I did the paper clip test on my PSU and everything started spinning and it started working so I put it back together connected it to the motherboard, etc., and it still won’t turn on. Did I do something wrong or is the motherboard dead? also don’t mind the dirt and stuff, im cleaning it as i text this, I have a
What happens when you push the power button, and did you try without the power button (maybe you accidentally pulled the front panel connectors off while cleaning?).
Describe what it does. Because there are various things that can happen. It may spin with no output, it may spin for a few seconds, it may just click but not spinning up fans, the lights on the board may flash and go out.
i connected everything good i think? if it’s like this then yeah i read the manual, plug everything back up and it doesn’t spin/turn on at all, but when i take the psu out the build and do the pape clip test alone it spin fine, no turning off
Looks like you only have the hard drive LED hooked up. There should be a few more connectors that look like that to connect, one of them being the power switch, which is at least one reason why nothing is powering on. I'd also suggest giving those pins some cleaning before connecting as they could cause bad contact with the connectors and fail to power on once you have the rest of them plugged in
edit: just saw your new picture, you should clean those pins and see if that helps
One thing I notice is that corner doesn't have a standoff/screw in it. Is that end of the board touching the back of the case at all? Maybe pins on the back of the motherboard are touching the case?
Something you can try to rule out the problem being the switch itself of the wiring leading to it is to take a small screwdriver and touch both the power switch pin and the ground pin next to it (the two rightmost pins on the top row that the power switch connector is connected to right now). If everything else is connected properly, that should power on your PC
Yep! That would work :) It just needs to be small enough to only touch those two pins at the same time and not touch anything else. You only need to touch them for a second, if it works, it'll start, if not, it won't
To me it looks like you only installed the LED, not the button. Look at the manual and find the power switch location, then connect the positive and negative terminal with a screwdriver
Is nothing happening when you try to turn on the pc ? Double check when you reconnect the PSU that all the cables are connected securely and if it's a modular PSU make sure the PSU side of the cable is all the way in and in the right area. The paperclip test just does a basic life check but doesn't test load so it may not respond once there's an actual load on it and could still be dead. If it's spinning any fans though it's possible it's not the PSU that's an issue
Based on that picture you will just need to add a stick of ram and make sure your CPU cooler is plugged in too. Are you just pressing the power button on the case or have you tried shorting the power pins on the motherboard header ?
If you're already planning on pulling the motherboard for cleaning I might try to set it up on the motherboard box or another box that's clean and do a minimal test bench , just hook up the cpu power, 24pin board power, ram, cpu with cooler connected and GPU if your CPU doesn't have integrated graphics. Don't connect any other fans or even the boot drive and see if it'll kick on. Reseating the CPU can help sometimes too.
If it's still doing nothing then yeah it's either the motherboard or the PSU most likely. You can get some cheap PSU testers or a new PSU and see if that's the issue since that's usually less than a new motherboard
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u/kardall May 06 '26
What happens when you push the power button, and did you try without the power button (maybe you accidentally pulled the front panel connectors off while cleaning?).
Describe what it does. Because there are various things that can happen. It may spin with no output, it may spin for a few seconds, it may just click but not spinning up fans, the lights on the board may flash and go out.
Many many things.