Diagnosis on a Ryzen System in Deepest St Albans

Soldato
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Not normally needed any help in 30+ years of building PCs but had a strange issue with main rig last few days. Mild OC present. Suddenly screen would go blank and monitor report no signal. PC seemed to still be live and running but no pic. Assumed it might be GPU so tried dialling OC down even more but still got it every now and then. Usually when a "demanding" game like Minecraft but sometimes from plain desktop. No pattern.

So today I think, let's whip out the GTX1080 and put an old GTX750ti in and see if it fixes it. Machine refuses to boot at all. Notice the diagnostic LED stuck on CPU. Powered off. Reset CMOS. But then when it starts to boot into BIOS, when I try to load optimized defaults, it just powers off. Back to LED stuck on CPU.

So, CPU faulty? Bought it off MM so I need to be sure before I go back to seller. Luckily I have an OLD system I can get online with..... I need some help and don't want to randomly buy new components on off chance some one might be the one that is causing issue.

Could be:
CPU
Mobo
Ram
PSU
GPU

My hunch is actually the mobo.. don't ask me to explain a gut feeling!

Any ideas that don't involve major expenditure?? if anyone within a reasonable distance of St Albans, Herts has a Ryzen system I'd love to visit and test some components so I can work out which is at fault.
 
Soldato
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Not normally needed any help in 30+ years of building PCs but had a strange issue with main rig last few days. Mild OC present. Suddenly screen would go blank and monitor report no signal. PC seemed to still be live and running but no pic. Assumed it might be GPU so tried dialling OC down even more but still got it every now and then. Usually when a "demanding" game like Minecraft but sometimes from plain desktop. No pattern.

So today I think, let's whip out the GTX1080 and put an old GTX750ti in and see if it fixes it. Machine refuses to boot at all. Notice the diagnostic LED stuck on CPU. Powered off. Reset CMOS. But then when it starts to boot into BIOS, when I try to load optimized defaults, it just powers off. Back to LED stuck on CPU.

So, CPU faulty? Bought it off MM so I need to be sure before I go back to seller. Luckily I have an OLD system I can get online with..... I need some help and don't want to randomly buy new components on off chance some one might be the one that is causing issue.

Could be:
CPU
Mobo
Ram
PSU
GPU

My hunch is actually the mobo.. don't ask me to explain a gut feeling!

Any ideas that don't involve major expenditure?? if anyone within a reasonable distance of St Albans, Herts has a Ryzen system I'd love to visit and test some components so I can work out which is at fault.

Screen just going black is normally the CPU on a RyZen system, you say a mild OC, how mild and which CPU ?

A cmos reset should fix it though, so I have to ask, which board too ?
 
Soldato
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I had this on a Ryzen 1700 system. I changed motherboards, it went away for a while. It came back about 6 months later. I managed to get Amazon to agree to return the board, CPU and RAM and bought a new CPU board and RAM (X570 and a 3700X) and my problems have gone away. The only crashes I've had are from pushing my GPU too hard with Afterburner.

What's your actual hardware?
 
Soldato
OP
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I had this on a Ryzen 1700 system. I changed motherboards, it went away for a while. It came back about 6 months later. I managed to get Amazon to agree to return the board, CPU and RAM and bought a new CPU board and RAM (X570 and a 3700X) and my problems have gone away. The only crashes I've had are from pushing my GPU too hard with Afterburner.

What's your actual hardware?

2700x. MSI x470 gaming plus. I may try a return on mobo.
 
Soldato
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Somewhere Only We Know
4.1 on a r7 2700x

I have cmos reset already several times. Won't boot

MSI x470 gaming plus with latest bios

I had the same set up, when you are cmos resetting, are you using the jumper on the motherboard or the battery method ? I had a problem where I couldnt seem to get the cmos to reset on the same board, I was using a screw driver on the jumper pins, so one day I decided to try different thing, kitchen knife didnt seem to work, my car key did though, go figure, it was fine after that.

There is a lot of problems using the battery method, so id suggest sticking to using the pins, for instance, if you left the PSU still plugged in, it can supply power whilst the battery is out, therefor not really resetting the bios, or even if you have disconnected the psu from the mains, the caps in there can still be charged enough to supply power whilst the battery is out, the only successful way to do it via the battery method is remove the battery, the 8pin 12v EPS power connector and the 24pin ATX board connector, then leave it for 5 to 10 mins.

4.1ghz on a 2700X isnt really a mild overclock, 80% of them will only do 4.2ghz max on a manual overclock, it could have been something simple like not enough voltage, when these chips crash, they just crash to a black screen like what you experienced, if its a serious crash, like you pushed the chip way too far then its a reboot, id say if the motherboard died it would have just been a complete power off with no signs of life.
 
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Soldato
OP
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I had the same set up, when you are cmos resetting, are you using the jumper on the motherboard or the battery method ? I had a problem where I couldnt seem to get the cmos to reset on the same board, I was using a screw driver on the jumper pins, so one day I decided to try different thing, kitchen knife didnt seem to work, my car key did though, go figure, it was fine after that.

There is a lot of problems using the battery method, so id suggest sticking to using the pins, for instance, if you left the PSU still plugged in, it can supply power whilst the battery is out, therefor not really resetting the bios, or even if you have disconnected the psu from the mains, the caps in there can still be charged enough to supply power whilst the battery is out, the only successful way to do it via the battery method is remove the battery, the 8pin 12v EPS power connector and the 24pin ATX board connector, then leave it for 5 to 10 mins.

4.1ghz on a 2700X isnt really a mild overclock, 80% of them will only do 4.2ghz max on a manual overclock, it could have been something simple like not enough voltage, when these chips crash, they just crash to a black screen like what you experienced, if its a serious crash, like you pushed the chip way too far then its a reboot, id say if the motherboard died it would have just been a complete power off with no signs of life.

Its a CMOS button. I have pressed it MANY times. I also removed the battery for a while too. It's not booting at all now

I did have it OC at one stage to 4.2 for testing. Its prime stable at all clocks. I downclocked it to 4.1 and then to 4.0. Each time Prime stable but either way, a CMOS reset should work so it does sound rather mobo-death-related....
 
Soldato
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Its a CMOS button. I have pressed it MANY times. I also removed the battery for a while too. It's not booting at all now

I did have it OC at one stage to 4.2 for testing. Its prime stable at all clocks. I downclocked it to 4.1 and then to 4.0. Each time Prime stable but either way, a CMOS reset should work so it does sound rather mobo-death-related....

Yes in that case it could be, get that changed first, but it could be the CPU.
 
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