PS4 Won’t Turn On Issues | Totally Fixed By Experts

There are several reasons why the PS4 won’t turn on, and many PS4 users have already faced this issue.

When your PS4 won’t turn on, it can be hard to know where to start fixing it. In fact, there are many reasons why a PS4 console won’t turn on and often very few clues about what might be the problem. The only symptom is usually the simple fact that “nothing works,” which isn’t much to go on.

Maybe the PS4 doesn’t turn on at all, maybe it powers up but shuts right down, or maybe it black screens. Whatever your issue, here are some troubleshooting steps to take when your PS4 won’t boot correctly.

What to do when PS4 won’t turn on?

Some of the reasons for this issue are simple and small, such as a defective power cable, and some are really serious that you need the help of an expert. The worst scenario is when you have eventually to replace your PS4 due to vast and irreparable damage.

But before deciding to dispose of your not-turning-on PS4 or take it to a repair shop, you have to try all possible solutions for this problem. That’s because the problem might be trivial and easy to fix, so you can do it yourself without asking others for help or paying an expert.

In this comprehensive article we will address the most common reasons that lead PS4 to not turning on, and almost all possible solutions that you can do yourself at home without the assistance of anyone else.

PS4 Won’t Turn On Issues Covered

This comprehensive guide covers the most common PS4-won’t-turn-on issues, which are:

• PS4 won’t turn on but beeps
• PS4 won’t turn on and getting blue light
• PS4 won’t turn on and getting white light
• PS4 won’t turn on after power outage

If this guide has not helped you fixing your PS4 not-turning-on issue, please feel free to contact us and we’ll be more than pleased to help you figure it out.

Below are the fundamental troubleshooting tips to help you work around a PS4 that won’t turn on.

How To Fix PS4 Not Turning On?

So, this is the most important section in this guide. You’re going to learn here how to fix PS4 not turning on issues. We will illustrate almost every possible solution for this problem that a layman can implement before taking your PS4 console to a repair shop.

1. Power Issues

If your PS4 isn’t turning on at all—no fan is running, no light is blinking, and nothing appears on screen—you probably have a power issue.

In this case, the PS4 won’t turn on but it might give a blue or white light. That means there might be a serious issue with your PS4 power supply.

a. Check Your Cables

let’s start with the cables coming from your wall.

• Test that the wall outlet is active by plugging in a device (such as a lamp) that you know works and seeing if it functions properly.
• Make sure any surge protector or power strip is correctly plugged into the outlet, and that the power switch is on. Plug in other devices to the power strip and confirm they are operating properly.
• Confirm that the PS4 power cable is properly plugged into the power supply and outlet, as it can become loose over time.

If nothing works still, unplug your PS4 and plug it directly into a wall outlet you know is working, rather than a power strip or battery backup that may be failing. Make sure the power switch on the back of your power supply is flipped on, and if the outlet is connected to a light switch, make sure that switch is turned on too.

Once you’ve double-checked the connections from your PS4 to your wall, it’s time to test the PS4 power cable that plugs into your PS4 PSU.

• Some monitors may use the same cable as a PS4 PSU. If that’s true for you, swap out the monitor cable with the PS4 cable, and see if your monitor turns on. If it doesn’t, test your PS4 with the one that was powering the monitor.
• Acquire a replacement PS4 power cable if you don’t have any spares.

b. Check Your Monitor

If the PS4 sounds like it’s turning on but you don’t see anything on the screen, the PS4 may be booting and the monitor just isn’t showing an image.

You might think then your PS4 won’t turn on yet you get a blue light, but the fact is that it’s your monitor that you need to check.

Check to make sure your monitor is plugged in (again, try a wall outlet instead of a power strip), turned on, and set to the right input using the buttons on the side or bottom. You’ll also want to make sure the cable connecting your monitor to your PS4 hasn’t come loose.

Additionally, this may sound silly, but make sure the brightness is turned up. Multiple people come and ask for help with a PS4 that won’t start, only to find the brightness was turned all the way down causing a black screen.

If these fixes don’t help, try plugging your PS4 into another monitor if you have one—or even a TV—and see if PS4 system shows up there. If it does, your monitor may be dead, and you need to buy a new one.

c. Check the Power Button

If you press the power button then you hear the PS4 fan spin, or the PS4 itself turns on for a moment then turns off, a potential culprit is the PS4 power button itself isn’t working or the wires connecting that button to the motherboard.

If the PS4 power button is defective, you can simply use a screwdriver to jump-start your system.

