Fixing a Viewer's BROKEN Gaming PC? - Fix or Flop S5:E1

hey Greg this is my son's PC and we put it together for him and we got the parts used from my brother video card RAM and processor core i79700 except the motherboard we bought that online used on eBay and it was working good until these past two weeks we noticed that when we started Windows it would shut down right away and I would press the power button and nothing I reconnected everything but nothing the only thing that stays on is the RGB from the board but nothing powers on hopefully if you see our PC maybe you can figure out what might have gone wrong this here is that viewer's broken gaming PC and she's a bit of a sleeper I imagine most folks opening this case up for the first time aren't expecting what's inside this platform while not new definitely outclasses the case itself this is an Old Dell OEM case and uh definitely misleads anyone on the outside into thinking that it's actually a lot worse for gaming than it really is and while the platform might not be the most upto-date a 9th gen core i7 is well it's not the newest the latest the best the most powerful we do have an RTX graphic card in here and a CX 750m power supply so I think this was built with actually a fairly decent balance in mind but if she isn't powering on that is a bit of a problem we're going to try to fix it in this video are you ready stay with me if you're sick of seeing that same activate Windows watermark over and over head on over to VIP SCD key where they have Windows 10 and 11 Pro OEM keys at a fraction of the price of retail just see the secure payment method like PayPal enter your product key and your PC settings window and say by-bye to the watermark and be sure to use your offer code skgs for that sweet discount hello there and welcome to season five of fixer flop this season part's a bit arbitrary we don't really have much of a gap between seasons in most cases but that's because we still have so many computers in the queue waiting to be fixed and this one is no exception and for those who don't know in fixer flop we offer to fix viewer systems for free without charging for labor without charging for replacement parts and exchange we get to film videos like these and post them on sites like YouTube that's how I make my money of course I'm not going to offload any of that charge to the owner who's already gracious enough to loan us this the system in question for at least a few days so if you have a broken computer maybe it doesn't power on or maybe it does but it doesn't send a signal to your monitor something along those lines be sure to fill out a form Linked In the video description if you are an Orlando Florida local those are the ones we're really honing on this season and we have historically as well because I prefer to see systems in person take them home myself and then drop them back off in person it's liability nightmare when you have to deal with shipping and that's why we have ignored many of those who have insisted on applying to the featured and fixer flop despite not living anywhere near us let's shift our attention then to this bad boy here um apparently it lights up you can see LEDs on the motherboard and things but it does not officially power on Via the power button up front I'm curious if there's an issue with the power button in this older case that could have gone bad or maybe we have a bigger problem on our hands as a part of this rig story that I haven't mentioned yet and it's because it wasn't initially included in the description that I read you at the beginning of this video when I met the owner of this rig in a Burger King parking lot he told me that the CPU I think it was also the RAM and the graphics card if I'm not mistaken were pulled from his brother's old rig that involved a motherboard shorting to the case apparently he didn't use the correct standoffs and the right places and so when he powered the system on the motherboard shorted and fried the other components apparently still worked and that's what he ended up giving to his brother now that brother's son is the owner of this um it doesn't mean though that just because they work right after something that catastrophic that they won't fail in the short term little all down the line Maybe a month or two right that's exactly where we are now um it's possible that uh well the damage from earlier has finally caught up to one or multiple components here I don't know if that's what we're going to find maybe they're still okay but that context is greatly appreciated because it will help me narrow down even further what is going on here where's the power button is that it right there let's see apparently this shouldn't work but it but it does maybe what he meant was that the system powers on but doesn't post or send a signal to a monitor so we're going to test that here the drive according to the owner at least has windows installed on it so if all is well it should boot straight into that let's see power button again what okay uh now we're talking this rig is just totally unresponsive now and you saw in the last clip it powered on seemingly without issue it might have even posted if we had had a screen connected but now it doesn't want to and all we did was power cycle the system and just as the owner described we still have LEDs illuminated on the motherboard so the platform is at least somewhat receiving power that's probably a good sign now since we're working with such an old case it's possible that the power button itself has become uh an issue so we're going to bypass that entirely and manually jump the power pins on the board looks