A real repair from our Blue Springs bench, April 2026. Customer details removed.
The problem
A customer moved his custom-built gaming PC into a new case. Afterward it would power on, show the boot screen for 10 to 15 seconds, then shut off hard. He moved everything back into the old case. Same result. He drove in from Knob Noster.
What we found
On the bench, the CPU temperature spiked within seconds of power-on and the system force-shut down to protect itself. Reseating every cable on the AIO liquid cooler changed nothing, so we pulled the cooler off the CPU. Two problems: almost no thermal paste, and the cooler’s mounting springs were installed underneath the cold plate. That held the cooler off the CPU instead of pressing it down. Bench diagnosis took 25 minutes.
The fix
We remounted the cooler with the springs in the correct position, applied fresh thermal paste, and stress-tested the system.
The result
Fixed the same day for $150 total, diagnosis included. Quoted at 3:20 PM, ready for pickup at 4:45 PM.
The takeaway
“Won’t stay on after I swapped cases” is rarely a dead part. It is usually a cooler mounted wrong, which is a $150 fix, not a new motherboard. If yours is doing this, start with our guide: Gaming PC turns on then shuts off after a few seconds.