps, but Dell denies it, and in their favor, I can't actually SEE any blown caps, and also, the pathogonomic "Thermal Event" BIOS message on reboot is absent...
My friend's got a Dell Optiplex GX270 that's lately been having issues. During use, whether playing games or just using the internet, the screen goes black and the system no longer responds. The problem is highly erratic and unpredictable, but the most common scenario occurs after about 15 minutes of use. The funny thing is, after the problem popped up initially, it went away on its own for about a month, but now it's back with a vengeance, he hasn't been able to use his computer for several weeks now.
When I checked out his machine I suspected that the issue was likely heat related; opening the case I found a lot of dust which I cleaned out to improve cooling. Memtest86+ turned up no errors.
When the computer crashes, it doesn't power off...you have to hold the power button down for 5 seconds to turn it off before you can reboot it. On this, I ruled out PSU death as I think the system would shut off entirely in that case.
Quick check on the internet revealed that this particular Dell is notorious for cap problems, that his issues are fairly consistent with that type of defect, and that I must have been living in a cave if I didn't know about it. I examined the board expecting to find blown up caps, but none of the ones I could get a good look at were obviously at fault. Unfortunately, the P4 heatsink obscures most of the caps that run along the side of the CPU socket, and I don't know how to get the heatsink off without breaking it, since it doesn't have any obvious release mechanism like a normal computer does.
I told him to just call Dell, tell them he has bad caps and ask for a new mobo. Since I had read that they were doling out new mobos pretty much "no questions asked" on the basis of the ubiquity of this issue, I was surprised when told me that the tech said that he didn't believe the caps were at fault, instead blaming it on a video card or monitor (wtf?) issue.
I figured video card problem was plausible although unlikely, since he got graphical artifacts sometimes in games right before a crash, even though the machine will crash regardless of whether or not the task being run is graphically intensive. I took out his Radeon 9800 and played with it in my machine for a while, and found it to have no problems. I would have put my X800 in his box to see if that worked out the issue, but I had my doubts that the GX270's stock 200ish watt (lol) PSU could handle it.
So, to the minds on this forum...what's the next step for me to find out what's really wrong with this thing? It's easy to just blame the caps, but Dell denies it, and in their favor, I can't actually SEE any blown caps, and also, the pathogonomic "Thermal Event" BIOS message on reboot is absent...
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