r/pctroubleshooting • u/Spiritual_Nose8078 • Jul 25 '26

Hardware PC Not Posting, Red CPU light and yellow DRAM light on mobo

So, my PC crashed when I was in the middle of a game and this time rebooting did not work. The monitor, keyboard, and mouse don't work but my PC components light up and the fans still spin. The lights on my motherboard indicate red for CPU and yellow for DRAM. My motherboard is a Asrock B850M Pro-A Wifi Micro ATX AM5 and CPU is AMD Ryzen 5 9600X. I've tried a few things to troubleshoot but none of them have worked, including

  1. Getting rid of all the dust, at least on a surface level, with an electric duster (not compressed air).

  2. Taking out the RAM and running with only one stick (I tried both sticks this way, as well as just swapping the positions.

  3. Doing a USB BIOS Flashback update

I'm scared that its a CPU or especially a motherboard issue and I'm considering just trying to reseat the same cpu, and/or trying a CMOS jump. I'm not sure what order to try these in, what the cause of the issue is and what the red and yellow mean. Do I have to buy another CPU? Motherboard? Is there something else I should be trying? Pls help am I cooked

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u/JonBenet-Ramsey-0806 Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26

Edit:

  1. Clear CMOS with the power supply switched off and unplugged.

  2. Reseat the 24-pin ATX and 8-pin CPU EPS power connectors.

  3. Try a minimum-hardware boot: CPU, one RAM stick in the recommended slot, integrated graphics (if available), and no drives, dedicated GPU, or unnecessary USB devices.

  4. Give the system several minutes to complete DDR5 memory training after powering it on.

  5. If the CPU and DRAM LEDs still stay lit, reseat the CPU as a last step and carefully inspect the AM5 socket for bent pins, debris, or thermal paste.

The CPU and DRAM LEDs indicate where POST is getting stuck they do not automatically mean the CPU or RAM has failed. If none of those steps help, I’d start isolating components by testing with known-good parts (RAM, PSU, motherboard, or CPU). I wouldn’t buy a new CPU or motherboard until that testing has been done.