Computer Diagnostic and Repair

hi my name is Carrie holzman and today I have a computer in for repair so I thought I'd go ahead and diagnose it live ah this was a computer built by the customer and there was already something rattling around inside and I pulled a screw out that's never acceptable there should never be any loose screws when you're building a computer you should know if you drop the screw and if you did you need to make sure that you before you complete the computer and as soon as you can secure the parts that you can pick the computer up and kind of move it around until that screw falls out so ideally you would never leave a screw inside the computer because that's a piece of metal that will short out and could cause the computer to need repair as this one does of course I don't know the reason for this one's repair yet but let's take a look at it first I can tell you this was somebody's first to build and I advised them not to build in this case this is not a good case to make your first build with they did it anyway and now here it is in the shop it's already got a crack right up here it's already been broken this is a good case but really for an experienced builder there's also something else I don't like about this case and that is when you see the switches and ports on the side that means it's impossible to fully remove this panel I already see there's a screw missing from the panel and I can see why the panel won't sit flush so why can't you remove the panel fully because all the wires are connected to it as you can see right there so that means in order to work on this you have to disconnect all these wires it's really a terrible terrible design it's a good-looking case but a horrible design so if you're wondering why you've never seen me build one of these on my videos because I would never recommend this case if you're somebody who just really wants that portable land computer and you really like this design just understand what you're buying when you get into it before you buy it then if you're ok with this setup well then your expectations should be met accordingly but to me this is a very difficult computer to work on it's a very difficult computer to get all the parts to fit properly the cabling is difficult to do there's just really nothing good about it other than it looks cool so with that said I'm told the computer doesn't turn on I don't know why this is the first I've seen it so let me get my monitor hooked up here I'm not even going to hook up a keyboard or Mouse at this point I just want to verify the customers claim that it doesn't turn on so I got my power here we're going to plug that in and now you know normally I'd reach on the front but again the switch is on the panel which is going to make this harder than it needs to be let's go ahead and hit the switch and rail its debtor to doorknob in it it is not turning on at all now initially when I get a complaint that a computer won't turn on it's generally because of a lack of power or the power switch itself is bad so what I'm going to do in this particular case is I can see why this wasn't sitting flush that the reason that screw was missing is it looks like they didn't put these screws in correctly I think this metal piece has to go behind this one it's creating an edge here so that this can't sit flush again bad design whoever engineered this I hope they never engineer another case again or I hope that they have to build with their own cases like about two dozen of them and support them for the next four or five years because that will make them never want to design a case like this again you can always tell when a company there's a term in the in the industry called eating your own dog food and that means you use your own products it's clear to me the engineer who designed this case never utilized this case in a business atmosphere where he had to support it he might have done it for himself and I say he I mean it could have been a woman I don't know but I don't think a woman would be stupid enough to design a case like this so I'm going to put it to the men on this one this just looks like it's all about the looks and not and nothing else and it's just very short-sighted now the first thing I want to do on this just to verify it whether or not its power supplies I want to check all the power connectors because as you can see on this case the power supply sitting right in here and then there's a power extension cable that leads to the back where you're going to plug the power in and all it is is an extension so want to make sure all those cables are in tight again this is a pain in the butt you would this is not common this is not ordinary this is not normal I'm going to take the other side panel off and you know these same parts that were put into let's say a Corsair case like the Corsair 200 are 100 are this builder probably would have had this done in a tenth of the time and it probably wouldn't be in my shop or repair right now and the case would have cost him about $40 less or maybe even half the price of this case so I'm a little upset about the situation because I told the customer not to use the case and they did it anyway so looking around here I want to see where the power connector is going in on this power supply it's got to be ah okay so the power connector swing that around the bottom of the power supplies here and it's switched off so I'm going to switch that back on then I'll go ahead and plug in the power and you know how often have you ever seen me turn a case on to its face in order to access the switch on a power supply I'm already getting a green light on the back of the motherboard that's indicating it's got power and let's just get the switch and see what happens so I don't have the keyboard or mouse hooked up to it just yet and I'm kind of looking at the screen there the reflection of the screen see if