HelgenX Posted March 5, 2014 Share Posted March 5, 2014 Hey all, I found a PC on the street, a Lenovo Thinkcentre. It had the mobo, the PSU, and the CPU which was a Pentium (something) dual core. Anyway, I threw in some ram and a 1tb SATA drive, it runs really good... However, it freezes from time to time, mostly when doing something. I could watch full movies on it or play games with no problem, but it seems to freeze up when i'm doing something like doing heavy browsing or something involving the browser which is weird. I can't pinpoint the problem really, it seems more hardware specific than software to be honest. The event viewer has no errors whatsoever. What do you all think the problem can be? There is one main thing which could be the problem, but I need advice before I go and buy a new one. Sometimes, the PC doesn't turn on. I believe it to be the PSU, but I could be wrong. I have to turn it on and off a few times if I don't use it constantly. Also, when I changed the voltage on the PSU, the fan spins really fast on the CPU or really quietly. I feel as if the CPU was overheating, but I doubt it because I used CPUID to check the temperature, and it was quite fine. Also, I one in a blue get a ram error, the ram should be fine, ran memtest with no errors many times on my main PC, but I can't use all 4 sticks otherwise it'll beep. I know this is all quite vague, but if anyone could possibly help me out, I'd appreciate it. I'll sum up everything if you don't want to read everything: *PC freezes from time to time, mostly when browsing web pages *Sometimes doesn't turn on and the fan spins fast at first, then goes really low *Can only use 3 sticks of ram, 4 will make the mobo beep. Thanks in advance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mindovermaster Moderator Posted March 5, 2014 Moderator Share Posted March 5, 2014 CPU overheating or bad PSU. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robbie Ride Posted March 5, 2014 Share Posted March 5, 2014 Sounds like a faulty motherboard, probably the reason it was tossed. I found a system on top of a skip in January this year and it was in a bad way with dust but it actually worked so I stripped it and used the parts lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snaphat (Myles Landwehr) Member Posted March 6, 2014 Member Share Posted March 6, 2014 There's a hardware issue if it isn't turning on consistently. The mobo could be faulty, the PSU could be faulty. More or less impossible to pint down what without swapping out something in this case. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Praetor Posted March 6, 2014 Share Posted March 6, 2014 Hey all, I found a PC on the street, a Lenovo Thinkcentre. lol the only thing i can found on the street is junk and even for that people dig on trash cans... :/ anyways, seems like a hardware fault (PSU or Mainboard); does it boot into BIOS? can you see the temp and voltage? i would take whatever is working and scrap the rest of it. robertwnielsen 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
riahc3 Posted March 6, 2014 Share Posted March 6, 2014 Hello, Hey all, I found a PC on the street, a Lenovo Thinkcentre.Sound strange :huh: lol the only thing i can found on the street is junk and even for that people dig on trash cans... :/ anyways, seems like a hardware fault (PSU or Mainboard); does it boot into BIOS? can you see the temp and voltage? i would take whatever is working and scrap the rest of it. Yeah, very strange. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HelgenX Posted March 9, 2014 Author Share Posted March 9, 2014 Thanks for the info. I live in the East Village in NYC, it's a fairly rich neighborhood, and people sometimes throw out brand new things simply because like a button was stuck or something, and I end up just using something really ridiculous to fix them like a piece of tape, lighter fluid, a philips head ETC. Anyway, this is one of the first times I've been stumped on fixing a PC, I usually have at least a 90% ratio of fixing desktops to say the least, but this one is giving me headaches (although don't use it much,) if used as just a server, it'd be just fine, or I'd just have to wait a minute every 20 minutes for it to end it's freeze cycle... Which ain't so bad. I'm almost tempted to use the PSU from my main one... Unless I find another PSU haha. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Devmer11 Posted March 9, 2014 Share Posted March 9, 2014 i would check the PSU first my thinkcentre had the same problem it would throttle heavily trying to pull power check that :) thinkcentres are a pain to troubleshoot especially the IBM ones Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snaphat (Myles Landwehr) Member Posted March 9, 2014 Member Share Posted March 9, 2014 You can't fix everything. Sometimes, you get hardware that inconsistently works when failing. Intermittent faults like that are a class on their own. The mode of demise for an HP laptop I had was that the screen would turn on about 1/20th of the time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mockingbird Posted March 10, 2014 Share Posted March 10, 2014 You are going to have to swap something out to find that is wrong. The easiest is to borrow a PSU (power supply unit) from another computer to test. T3X4S 1 Share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mockingbird Posted March 10, 2014 Share Posted March 10, 2014 It likely a PSU problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Decebalvs Rex Posted March 10, 2014 Share Posted March 10, 2014 Set the BIOS settings to default and restart. Check if all parts are correctly in place. Sounds like a faulty mobo to me, check with other ram if you can. My $5 placed on faulty connection between hardware components. If not.. just my two cents here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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