Here’s how to do it:

• Locate the two power switch headers on the PS4 motherboard. These small headers are often labeled something like PWR_SW, with + and – symbols. If the power button from the PS4 case is already wired to these headers, you’ll need to remove those cables.
• Make sure the 4/8 CPU and 24-pin motherboard power cables are connected.
• Lightly touch a metal screwdriver to the two power switch header pins, and the system will turn on if everything is connected correctly. This process accomplishes the same thing as hitting the power button on the PS4 case when properly connected, or using an onboard power button on a PC motherboard.

If your system turns on when jumping the headers with a screwdriver, it could be that the PS4 case is the problem.

d. Check for power supply issues

Much like the PS4 hard drive, the PS4 power supply unit (or PS4 PSU for short) eventually fail. Also like the PS4 hard drive, it isn’t a matter of if, it is a matter of when and why.

Before the PS4 stopped turning on entirely, remember whether it was behaving strangely or randomly crashing before that or not. If it was the case, testing your PS4 power supply should be part of your troubleshooting—it might be on the way out. Often you get your PS4 won’t turn on after a power outage.

But why does the PS4 power supply fails in the first place?

Well, the component of your PS4 console that’s under the most stress is the power supply unit (PSU), because it’s the power-conversion bridge between the system’s components and the mains grid. What that means: It has to deal with every abnormality of the mains and make sure those abnormalities don’t affect other components. That’s a tough job, and it gets even harder if there’s no power conditioner or surge protector installed.

You can extend the lifespan of the PS4 power supply with Furman Power Conditioner.

Additionally, besides high voltage spikes, which can be caused by weather conditions (i.e., lightning) or other problems in the mains grids, high currents can be sunk from the mains due to sudden (transient) energy demands caused by or during the PS4 system’s startup. Those high currents are also called “inrush currents,” and in power supplies, the main reason for them is the charge of the bulk cap(s).

High voltage and current surges can be the cause of multiple component failures, including fuses, bridge rectifiers, diodes, and FETs. Even if the PS4 PSU is equipped with an MOV (surge protection) and an NTC thermistor (inrush current protection), it can still malfunction, especially if the voltage or current surge is too high.

How to Check the PS4 Power Supply

First, check that it’s not the plug socket at fault by plugging it into a different socket. If that doesn’t work, it could be that the power supply in your PS4 has failed. If that’s the case, you’ll need to replace it. Before you do that, make sure that it is the power supply. If you can, remove the case and check that the power button is connected properly – a faulty button is much easier to fix than a power supply.

e. Check the CMOS Battery

You should also try replacing your PS4’s CMOS (or clock) battery. This tiny battery supplies power to the motherboard so that it can store BIOS settings. It’s essentially a watch battery and costs only around $10 to replace. If your PS4 is more than three years old, it’s a likely cause of your PS4 failing to boot.

2. Make sure it’s not a slow boot

Make sure your PS4 is not just really slow. It may sound ridiculous, but it could be that your PC is just starting up very, very slowly. So be patient and give it 15-20 minutes to make sure that there really is a problem.

PS4 becomes slow for several reasons. Fixing a slow PS4 may what you need to learn here instead.

3. Unplug Unnecessary USB Devices

Before continuing, unplug anything superfluous from your PS4—webcams, external hard drives, USB headsets. Try booting with just a controller (or even without that if in dire straits) to see if one of your USB devices is causing a conflict.

In some circumstances, it may not even be the device itself, but the port on your PS4. The more variables you can eliminate, the better.

4. PS4 CPU Is Failing

The CPU is the brains of your PS4 console. When your PS4’s CPU is getting older or overheats due to poor power flow, it could fail completely.

The symptoms of a malfunctioning/degrading PS4 CPU is that the PS4 won’t turn on yet there’s a white or blue light coming out from the console.

Actually, when your PS4 won’t turn on yet you get a light, whether it’s blue or white, it means there’s a serious hardware issue going on inside your console.

Common Reasons Why a PS4 CPU Goes Bad

The most common reasons for the PS4’s CPU to go bad are simple:

1. Age—Every machine has its limits. A PS4 console that is five years old or older is considered to be in its grace years. They can just give up.
2. Heat—Overheating CPU’s lead to a dead CPU. This can happen when room temperature is often above 80 degrees Fahrenheit and if the PS4 has an ineffective cooling mechanism inside. (read more about PS4 overheating)
3. Electrical Power Surge—Whether it was the power supply going bad or lightning, any high voltage spike can render a CPU useless. Be sure to have a surge protector and a battery backup attached to your PS4 to help prevent this sort of thing from happening.