we're getting any video and I'm not seeing anything let me make sure my monitor is turned on and working you have a monitor has power and let's go ahead and put this back up onto its feet so we know the power switch is okay and we know the power supply well we don't know the power supply works we know that it partially works at the very least I have seen bad power supplies that turn on but the system won't do anything that's actually quite common and people go well it can't be my power supply because all the fans come on no it still can be your power supply you can for example go into your if you have a car and listen to the radio and then go to start the car and there's not enough amperage in the battery to start the car same thing happens with a power supply if it's not delivering the amperage the computer needs it may be delivering the right voltage and that means fans and things will turn but when it gets an actual load on it it fails people ask me about power supply testers they're wasting money don't waste your time just carry a spare power supply with you it's cheaper than a power supply tester and it's about 300 percent more accurate so if we turn this around here and see what's going on I want to look I want to investigate to make sure that the video card fans is turning and it is you guys will have to take my word for that CPU fan is turning it looks like we've got two hard drives here we've got a solid-state and a traditional drive right here and I think what I'll do at this point is here's what I'm going to do I'm going to start working on this I'm going to turn this microphone off I'll record my actions because it's too distracting for me to talk about it and do at the same time and then I'll do the play-by-play narrative to explain what I'm doing and the process of elimination that's used in diagnosing a computer problem like this yeah so this is going to be a fun computer problem to solve because you know it's bad enough you've got to diagnose a system a regular system which can be frustrating but when you make all the parts hard to access can't really get your hands in there and they've got all these cables in your way it's it's just another level of frustration that just doesn't need to be there now not exactly sure what I'm doing at this point now I'm reaching under there to hit that power supply switch to turn it off and then to try turning it back on again just to see if I can get that DVD drive to open and the customer has left a DVD in there which is terrible you never want to ship a computer with a disc in the DVD drive that looks like it's uh Sherlock Holmes somebody left in there the reason is that nothing keeps that disc laying flat when the computers being tilted sideways and shuffled about in transportation and then it can get itself wedged in such a manner that the drawer won't open anymore and I've seen it happen a number of times so remember before you ever take your computer anywhere whether it's in for repair or you're just going over to a friend's house be sure to check your DVD Drive and ensure that it's empty well looks like I'm going to take the hard drive tray out of the way that's certainly a huge obstacle to me being able to look at the motherboard it wasn't installed correctly which is why that panel was not fitting flush and one of the screws was also missing and these screws were stripped out because it was installed backwards they had to drill through the threads that the screws supposed to lock into and it's basically ruined the case so the case has a crack these threads are so stripped out I'm having to turn the electric screwdriver by hand because the power in the electric screwdriver isn't strong enough to break those screws free from the threads that they recreated by stripping them and putting them in the wrong way it's a little difficult to explain but there's a Ledge on that hard drive bracket and it needs to go behind the ledge that runs along the bottom of the case and instead they put it in front of it so now I'm going to just go ahead and disconnect the SATA and power cables from the solid state drive and from the hard disk drive and set that aside because we're not even at that point right now as far as I know those drives work fine and once this computer is fixed they should boot up to Windows 7 just like it did before so we're not going to even mess with that and then one of the fun things of having the microphone on is the little you'll see that from time to time of my videos if you pay close attention the little windsock that's on the microphone just falls off or sometimes if I'm wearing a t-shirt rather than a button-down shirt the cable hangs out and when I lean against the counter it pulls the cable and it drags the microphone out of its clip and then it falls to the floor and these are all things that delay the filming process because that means whatever I was doing I have to go back and put everything back the way it was before the accident happened and then do it again so it looks like I've removed the microphone so I won't have to worry about that mess anymore and now just visually inspecting I'm looking for the things that are burned I'm looking smelling for things that are burned I'm checking to make sure everything is seated properly checking the memory to make sure that that seated properly simply pushing down on it to see if it clicks or makes any sounds when I push on it and then I give it an intent stare waiting for as Moses to strike me as I stare into it hoping something will be obvious and when nothing happens I start putting my fingers in there and checking all the other cables that I haven't yet checked are they fully seated is anything falling out is anything when you have all the cables loose like that it's hard to tell if something should be plugged in that isn't so you have to start untangling things and then of course you know checking