Dell - Fan ramps up but no boot

[alextreadwell]

Optiplex GX280 - loud fan at start up and amber power light - does not boot - DELL COMMUNITY

looks like the recall for gx280'w without warrenty has ended but still available under warenty mine no longer have it, also I have read its easy to replace the dead caps on the mother board (I have not attempted it yet but will be soon) motherboards were going for about £25 on ebay last month but missed the end.

[TechMonkey]

Bummer, that sounds like it all right. Well then time to find either cost of new MB or replace machine. No sign on any of the caps of damage so I doubt replacing them would be viable.

[alextreadwell]

Could be the processor I have swapped them between machines and had the problem folow the processor in the past when the motherboard was fine

[TechMonkey]

Will give that ago. Anything at the moment!

[LeMarchand]

Had a chat with one of our LEA's "top guys" about something else and mentioned this problem. His first response was "bad caps". I said that there weren't any visible signs of this, but he reckoned there isn't always.

Apparently another school had 2 280s go in their suite. As the suite was up for replacement anyway, they bought in a bunch of new machines and the old machines were re-purposed for class use; since then a third of them have developed the same fault.

Worryingly, another machine in our suite seems to be on the way out with the same symptoms .