like a standard jfp1 header let's see then power on [Music] and look at that seems to fire up without issue now although we aren't getting any signal to our monitor possibly a separate issue we're going to keep this in the back of our head although since power cycling this rig once more it doesn't want to power off again I've never seen this before this is very strange I'm jumping the Power Pin so it should be turning on and it is not but it looks like it's still receiving power this is really bizarre I believe this CPU has integrated Graphics so I'm going to bypass the discreet card entirely so it give us a bit more room to maneuver around the base of the board as well I have cleared the seos off camera that hasn't fixed anything I'll try uh testing battery voltage although that's usually a very Niche issue we reading just over 3 volts so nothing wrong here and we've quickly removed memory from the equation because well I've literally removed it here and the system still will not power on I did notice that this Dell front panel connector is a bit odd and that it's actually two six pin layer stacked on top of each other instead of two five pins and what it looks like they've done is for some reason jumped what would be in a normal jfp1 header the power it's actually a separate power LED pin this is the positive pin looks like it's been routed to the negative terminal on the power switch side of things just really odd and this was plugged in like normal so on this board he very well could have been running power where he shouldn't have so that would be this pin here which on this board is actually a power LED it's separate power LED positive pin being jumped to this pin which is the power button negative pin I'm not sure what board was originally in here but that is definitely not what should be happening and because I don't know the pen array of the original motherboard in this Dell OEM I'm not sure how dangerous the current setup is I definitely wouldn't do what this owner did I would have removed that jumper altogether it's possible we have irreversible damage now on the motherboard side of things which is not fun but even with the front panel entirely disconnected we still cannot manually jump the power pins which is super odd and I've cleared the seos here these two pins uh should be jumped should be closed to uh bypass the battery uh to uh reset the seos that's not working either it's just peculiar and I have even tried connecting one of these uh speakers I always get people yelling at me for not using these speakers if it would focus there it goes um yeah it just these never work I I don't know why they never make any sound they they're just not much help even with everything nonvital disconnected from the platform we've only got the 24 pin and the8 pin EPS being run to the board it does not want to power on that's not a good sign it means we either have a power supply issue which I doubt because it looks like we're getting power delivered and it sometimes does want to power on or we have a motherboard issue uh and this is an older board I don't think I have a replacement which means we'll have to order one on a site like eBay we've tapped into the power supply and everything so far looks healthy here uh slew raid voltage Ripple timing all good so far but even with a replacement power supply just to calm the nerves and ease any doubts you might have about the tester it still doesn't want to actually power on same symptom as before we still get the LEDs on the board but no real reaction when jumping the power pins that means the platform needs to come out this is when you know you've got an intensive troubleshooting task ahead of you when you have to take the platform out examine the socket the CPU you've hopefully by this point exhausted all other resources and uh well I believe we have I want to first check and roll out this m.2 this is where windows I believe is installed I don't suspect it's the problem but we're trying to just roll out as much as we can and so far everything looks okay now I want to carefully take a look at the CPU and socket we'll clean everything up and uh we'll just make sure there aren't any bent or missing pins sure enough the underside of the CPU looks spotless no bleeding over thermal paste or anything that would impede any of these pads making contact with the socket and the socket itself is also also in Immaculate shape no bent or missing pins but to rule out the CPU I'm going to replace the current core i79700 with my cor I3 9100f that I know works and if the same symptoms are exhibited then we can more or less rule out the CPU as the culprit although we could have a situation where both the CPU and the motherboard are dead and that's the worst thing to physically troubleshoot a hardware is usually pretty straight forward but you have multiple dead components you're getting mixed signals from different combinations of Hardware being connected it's just like you're just chasing yourself in circles sometimes so I hope that at least his CPU is fine we'll find out I know the setup looks a bit sketchy I had to connect to scet Graphics because this is an F skq so it doesn't have an igp and I had to lift it off the board I used a Q-tip box to do that so it's cringe the CPU also doesn't have a cooler attach so we're not going to leave it on long enough for that to matter but uh don't try this at home if you're not very familiar with tech here we go power on so the board is lit that's a good sign and let's let's jump the power pins is it really powering on it is we might even get a post here wow we did we got a post okay uh dead CPU I'm a