the video card which requires that I remove this there's a piece that holds the video card in on the outside of the case and it has to be loosened and pulled away so that I can pull the video card out and the video card appears to be seated just fine it I don't see anything physically wrong with it I see no reason why the video card would have a problem I'm going to go ahead and reseat that video card just to be sure and by reseeding it that means I unplug it and then you know all the way and then plug it all the way back in sometimes just pushing it on it's not enough and with that I flipped the switch back on on the power supply and then hit the power switch on the side panel of the case to see if that's made any difference whatsoever here's a spoiler alert it does not so what I'm going to end up doing in my frustration here is I'm going to end up pulling all of the components out of the case because I'm very limited with the tests I can run that are reasonable for me to run in the confinement of this case okay so here's a quick jump cut to me removing the optical drive which means pulling the SATA and data cables out of the back and then setting it aside and now I'm going to look through these cables and start unplugging them one by one at this point you can tell I've already switched the video card out you can see the old video card sitting on the counter and there's a another test video card I slapped in there which didn't make any difference at all and then that's when I've decided to throw in the towel here and just take everything out and I am NOT looking forward to putting this all back together which is why with a conversation with the customer we made a deal that if I'm to fix this we will not use this case again they can have the case back I don't want it but I also don't want to work on it ever again and I'm not going to you know one of the great things about being self-employed is you don't have to do anything you don't want to do and I did not want to work on this computer and when they said they were going to buy this case I said if you buy it you know I don't want to work on it so it's all yours and they said okay and then problems happened and they said would you help us and I already told them previously I didn't want to work on it but of course I said yeah I'm going to help you what am I going to do let them said you know hang on the wind and then they had another problem with it and that's why I've got it now and I'm just cursing you know silently to myself that I have to work I don't have to work on it but I feel obligated to and again I'm not going to just leave somebody hanging but again part of the great thing about being self-employed is that if this wasn't a customer that I knew personally if this was just somebody out of the random calling me I would have simply told them you know to try somewhere else because I don't have the time that this requires to to remedy the you know to investigate it like I'm doing right now it and keep in mind this video has been cut a few times in order to save time in the diagnostic process right here you can see I'm trying to get the power supply out ordinarily you watch any of my build videos it doesn't take me this long to pull the power supply out something as simple as four screws it's way too complex for this case and it has been as part of of what comes along with the business is that you will get stuff you're not going to want to work on when you're working for somebody else you don't have a choice again when you work for yourself you can always tell people you're too busy or charge a really expensive rate which essentially tells them to go somewhere else or you just do what I do and bite your tongue help the customer out get it done right the way it should have been done the first time the way you suggest that they do it the first time and hope that they'll have years and years of trouble-free experience with the computer and that there's no ill-will towards anybody you know I don't have any ill-will towards them they don't have any ill-will towards me but sign let me to myself right now I'm cursing I'm saying you know I shouldn't have to do this right now the the idea of going through and diagnosing everything is requires a amount of focus you really have to stay focused any interruptions can just make you have to start all over again it's like if you're sitting there and you're counting money and you're saying you know 850 to 853 854 and then someone comes in and starts yelling 17 24 7 and then you're like oh I have to start all over again that's what happens often when you're when you're diagnosing a real serious computer problem something that's not basic and not straightforward and so what I'm doing here requires I have to have my phone off I have to have no interruptions in order to get this done as quickly as possible because there are other computers waiting for my time as soon as I can get this one done and those I'm sure won't take me near as much time as this one well so what I'm doing at this point is I pulled the the power supply out so that I can see where all the power cables are going and I can verify that all the power cables are plugged in correctly so we're basically what I'm saying is I'm turning it on with the spare power of spare video card that I plugged in there is no optical drive plugged in you see the optical drive sitting on the counter you saw me remove the hard drive and the solid-state drive so those are all removed from the equation we know that the behavior of the system is the same with those components removed therefore the video card is probably fine the optical drive is probably fine the solid-state and the traditional mechanical hard drive are probably fine so what does that leave that leaves us the power supply the motherboard the memory anything plugged into the board you know a shorted out USB port could do