G5 doesn't do ANYTHING, no boot, no noise

Hi, i'm brand new to the forum. So thanks in advance to any help or advice from anyone.

I just received a iMac G5 17" from a friend for free because it won't turn on.

Once plugged into the wall i pushed the power button on the back. On the front panel a white light flashes for a split second. Nothing else happens. No noise, No fans, Nothing at all. I removed the back panel and found two tiny little 'buttons' on the main board and pressed them once. Replaced the backplate and plugged the computer back in. Pressed the power button, and SAME thing. The light flashed once, and nobody home.

Any thoughts? Power supply, logic board, other stuff i don't know about??

thanks!!!

New information! ---

i just turned my darn music off... and put my ear really close to the monitor while pressing the power button.... you can faintly hear a 'buzz' noise....
it sounds like when you hear a fluorescent light turn on... that buzz.
But it goes buzz..then fades away.. like a Doppler effect.
not sure if this means anything.. maybe something with a capacitor??

It could be any of the above.... bad PS or dead logic board. If you would like to do some trouble shooting yourself, go to iFixit: The free repair manual and look up the model and year iMac G5 that you have. Find the take apart instructions for the machine and have at it. A note of caution... that iMac like the newer models require removing the entire front panel and display before you can gain access to the innards. Not an easy job.

And welcome to the Mac Forums.

thank you! i've only been tinkering for a few hours and to no avail.
i appreciate the website.
i took the rear panel off but it doesn't seem to show me much...

thanks!!

also, i found in another Mac forum to try and take out one ram stick at a time and retry, and then flip-flop them. hopefully i'm pulling the right thing out!! i don't know what ram looks like really. They're about 1" tall and maybe 7" long... black plastic catches that pull it into place and lock it in. i don't know... guess we'll see what the repair manual says.

thanks again!!

dead Imac G5

Just had the same problem with my iMac I have had since new in 2005. Went to Apple store. They opened it up and found the capacitors on the motherboard had "popped" i.e. the tops were now convex instead of concave. They wanted $600 to replace the entire MB. Found an independent mac repair shop that just replaced the capacitors for $200. Works fine now. The urban rumor is that Apple was supplied a bad batch of capacitors for these machines and about half of them pop. As previously noted, could be other things as well.

This of course is a guess, but it sounds like either the Power Supply went out or that lastguy said, blown capacitors. That was an issue with some iMacs from that time period.

The Capacitors look like small cans covered with plastic and have a metal top. If the top of a capacitor is not flat but Bulging out, it's bad.