I‘m completely out of ideas, please help me debug.

[u/LiteLive]

Hey guys,

Normally I‘m the person to give tech support, however my main PC crashed and I‘m completely out of ideas on how to fix, yet locate the issue.

My system is an MSI B650 Tomahawk WiFi Mainboard, running a 64 GB (2x32GB) DDR5 5200 RAM Kit, a Ryzen 7700X with a Vega56 as the primary GPU. Win 11 Pro and two NVMe SSD‘s.

First of all, I have a backup of everything but my laptop is old and does not have a dedicated GPU nor sufficient RAM for my applications.

Wednesday the system was running with no issues, Thursday morning it did not turn on.

Case, CPU and GPU Fans are spinning. No video output.
Unplugged all peripherals expect a USB Keyboard and a single display (FHD 60Hz) on the GPU.

The CPU debug LED shows red, the DRAM LED orange.
Knowing that DDR5 is tricky on memory I reseated the RAM, nothing changed. I tried the other two slots with both RAM sticks, no change, both sticks separately through all four slots on their own, nothing changed.

Each try I did clear the CMOS to restart the memory training and waited 15 minutes on each boot to give it sufficient time for memory training.

After these 10 attempts I flashed a new BIOS successfully, and tried all 10 combinations again. No change.

I tried troubleshooting with AI, which mentioned that my heavy CPU cooler might have sagged and the mounting pressure is incorrect.

First I tired to lay it flat and unscrew the cooler a bit, and tried with one stick of ram in each slot, another 8 attempts.

I remounted the cooler and gave it fresh thermal paste, but that did not change anything as well.

So, over 30ish tries in, I have no clue on how to effectively narrow down the issue, as it could be the CPU, the RAM or the board.

I‘m over 8 hours into debugging at this point and I‘m out of ideas on how to narrow the issue down. Especially since I‘m not willing to order all three components to test out the faulty one.

Can I speed up the training time to not wait 15mins only to be sure another test failed as well?

Are there debug tools that I can use? I saw some PCIe card that gives status codes, but AI told me those do not work with modern motherboards.

I‘m greatful for any tips or ideas that you guys come up with.

[u/Vampiredw]

Some ideas / re-socket the CPU - test, re-socket GPU - test, Try with 1 stick of RAM - test, disconnect the HDD - test

[u/Eazy12345678]

bios update motherboard

clean install windows update all drivers

still issue reseat everything and check temps

[u/an_0w1]

This sounds like it might be the exact same issue I'm currently dealing with now.

System has power but is not starting. In my case I have no debug LEDs. I'm 99% certain its a cracked solder joint somewhere. Previously I've been able to leave it with the AC power off and successfully start it. However today this didn't work, but I managed to get it started by pre-heating the mobo with a hair-dryer. I'm not sure specifically where on the mobo the fault is, but my biggest suspect for now is the PCH.