that if somebody were to jam something into the USB port there could be a screw behind the motherboard on a mount that is shorting it out there could be a number of variables still at play here so let's go ahead and do another jump cut okay now here I've removed the video card and I'm unplugging all the cables and removing the screws from the motherboard so I can take the motherboard out because I've just now reached my point of frustration where I can no longer work with in this case in an efficient manner there's just too many things even with the case practically empty it's still too difficult for me to work on the fans are in the way that bottom fan is blocking the CPU power connector on the motherboard which was very difficult for me to get loose I can see how it was easy to put on but the clip is actually behind and below that large fan on the bottom of the case by the way that large fan on the bottom of the case didn't need to be added to this case all it did was bring more dust into the system it was completely a waste of money to purchase it they didn't ask my advice when they did it they talked to the guy at the retail store he recommended it and and they went off some stranger's advice who's working for minimum wage at the store rather than call me and ask me so you know stuff like that bothers me because there's no reason they couldn't have just verified that and saved some money and made the computer a little bit easier to work out there was a loose screw there he saw me shake that out there was a screw rolling around in there and not that I've got everything out of the case I can diagnose this properly at this point to the level that it needs to be which means at this point I just want to test the motherboard the CPU the memory and the power supply now I'm fairly confident that power supply is working but I really don't know for sure just because the power supply turns on does not mean it's providing the right amount of amperage it might be providing the right amount of voltage and even a power supply tester may show that the power supply is providing the right amount of voltage but it's the amperage that matters and as far as I know there is not a power supply tester on the market that will put a load on the power supply so the best power supply tester you can buy as a technician is a spare power supply one that you know works and it's very simple to plug the two connectors in just the the main power and the CPU power and in this case I've also put the video card in you'll see the test video card is sitting there that's part of my test equipment and now I think I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to turn it on because I don't have the switch and I don't want to have to carry that whole side panel with the switch so okay there's there's power and oh there's a okay there's a button on the motherboard that's a power button for diagnosing it some high-end motherboards do have that and this one this one does this is a kind of soos rampage for I think motherboard and it's still not working at all so we haven't everything I've done so far has not made a difference so at this point I'm very very confident that you know there's no USB shorted out because that's all been you know as far as the cables that go from the case to the motherboard all those umbilicals those are out of the equation now so what's left well as I previously mentioned power supply motherboard RAM and CPU I know it's not the video card I've already tried the video card and apparently I stepped away for a moment to get something I'm going to pull the RAM out and this customer I'm actually building two systems for them and I talked to them on the phone and they gave me the okay to go ahead and take their memory out of their new system that I know works and to temporarily place it into their broken system that they built to see if that makes any difference at all and when you handle memory you want to make sure you're in a static free environment memory is very sensitive to electrostatic discharge so only handle it just the way you see me handle it if you have the heat spreaders you can hold it by the heat spreaders don't touch any of the connector part and don't touch any of the chips if you have chips exposed in that case hold it by its edges so we're going to seat both new memory modules these are brand new from a brand new build and turn the system back on push the button there it is and see what transpires here nothing so we can remove memory from the list of things that could be wrong clearly it's not a memory problem it could still be a memory socket problem if the sockets are damaged and one way you would test that is to simply move the memory you know in this case there are four sockets and by moving the memory into the other set of sockets just to see if it'll work can verify whether or not the socket itself is damaged there's no repairing a broken socket so if it is you're going to have to replace the motherboard if you say well I just won't use the damaged socket you don't know what's shorting out in that socket and whether or not that system is going to continue to blue screen or behave erratically as a result of the damaged socket so it looks like I'm putting the original memory back in I put the new memory back in the new system because I don't want to get them mixed up and just doing one thing at a time and it looks like as I'm studying it I'm debating whether or not I can test this motherboard with a different CPU or test the CPU with a different motherboard it just so happens that the CPU is a socket 1150 and the new systems that I'm building for this customer are also a socket 1150 I think what I've done at this point is just simply move the memory into other sockets the original memory it didn't work so I'm coming out with my power supply that I know works and you'll see there's just two cables apart from the