Day before yesterday my computer randomly started switching off late at night. So I thought it could be a problem with the power supply or the power cable or the extension board powering the computer. First I changed the power cable and that seemed to resolve the problem. Unfortunately a little while later it happened again and I had to change the cable again before you started working. Which was very strange and made me think that the problem could be happening because of a short or something in the extension board that I was using so I ordered a new one for next day delivery.
In the mean time I connected the computer to a different board but it powered down again completely after a random interval. So I concluded that the issue had to be with the power supply itself and started looking options to get a new power supply as soon as possible. The local shop I used to use to get computer parts had gone out of business, so I asked around for recommendations and was going to reach out to them the next day (as it was around 1am at this time)
Once I had a plan of action I thought to try changing the cable again just to see what would happen and surprisingly the system powered on successfully. As I was working on the computer I heard a low volume beep from the computer but I didn’t see any message on the terminal as to why the beep was triggered and while I was checking on that I suddenly remembered that the system can also beep in case of overheating which can and does cause a shutdown. So I checked the temperature of the motherboard and the CPU and both were hovering at 98 degree Celsius. I remember from past experiences that the auto powerdown temperature in the BIOS is usually set to 100 Deg C so I figured that could be what was causing the problem.
I took a flashlight and took a look at the motherboard and CPU to see if there were any obvious problems causing the overheating and lo and behold one of the CPU fans was not working because a cable had moved which was blocking it from turning. I moved the cable out and once the fan started working again the CPU temperature started to drop quickly and its been a day and a half now with no issues.
Thankfully I had not ordered the replacement powersupply as that was not needed. The moral of the story is that we should always check hardware and software before you decide to replace equipment and if possible give your mind a bit of time to process information before going ahead and replacing the hardware.
– Suramya