bit caught off guard by this but looks like a dead CP let's see if we can replicate this power on scenario because before we definitely couldn't so here we go jumping it again it does it powers on again what what is going on here this is a okay you know what I'm going to swap the original CPU back in I just I just want to see something so now that's his 9700 back in I've got the power now on at the rear and uh let's try sorry I know the camera is just not going to be pointing where I'm looking right now but I just want to see if we we can get it to and it it responds what what on Earth is going on here the only two things we've changed between the system not powering on and it fully working and loading into windows with both CPUs mind you are this this is the boot Drive the m.2 that we removed earlier and the case now you always want to be mindful of potential shorts and cases like these sometimes these oems use unconventional motherboard shapes but uh this one actually uses the standard microatx layout they don't use standoffs they use these little indentions more or less in the from the motherboard tray they kind of pop out but uh nothing here that I would suspect is shorting the motherboard um yeah it all it all looks okay even up top there and while the sim. 2 does physically look okay we haven't independently verified that this works in a different system so what I'm going to do is put this back in the original platform and see if we can power it on I really doubt this is the solution but I have seen weirder before and here we go two power [Music] pins okay well that just um that just makes it even more confusing what so so it is the ca is it the case what we've changed nothing else about this rig could it be mounting pressure from the CPU Cooler I'm just I I have no idea where else to go from here heck even with the original RTX gravic card back in we still get a post now you see I'm so stubborn now I went ahead and reassembled everything inside of the case we're going to tried jumping now the only thing not reinsert is the CPU Cooler it's not turning on now I thought it might have been a a cooler mounting pressure issue but it doesn't want to turn on this board is this got to be shorting somewhere on in this case 12 midnight oh and you know what I think I just found it I was giving things another once over just checking for any obvious areas where the motherboard might short actually I was at the brink of replacing the case outright which I didn't want to do because well that would ruin the sleeper aspect of this build which I really like uh so this over here is I think our culprit now I'm going to have to focus let's see if I can focus through that hole there that's going to be pretty tough but I think I might be able to pull it off do you see that metal piece that's sticking up I'm going to mark it there on the screen that is literally touching a few solder points on the back side of this board I believe it's the solder points for whatever this header is here these pins are physically touching and you can even hear it you can hear that clanking metal sound that is the solder points making contact with the case and this being a bare steel case means that it is definitely conducting definitely shorting and uh well this board somehow hasn't fried itself yet which is a really good thing but uh that would definitely keep the system from powering on see a lot of modern components have not only surge protection built in especially on the power supply side of things but if they notice that power's being diverted somewhere it shouldn't maybe something isn't receiving power when it should that could be a trigger to keep the system from fully powering on you can see the motherboard still getting power somewhat it's getting low voltage power this might be 12vt uh here I'm not sure if these LEDs are 12 volt or 5vt but either way the system is not fully powering on and it's because of this little piece of metal here which we can easily Bend back we may even be able to almost perfectly simulate this so I've got only a single screw here at the top holding the board in which means I can pry this board forward a bit so that it's not actually making contact with that metal plate now let's power the unit on at the rear here and let's see if it powers on now I bet you it does look at that that is exactly what was keeping this rig from powering on and I guess somehow the viewer was able to get by for about a month or so with it not shorting and with the system working fine but that right there is super alarming and I'm really glad that nothing catastrophic happened as a result of that short so let's go and get this cooler reapplied then we'll remove the platform outright and work to bend this piece down downward completely we're going to make sure that there's not a shadow of a doubt that this is not making contact with the motherboard what follows is a brief construction Montage I could do the professional thing and take a Dremel to it but that would take a lot of time for a case like this I'm just worried about getting it out of the way it won't be seen anyway so now it's fully depressed inside of the motherboard tray and uh even broke off a few pieces just for a good measure like this one right here now we can carefully place the platform back in and button everything down wire everything back up I've created a makeshift front panel solution for the power switch by just connecting the blue wire to the black lead where it was supposed to go initially uh and also remove the extra black wire that was leading to a place it definitely shouldn't have gone and here we are the finished