power cable you sell remove there's the big 24 pin cable that goes onto the board and then there's the eight pin CPU power cable so those two get removed and this is the same even if these parts were still in a traditional case where you could you know reach in there with your hands and easily unplug them you don't have to remove you don't have to physically remove the power supply simply to test it so if this motherboard was still in its case in a normal case I would simply set the power supply on the counter and run the cables for the 24-pin when I'm hooking up right now and the eight pin CPU power or some other boards as a four pin CPU power that's all you need of those two cables and nothing else will matter and that will tell you if your power supply is working or not because if your system boots up it won't be able to boot to Windows or anything because there's nothing else plugged in there's no hard drives plugged in but it at least give us a post to power on self test and then we know we've got a bad power supply so here I've got my my known good power supply plugged in I've turned it on nothing's changed so I didn't suspect it was the power supply but you can never be absolutely certain unless you test it and this is why some of this DIY stuff isn't really good for you know it's not cost-effective for people that don't do this for a living because as you'll see through this diagnostic I have used a spare video card I have used the spare power supply I have used spare memory and if you don't have the stuff laying around and you have to go to the store to buy it you're effectively buying a whole new computer in this process that's expensive when compared to taking it to somebody like me who has these parts to test and I can diagnose exactly which part needs to be replaced so there is a certain cost that comes along with education whether you're taking it formally or you're doing it from the school of hard knocks and that's why I will save some old parts that I know we're working like that video card I've got in there that's a very cheap old video card and I don't care about it it has no value but I'm not worried about performance right now all I care about is getting a video signal so I know the power supply now is functional there's no difference between the two power supplies the behavior of the board is exactly the same as it's been this entire time now this is one of the hardest diagnosis that you will ever get because you effectively have to eliminate each part individually one by one as you work your way down to the CPU or motherboard those are going to be your last two options CPU and motherboard and unless you have a spare CPU laying around or unless you have a spare motherboard laying around that can be very difficult to diagnose because the CPU sockets are changing all the time so I've gone ahead and put the owners original video card back in then that requires power from the power supply just to try it it did not work and now I know what this means this means at this point the motherboard or the CPU is to blame and I already know from experience I very rarely ever see a bad CPU it is exceptionally unusual I think I've seen three bad CPUs in my lifetime so I'm going to take the heatsink off and I'm going to pull the CPU out and again I've spoken with the customer and I said look it just so happens the new systems we're building use them the same socket of motherboard that what you've got in the system that's not working here and with your permission I'd like to put that CPU into the new board temporarily just to see if the new board boots up and if it does I know you need a motherboard and if it doesn't I know you need a CPU that more or less that's the way it's going to go down so if I wasn't building systems for this customer I may not have had a spare socket 1150 board because why would I have a spare one there those are items on currently selling and to have parts like that in inventory they just appreciate and get cheaper and cheaper and cheaper so I lose money on it longer I keep it it looks like I just found the problem when they install their CPU there's these members tell you to be very gentle with the socket here there's eleven hundred and fifty of these little tabs I don't know if you can see that little black spot right there but that is a missing pin the pin has been destroyed you know it's no longer in location it should all be this uniform look so you can see that black spot there's actually I see I see two there it's nice and in focus right now there's two spots there that don't fit uniformly with the rest of that socket there's also I don't know what that is maybe it's a Wi-Fi adapter or something but there was a screw at some point that was holding it in position and that screw was just gone and even the the metal that goes around the the hole there has been busted off so somebody used some force unfortunately and damaged this board now no manufacturer is going to warranty that board when the CPU pins are bent that can only be done by the end-user that is not a defect in workmanship or materials and that's an expensive motherboard and it is now trash so just to verify because again I'm coming to conclusions here based on experience but the only way you can know for sure is to do the real test so I'm going to pull the customers new board out that we're using for their workstation builds for their office this is a gaming system for their son and I'm going to put their CPU and their CPU fan on this board along with their memory and we'll just use the onboard video and we should see a power on self tests succeed and hallelujah we will have finally come to the conclusion of what's wrong and as you can see it's a very methodical step-by-step process of elimination you simply cannot say and this really bothers me when people go I know it's not my power supply because the fans are turning no