My five-year-old PC recently started requiring five or six presses of the case power button before it turns on. Once it starts, everything works normally. There have also been several power outages recently, including abrupt shutdowns, so I'm wondering whether the case switch is simply worn out or whether the PSU or motherboard may have been damaged. The system has an MSI X570 Tomahawk, Ryzen 5 5600X, RTX 3080, 32GB Corsair memory, a Seasonic 750W Platinum PSU, a be quiet! Pure Base 500DX case, a Samsung 970 EVO 1TB SSD, and a Seagate 4TB hard drive. What's the best way to troubleshoot this?
2 Answers
The quickest first check is the case switch. Disconnect the two power-switch leads from the motherboard front-panel header, then briefly touch the two power-switch pins together with a screwdriver. That only simulates pressing the button. If the PC starts every time this way, the case button or its wiring is the likely problem. Be careful to touch only the correct two pins.
The outages make a PSU problem possible, but they don’t prove it. Since the computer runs normally after starting, test the button first instead of assuming the power supply failed. If bypassing the switch still gives inconsistent starts, then inspect the power connections and consider testing with a known-good PSU or having the PSU professionally checked. A basic paperclip test can show whether a PSU starts, but it doesn’t reliably confirm that it works correctly under load.
I was worried the blackouts had damaged the PSU, but I’ll start with the simpler switch test before replacing anything.
That makes sense. I’ll back up anything important before opening the case and testing the front-panel connection.