product and it looks identical to the way it did when it entered the office it's always a relief when a diagnosis doesn't require replacement Hardware in fact it only required a hammer which uh oh that's a first well okay I shouldn't get ahead of myself we need to make sure that of course everything works now as intended including that uh power button which we had to rewire ourselves where is the HDM cable plugging that in and let's see what happens power at the rear is on power up front look at that fires up straight away as it should there we go so looks like it's loading into Windows 11 judging from that animation come on come on there it is check that out this has got to be one of the more fulfilling episodes I've ever filmed in this playlist I'm I'm super happy with the result and I'm also super happy that it didn't require replacement Hardware such a crazy just random issue and a prettyand random fix as well if I'm being honest who would have thought wow what a way to kick off season 5 of fixer flaw I didn't expect this I didn't expect it to be as complicated as it ended up being uh but also as simple as it ended up being some of these are just bizarre and I'm I'm frankly shocked that we haven't had an instance or two where it's like the same thing over and over for several episodes it's it's like almost always something different and I think that is invaluable for uh for people who are watching these for educational purposes some of you just like to watch because you want to see me make a fool of myself and misdiagnose something get it wrong publish it and then just look like an idiot and I do that from time to time sure but uh you know what I'll go ahead and say it I would be willing to bet against myself having fixed this a year to ago I have learned so much just from being Hands-On with so many systems like these um I I've I've come a long way personally in in the troubleshooting Department I've learned so much about systems and there's still so much more that I do not know I might have even said stuff incorrect in this video but you know piece by piece build by build I'm improving and hopefully if you're watching and uh you see an informative aspect of these videos it at least keeps it fresh in your mind if something were to happen to your system you'd be super confident in being able to solve it yourself this reminds me of I think it was the end of season 3 of fixer flop there was a build that came in it used some older Hardware I think it was an x58 platform and I could not for the life of me figure out what was wrong with that system and I don't remember too much about it it has been I think a few years now but I ultimately ended up giving up on that system that was one of the few just complete flops in that playlist and I remember telling the guy when I met him again at the Target parking lot I said hey man I'm sorry this is like this is one of the few times when I've been completely stumped and of course when the video was published a lot of you had opinions on how I could have handled that better and I think the prevailing thought was that I didn't isolate the platform from the case at least I didn't show it on video now there was a a point in the video I believe where I had everything out on a desk and I was testing it but by that point it was too late see some of you pointed out this standoff right here which is really only used for some Micro ATX motherboards it shouldn't have been here for an ATX board at least most ATX boards that you'll deal with today and that I believe was short in the platform I think even the new replacement motherboard and CPU were fried because of that misplaced standoff and it's because I didn't isolate the platform from the case at the time that I not only couldn't fix the problem but also ended up bricking what I suspect were totally fine and working motherboards and CPUs in the process that I had ordered from eBay it was an extremely frustrating episode and looking back I'm just beating myself up over it because I could have fixed that guy system and I didn't because I didn't know enough about isolating individual components this took a while but at the end of the day we figured it out and it was almost an exact match to what we had at the end of season 3 so um I'm I'm proud of myself for not overlooking that I'm glad I gave things a second and third look and uh yeah that's about all I have to say thank you so much for watching if you enjoyed this one be sure to give it a thumbs up let me know in the comment section below what you thought about this one did you hone in on the issue before me did it take you a little longer um that feedback is uh is greatly appreciated I actually really enjoy within the first hour or two of these videos going live seeing your comments they're usually very encouraging um and and constructive which is great as well if you guys haven't subscribed already get subscribed check out our troubl shooting stuff in the description along with other relevant links and I will catch you in the next it is just past midnight now so um I'm going to get some sleep my name is Greg thanks for learning with me

Channel: Greg Salazar

Views: 180,209

Keywords: fix or flop, fof, fix or flop season 5, season 5 episode 1, how to fix a pc, broken computer, computer repair, how to, pc troubleshooting, how to troubleshoot a pc, gaming pc, fixing a viewer's broken gaming pc, PC Gaming, Computer Hardware, greg salazar, Tech, Technology, broken gaming pc, broken pc, pc no post, viewer pc, dead pc, Computer issue

Id: XwBt7oUd4Ig

Length: 21min 3sec (1263 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 02 2024