that doesn't work like that you cannot ever say I know it's not this component or that component because unless you've swapped it out with another one that's the only time that you can say that so it's it's just it really irks me when somebody asks me for help and they go I don't know what else to do I got to change the power supply now why would I change it the fans are turning I know what's working now you don't know it's working change it what have you got to lose what are you so afraid of you absolute the technology when it's not working like it's supposed to and it doesn't make any sense then you can't apply any sense to it you can't go well it can't be this therefore it's just magical mystical I need to call Carrie and find out what's going on and change power supply out and think boots up fine you know I've seen that happen so many times where they just couldn't be bothered because they convince themselves it couldn't be that component for whatever reason they came up with and even I with all my years of experience I'm not that good I simply cannot look at apart and go there's no way that parts bad not by looking at it not because the light is on not because a fan is turning there is no indication other than does it work or does it not work oh I lied I thought I was going to use onboard video I'm going to actually plug their video card in and the logic here is to verify that their CPU works their video card works their power supply works and the memory works so I'm using their memory their CPU their video card and their power supply and if this system comes on then we know all those parts work and we need a new motherboard now I've already come to this conclusion but I have to test it I have to verify my hypothesis otherwise I could tell the customer hey you need a new board they get the new board and then I go oh now when I put the memory and it's not working you need new memory and then they get some new memory and then suddenly I figure out power supply in fact isn't working are you going to need a new power sight they're going to say look you're just milking us here why didn't we just buy a new computer you're going to be made to look like a fool so you want to make sure before you call your customer you know 100% what the fix is take your time do it right the first time and you'll have a happy customer and ultimately you'll spend less time even though this feels like it's taking forever what I'm doing with the wire cutters I'm I'm trying to short the power switch circuit out so I can turn it on this motherboard doesn't have that button on the board it's surface the other board has a surface mounted power button and those wire cutters are actually insulated so they're not kind of work so I have to go back to my office and get a set of a power switch you'll often see me when I have older cases that I'm getting rid of I'll pull the power switches and the LEDs out of it because they can be used for this very purpose so I just went back to my office and I'm coming back now with it looks like it's a whole group of wires it's a power switch or power led a reset switch and a hard drive led and I just need to hook the power switch up and actually the reset switch will do just fine as long as it's plugged into the power switch connector on the board and if if my estimation is right and all it was was the bent pins in the CPU socket then the system should fire up so I did hit the button there and I'm staring at the screen and boom there it is boots so that means the video card is working power supply is working memory is working CPU is working now I got to get on the phone and say hello customer we need to buy a new motherboard that's a socket 1150 and we need to buy a new case because I'm not going to go through the hassle of cramming all this back in that case only to find you guys need some help a year from now or two years from now or maybe you want to upgrade three or four years from now and you bring that case to me again I don't ever want to see it again and customer says ok that's good where can we get a motherboard right now and so at this point I don't want to damage the new motherboard that I'm putting into the new system so I don't want to let this sit out I'll let their parts out but the new part I want to make sure gets put back so that it doesn't interfere with the new computers that I'm building for this customer I need all of this done by the end of the day including building new system because this customer is only in town for three days we're on day three right now so I have to get it all done very quickly and then that also adds to my frustration when I have to work around obstacles that are completely unnecessary such as that case you know why did they get insist on getting the case because it looked cool there was nothing necessary about that case and now let's put all this added pressure on me to get it done on time if I don't get it done on time then it'll have to sit in my office for a month before the customer will be back in town again and I don't have room for it I have other systems that I have to make room for and it adds more clutter so I've got my motivation to get it done they certainly would like to have it back as soon as possible and so now it's just a matter of unplugging all these components putting that new motherboard away so I can build that last system for them as soon as we get this one done but right now we're going to have to hop over to the local Fry's Electronics store which I don't like doing but I don't have a choice and we're going to have to find a case that we both agree on and a new motherboard now I'm not going to recommend Anasuya sport for them anymore I've had some bad luck with the Seuss boards especially like with that rampage you just saw very unusual design so I'm gonna stick with gigabyte gigabytes done well for me in my business that's kept me in business