Common PS4 CPU Failure Symptoms

The PS4 CPU often simply burns out. To determine that is your problem, consult this list of common processor failure symptoms:

• PS4 turns on, no beeps, no screen. Does not POST (Power-On Self Test)
• PS4 turns on, fans run at highest speeds, still no POST, and operating system not loading.
• PS4 powers on, but turns off immediately.
• PS4 Won’t turn on with blue or white light
• Screen freezes after being on for a few minutes. In some cases, the screen may freeze during the load screen of the OS.
• System halt errors (famously known as the black screen of death) that call out the processor as an issue.

Fixing a Bad PS4 CPU

Below are some simple things to look for that can cause the same symptoms. Once they are eliminated, you may have a bad processor. Otherwise, you have found the real source of the problem.

Heat

Next to dust, heat is the number one processor killer. The PS4 CPU runs from 30 degrees Celsius to 50 Celsius. If your game console is not cooling well, then there is an issue. A PS4 CPU above 70 degrees Celsius is in the danger zone. Between 80-85 Celsius is the melting point.

Check the heat sink in your PS4 and make sure it is clear of dust and obstructions. Make sure the fan on the heat-sink is moving smoothly (3,000 rpm is average +/-.) If the fan and heat sink is fine, then the thermal compound may be old and dried up. Replace the thermal compound. The thermal compound should be applied evenly, about one mil thick.

Power Supply

Bad power supplies can create all kinds of strange voltage and amperage irregularities. Check the power supply with a tester to see if it is in good health.

A malfunctioning power supply can lead to a situation where the PS4 won’t turn on but beeps. So, be careful when judging the symptoms you see on your PS4.

5. PS4 Motherboard Is Failing

PS4 motherboard failures are typically hard to diagnose because they share a lot of the same symptoms of other components failures. When the PS4 motherboard dies, the entire thing shut off and you cannot get it to turn back on.

So, one tell-tale sign is if you hit the power button on your PS4 and it doesn’t turn on, or if your PS4 randomly shuts off. Now, this might not be an immediate indicator that the PS4 motherboard is dead; it’s also just as likely that your PSU is dead, or your CPU overheated and your PS4 shuts itself off as a fail-safe.

What causes a PS4 motherboard to die?

There are several reasons for PS4 motherboard-failure, but the most common is overheating. Heat wears down all hardware components over time, but it’s particularly important that it doesn’t damage the motherboard, considering that’s where you connect all the other components. That’s why heat dissipation is important.

Overheating is more of an issue with PS4 consoles because of their small cases and tightly spaced components, but all those cooling solutions won’t matter if you don’t clean the dust out of your PS4 regularly. Too much dust will eventually clog your PS4’s ventilation system, in both your case and components, making it choke on hot air and dirt.

Other motherboard-killing culprits include partially connected or incorrectly connected cables, improperly seated components, and electrical spikes and power surges. All of those you can easily protect yourself against, however. Make sure you plug your PS4 and your peripherals into a quality surge protector.

Another thing to take into consideration is using your PS4 abroad. Not all countries operate on the same voltage. The US, for instance, mostly operates on 110-120V (except for large appliances), while the UK and Europe operate on 220-240V. Even if the PS4’s power supply or AC adapter says it can handle both currents, not using a voltage converter can still damage your components, especially your motherboard, over time.

When to Go to a Technician?

If your PS4 won’t turn on still after you’ve done all possible solutions to fix it, it’s probably time to take it to a technician. Go to a computer repair shop that does electronic works, it’s the best place to fix a damaged/defective PS4.

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Questions & Answers

Why is my PS4 not starting?

The reasons why your PS4 is not starting may vary. The most common cause of this issue is related to power. Your PS4 power cord might be damaged or malfunctioning. It might be also the power supply or even the motherboard. In this article you'll learn almost every possible causes of why the PS4 is not starting and how to work around that.

How do I force start my PS4?

To force your PS4 to start, you first need to turn it off properly. If that's not also possible, no problem. Just totally disconnect it from power and unplug the power cord from the power outlet, wait 5 minutes before plugging it back, and press the PS4 power button and hopefully, it will start. If the PS4 doesn't start still, please find out a solution in this article that might help you figure out how to do it.

How to Fix It When a PS4 Won't Turn On

Fixing the PS4 that won't turn on is not always easy, it might be hard, and in some cases you need the help of a professional technician. Actually there are several ways to fix a PS4 that won't turn on, including changing the PS4 power cord, checking and fixing the PS4 power supply, thoroughly cleaning the inside of PS4 and other solutions that we outlined in this guide.

What causes the PS4 to not turn on?

A PS4 won't turn on mainly because there's a power issue with your console. It can also be a hardware failure, such as power supply or CPU failure, but that is uncommon. You have to do a comprehensive test on your console to figure out the real cause of this situation and if you fail, you just need to get help from a professional technician.