Hey everyone,
I'm new here, pls help me out.

Okay so i have this problem with my computer, when i press the power button, the fan, lights, dvd drives etc turn on except I don't see anything on the monitor. Also, when the PC used to boot up fine, the motherboard 'talked' through the speakers saying 'System completed power on self test'. But now, when I turn it on, I can hear a message saying 'System failed CPU Test'. So, I have to keep turning the computer on and off until it boots up (completely random) - and when it does boot up, it runs for a random period of time until the whole thing just freezes and locks up.

Any ideas what the problem might be? I don't know if I'm in the right section to ask this, any help would be much appreciated, thanks in advance!

Btw my system specs (main) are below:
- P4 2.53Ghz
- ASUS P4S8X Motherboard
- ASUS GeForce 4 Ti4600 Ultra Deluxe
- 2 x 512MB PC-2700 Kingmax RAM
- Antec 350W SmartPower PSU

Apart from these audible messages that you get do you hear any beeps of any kind and do you know the make of the bios?

In theory the pc is saying the CPU is down but to me if it truly was you would not get anything on boot up.

Hey, I don't hear any beeps at all, except for the one short 'toot' when the PC boots up normally. I don't know the BIOS version at all, it must be the default Award BIOS because I remember updating the bios to the most recent version but that didn't work, so then someone told me to take the bios battery out and then put it back half an hour later, so i did and that would've reset the bios back to factory defaults.

Apart from this, when the computer booted up properly for once, I hit delete and went into the setup menu, I don't know if this is necessary, but I wrote down the Temperatures, Fan Speeds and Voltages:

MB Temp: 28.5C/83F
CPU Temp: 37C/98.5F

CPU Fan Speed: 2360RPM
Chassis Fan Speed: 3139RPM
Power Fan Speed: N/A

Vcore: 1.50V
+3.3V: 3.21V
+5V: 4.97V
+12V: 11.77V

I don't know why it says Power Fan Speed as N/A. Does that mean there could be something wrong with my PSU? I put my hand at the back of the power supply and I could feel the fan working...but not as strong as the other case fans I have, unless the power supply fan wasn't working at all and the air which I felt was the one blowing from the other fans through the PSU maybe?

Any ideas would be much appreciated, thank you!

Hi I have seen this issue before and it was caused by a faulty compsitor on the mainboard might be worth checking see the bulged one in this picture this is what to look for Blown, Burst and Leaking Motherboard Capacitors - A Serious Problem? - PCSTATS.com

Hi again, I had a look at the capacitors on my mobo, they look normal, as does everything else on the board. Any other ideas guys?