for some time the customer has agreed that we they will get the new case so I'm going to go ahead and take the hard drives off with this bracket and then I'm going to put all the screws and everything that I've removed back into a plastic you know ziploc bag and I'm going to put the ziplock bag in that old shuttle case and put the side panels back on it and set it aside so this computer is going to this customer rather is going to have four computers to bring home basically they're going to have the empty shuttle case to bring home the new case that we're going to buy and the two new computers that are going to be in boxes it's going to be one full car going back back to where they're from but you know this part I'm actually enjoying because now I get to say yay I get to take all these components out and then when I get the new case it's just building a new computer I just don't have to unbox any of the parts and you've seen enough of my computer building videos to know you know what that's going to entail it's all pretty straightforward the build will be no different than any other build with with that particular shuttle case they really should went with a modular power supply because the amount of cables they have left over is just ridiculous and there's really there's no place inside of the case or outside of the case to run the cables they just have to sit in whatever empty space you have which is horrible for airflow but let's let's jump cut here and let's show you what the new case looks like okay so now you can see there's the old case the old parts I've got all set up on the counter and the new case and look at the difference in size this is a course here 230 T and put the instructions right over there and it's not that much bigger than the case they thought was so special that I was going to put over there I better not do that set it down gently now I haven't worked with the 230 T case from Corsair before but I if you've watched my channel I've worked with a lot of coarser cases and in general I do like the quality of all the coarser cases I've worked on so far the motherboard it's bad and it's going to go to the trash there's nothing that can be fixed just throw it away I wish as you can imagine that's pretty pretty fired up to figure out what the problem was and got my screwdriver out here and the motherboard as you can see we went with a gigabyte z97 xu d 3h which is equivalent to that rampage 4 and all the other components are the customer's original components out of that shuttle case now the Corsair 230 T is only got one screw that holds in each panel instead of two screws on each side there's one screw on each side and then the panel slides forward it doesn't slide backwards it slides towards the front of the case so we're going to set that aside and at this point you're basically go and see the same build you've seen me do dozens of times before never in this case before but you'll certainly see the similarities I like those little grooves on the side of the panels that you can actually you know have something to grab your fingers and and slide that case slide the case cover off here I'm just speeding up the video because like I mentioned you see me do this lots of times before we put power supply in first I put both hard drives in put the optical drive in start putting all the screws in there we go you'll see this is gonna all go down much much faster so much easier to work on such a relief and we're just securing on the the optical drive remember this is going to be transported in a car so I want to make sure everything is secured all the screws are going to be used where they need to be there's the motherboard the i/o shield IO shields going in there it is now I'm going to prep the board oh that was disappointing alright now I'm going to go ahead and put the CPU yeah I'm getting ready I'm gonna put the CPU in its in heatsink goes on next blow out the dust and stuff in the heatsink but I'm keeping the thermal compound on the back on the bottom of the heatsink I'm not touching it and I'm putting the heatsink on in the same direction it was on so we don't have to replace the thermal compound memory is in the board is ready to be installed so I'm doing this upright normally I would lay the case down but I want you guys to be able to see what I'm doing I've got a little plastic standoff that I have in spare parts and it's going to go you don't have to do this but I like to do it there's a hole on the Gigabyte boards that the Corsair cases don't accommodate for so I just want that little plastic standoff there so that the board does droop over time and then eventually short-circuit against the the plate against the case so now I'm just mounting the motherboard in with the mounting screws and hooking up the power supply now there's the motherboard power there's the eight pin CPU power connector that's going on right there there's the rear exhaust fan and I make a better door than a window I can't see through me Oh video card video cards going in then I have to put power to the video card and then power to what am i doing I'm hooking up all the umbilicals the front USB the front audio power switch reset switch power LED harddrive LED yeah that's all going on now and then I've got power going to the hard drive solid-state drive and I think I just hooked up the two front fans because this does have a video card in it so we want the fans on the front hooked up all the spare parts go back in the box to go back to the customer now if I did everything correctly should be able to turn it on and the customers windows should still boot because all we changed as the motherboard yep there's the customers windows now I'm going to have to uninstall their drivers from their old motherboard and then put the driver disk in that came with the new board and install the new drivers windows may need to be reactivated in this