Hi hi!
I'd like to preface this by saying i know very little about tech and am very anxious about playing around with cables, so i might need some handholding when it comes to some of the terminology and i'm very sorry about that.
I also am unsure if anyone can actually help me with this or if it's an issue that needs to be taken care of by a repair shop, but i am pretty much broke at the moment and really cannot afford to get it fixed right away. Thought i might as well try and see if someone has any advice beyond that first
My PC has worked fine for the past three years that i've had it. We had some overheating issues in the past and got an extra fan that resolved those and aside from that (and lower end RAM; 16GB if i remember correctly) everything was okay.
But i've moved out of my parents' place last year and a few months ago i started running into freezing issues where my PC would just stop working sometimes, occasionally accompanied by the sudden loud static noise of it loading the last bit of sound, and i'd have to manually turn it off and on again. It scared me, especially the noise, but turning it off and on again did fix it at first. I didn't like not knowing what the issue was, but it wasn't like i really knew what to look for either.
It started happening more frequently within the last two weeks, sometimes making a short beeping noise when i turned it on again or freezing AGAIN later. My boyfriend recommended opening up the PC and seeing if i can clean it out and i did, but there honestly wasn't much dust buildup. Definitely not enough to cause this. And as i said before, i am very wary about messing with anything, so i didn't take anything about at the time. Only wiped off little bits of dust where i felt like i safely could. It resulted in my cores being minimally cooler, but didn't fix the freezing issue. Didn't really seem like it was overheating that was the issue in the first place.
The second thing he suggested was looking at my files and if maybe it was a memory issue. I admittedly have too many games (with mods) for how little space i actually have, but even after deleting some things and the games not taking up that much space anymore, my memory usage from other idle apps was concerningly high. I also didn't recognize most of them, so they're probably apps the system just?? needs?? and runs on its own? None of them seemed particularly suspicious.
However, i'm unsure if memory usage is the issue either. Even after making some space and not even actively playing any games, the PC would now sometimes crash while just idling. No games, no extra applications, just turned on.
Up until yesterday i could still at least mostly play my games. But it seems like it finally came to a point where it couldn't do it any longer. It kept freezing, then upon the third try, it wouldn't even properly turn on anymore, it just made a continuous beeping noise. A mutual friend who knows a little more about IT stuff tried helping me, suggesting i open it up again, take out the RAM and very carefully clean the copper sides with a clean eraser. They didn't look dirty and it unfortunately didn't fix the issue.
Then we tried taking out the graphics card and doing the same thing there; also didn't help. Tried putting in each RAM stick in one of the slots to see if it was either one that was "more" of an issue; nope. Not that either. Last idea was to take out the little coin cell battery for a few minutes to (i think) manually reset the BIOS. Also didn't fix it.
I would love to just put it back to factory settings and see if that magically fixes it, since aside from mods i don't have anything valuable on there i would miss anyway, but it won't even turn on anymore. Not even for a short moment. All it does is give the long drawn out beep while it's running.
I can't see any issues observing it from the side. All of the fans seem to be working fine and the LEDs turn on. A quick google search suggests it is probably an issue with the RAM, graphics card or power supply, but i don't know how to figure it out and unfortunately said friend and boyfriend live on the other side of the world (for now) and can't help me with it other than by talking me through some things over call. We briefly changed where it was plugged into, but that also didn't help. I am already impressed by the fact that i was "brave" enough to take out all that stuff, and i guess i learned some new things. At least one positive thing to come from this haha
If anyone has ANY suggestions i could try before taking it to a shop i would honestly be so so grateful. If i do have to take it to someone else, is there any way to know approximately what amount of money i can expect it to cost? I doubt it, but maybe worth asking. And i apologize again for my lack of knowledge on this.
The PC is an acer predator orion 3000, barely 3 years old. Cores were at an idle 30-40 degrees celsius, then 60-70 max during gaming. The NVDIA driver is fully up to date and there weren't any windows updates last i checked (i'm on windows 11, if that matters at all, but since it's likely a hardware issue i doubt it)
Thank you in advance for anyone even reading this and i hope you're having a better week than i do 🙏🏻