case it did not need to be reactivated it just depends on how many pieces of hardware Windows has detected you've changed once you reach a certain amount it it'll make you have to call Microsoft and do a phone activation so I'm having some trouble with I thought I was having some trouble with the keyboard there but it looks like it's all ok I'm waiting on the computer to do something that it's not doing when you first turn a system on that's got new hardware you do need to be a little patient while it's loading drivers to detect all that new hardware and so I'm Sarah turned it off and on a few times I'm into the BIOS verifying a few things inside the BIOS I couldn't tell you what they are that's going through far too quickly but it's all standard stuff and hopefully that change is what I need nope I change something back i I don't remember this was done some time ago what the changes were but they were very minor changes just simple resets you see I've reset it now three or four times and the system is stopped booting so I have to change something back and I'm not sure which thing it is so I'm going back each time and and resetting it and going in for looks like it might be a cable short back it looks like I'm back in the BIOS one more time there we go oh I see what happened windows got corrupted it wouldn't boot and I had to get a Windows disk and do the repair option that brought me back to where I needed to be finally I got the system all done and this is what it looks like a wire tied nice and neat all the way around gonna be a lot easier to work on in the future probably won't even need to work on it on the future but if we ever do it'll be that much simpler and before I button it up I want to verify one last time now that I've got Windows install around Windows working and I've got all the drivers the old drivers removed the new drivers installed all the wires are tied up this is the final step to make sure that it boots correctly like it's supposed to so this is the big moment see the front fans are on they've got an orange LED I see the DVD Drive light is blinking and there we go we see starting Windows we see the flag come out doesn't even form a flag before it's already booting to the desktop that's fast that's the way it's supposed to be and I think that computer now is going to last this customer many years trouble-free and that is a nightmare of a diagnostic that's about as bad as it gets so I hope that you guys enjoy this video because I don't want to make another one like it it is difficult enough to try and do this without the camera on me I'm going to have to go back and do the narration and try and remember what I did but it's important for me to at least do this and show it once because the diagnostic procedure is always going to be the same it is a process of elimination here I'm running the 3d bench just to make sure that the video card is functioning like it's supposed to like I said earlier on the customer thought their video card was bad and that's why they weren't getting any video and I wish life was that simple I really do but the video cards working perfectly its flawless the frame rates there are excellent there's no jitter Nate jitteriness going on there's no artifacting everything looks exactly like it should look so because I can say with confidence now I have tested everything I can test everything's cleaned up I can shut it down and then I can put the side panels back on it and just wait for that to shut off there it goes now it's off unplug everything I got to remember to take my keyboard and mouse dongles because they're wireless they're really tiny they'd be really easy to forget there we go good boy all right yay I'm going to lay that down because those cables stick out just a bit I wanna make sure they're as flat as they can possibly be so that they don't blow out the case and it's going to make that side panel easier to put on the flatter that I can make these cables so let's grab that side panel and here we go I got to remember it goes on the front and slides back towards me it's the exact opposite of every case I've ever worked on that's a that's a first got the screwdriver and the screws that we removed initially I'd put aside because they're the last screws that you put back in so that's the hard panel to put on and that one I'm pretty easy the next side panel that's going to slide on smooth as silk because there's nothing to interfere with it and second up the plastic cover over the window over the acrylic window pull that off so it's nice and shiny and clean there we go put it on again with the extra hanging over the front there and then slide it towards the back make sure things clean nothing scratched or dented it all looks good grab the final screw and done in this final bit you guys are familiar with you know I put a label on it with the date the month in the year so we know when this was last worked on and then I'll go get the box the case came in put it right back in the way it came out so it'll be safe for transportation see how I slide the box over the computer I don't slide the computer in the box and that's it it's ready to go to the customer hope you enjoyed this video and I'll see you again next time bye for now

Channel: CareyHolzman

Views: 230,928

Keywords: Carey, Holzman, repair, diagnose, diagnostic, fix, computer, personal, how-to, diy, featured, popular, youy, #pcmasterrace, pcmasterrace, buildapc, #buildapc, easy, remedy, resolve, parts, hardware, software, os, windows, Technology (Industry), Do It Yourself (Hobby), Cleaning, Tutorial, Maker, Construction, Installation, Desktop, Basic, Design, Apple, Inc, Linux, Ubuntu, Interior, Ubuntu (Operating System), Removal, Kitchen, Building, Commercial, Water, Window, help, Improvement, Architecture, Custom

Id: EJJHYfVzo-4

Length: 52min 34sec (3154 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 16 2015