**A Wild Ride: Repairing a Wonky Motherboard**

It's not uncommon for motherboards to develop issues over time, but when they suddenly decide to "brick" themselves, it can be a real challenge to diagnose and fix. In this article, we'll follow along with the author as he attempts to repair a faulty motherboard, navigating the complexities of hardware troubleshooting and replacement.

The story begins with a mysterious failure of the original motherboard, which leaves the system unresponsive. The author suspects that the issue may not be related to the CPU or BIOS, but rather something more fundamental. He begins by disassembling the case to assess the situation and determine the root cause of the problem. After careful examination, he discovers that the main symptom is a lack of power, which leads him to suspect that the motherboard itself has failed.

Fortunately, the author has a replacement motherboard in his arsenal, courtesy of Gigabyte's regular shipments for testing and development purposes. He carefully transfers the cooling system from the original motherboard to the new one, making sure everything is securely connected and ready for installation. The author then proceeds with reassembling the case, taking care not to touch any sensitive components or static-sensitive areas.

As he works, the author notes that the thermal paste may have been left behind by a previous owner who was swapping out CPUs, which adds an extra layer of complexity to the repair process. Despite this, he presses on, determined to get the system up and running as quickly as possible. The next step involves booting up the system and attempting to load Windows, but the author soon discovers that the motherboard is not recognizing the storage drive.

The author realizes that the issue may be related to the motherboard's SATA ports, which are older models that don't support newer storage technologies. He suspects that the system was originally configured with an older storage drive that came with the machine, which explains why it's still functional in the replacement motherboard. After loading a recovery environment and attempting to boot from a different source, the author discovers that the issue is not related to the CPU or BIOS after all.

The author then deduces that the motherboard itself has simply decided to "brick" itself, leaving the system in an unresponsive state. He notes that there are no signs of physical damage, such as burn marks or other indicators of a power surge, which suggests that the failure is likely due to a manufacturing defect or other internal issue.

The author is impressed by the fact that the replacement motherboard has a feature called Q Flash Plus, which allows for easier updates and diagnostics. He also expresses gratitude to Gigabyte for their generous shipments of motherboards, which have proved invaluable in his repair endeavors.

In the end, the system is successfully restored to its former glory, thanks to the author's expertise and the trusty replacement motherboard. As he puts it, "the most important thing is that the system is back up and running." The author concludes by thanking his audience for their attention and invites them to subscribe to his channel and join his public Discord server for more in-depth discussions on computer hardware and repair.

**A Final Shoutout**

The author would like to give a huge shoutout to Gigabyte, whose motherboards have saved the day time and again. Their willingness to send out replacement parts and support has been invaluable in this repair process. If you're in the market for a new motherboard or are simply interested in learning more about computer hardware, be sure to check out Gigabyte's products.

**Conclusion**

Repairing a faulty motherboard can be a daunting task, but with the right tools, expertise, and resources, it's definitely possible. The author's experience serves as a reminder that even seemingly insurmountable problems can be overcome with patience, persistence, and a willingness to learn. If you have any questions or comments about this repair process, please feel free to reach out in the comments section below.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enone day I was playing Watch Dogs 2 and got a notification that was something along the lines of quote high memory usage or something similar shortly thereafter my game an entire PC froze and a still image of the game remained on the screen but that was all after that the system would only Power Cycle and display the CPU and Dam lights when powered on see picture also when I connected a USB keyboard the keyboard would not power on since then I have tried switching from display port to HDMI different HDMI cables different monitors different power supply different CPU this caed a return to the power cycling issue which I rute to an out ofate bios but I have no way to fix that since the motherboard doesn't have bios flashback this here is that viewer's broken gaming PC and though my this one is a handful I know at times viewer descriptions can be convoluted you have to dissect to interpret what they're trying to say what they're trying to tell you they've already done and the issues they're experiencing the gist of it for this rig is that he was playing a game and all of a sudden he had a high memory usage warning that resulted in a freeze and since then the PC has not posted apparently he tried part swapping a few things the power supply being of them though to no avail and I wouldn't have assumed a power supply swap would have fixed this anyway just based on the symptom we read in the description if the system's powering on just not sending a picture to a monitor not posting that's usually not a power display issue that we have seen weirder the other thing he tried swapping was the CPU now the CPU he swapped 2 was a 5500 that's a Zen 3 chip and the owner bought this system brand new I believe several years ago he's never updated the bios so it is possible that a CP swap will fix this he just had no way of confirming that because the BIOS was not up up to date and so he didn't get a picture out which is that's kind of the original problem we just created that same problem Again by doing something else that's if the CPU does fix this but that at least gives us a nice starting point I think I'm going to focus primarily on the CPU and motherboard area just generally the platform I don't believe the graphics card is to blame though that would be a very quick check by itself but I digress I'm turning into Jay slowly but surely this should be a fun one and I hope you'll stay with me if you're planning your next PC build then consider checking out our sponsor VIP SCD key their Windows 10 and 110 M Keys sell for a fraction of retail and will unlock the full potential of your OS it'll also remove those pesky activation watermarks click the links below to get started today and be sure to use our special offer code skgs for a sweet discount on a variety of options including Windows 10 and 11 Pro and home and more hey there and welcome to fixer flop if you're new just know that everything you see us do in these videos is free of charge to the owners in question and that's thanks to your viewership the fact that you watch is why we can do this for free we don't charge for labor or Hardware any of that and uh I I'm frankly surprised we've been able to do this for almost five full seasons this is the final episode of season five of fixer flop I I thought maybe we'd get two three seasons deep at most so thank you so much for that support I'm uh I'm I'm hoping we can end on a high note here hope we get this one fixed it sounds doable so we're going to turn this thing on and see if we can replicate the issue described by the owner if I can figure out where the power button is there we go so I'm expecting it to power on which it obviously has and to not send a signal to a monitor it's looking that way so far so it it actually sounds like the system has toned down a bit like the fan curves kicked in it sounds like it's posted to be honest with you but we very clearly are not getting a signal to our display so first thing I'm going to do I'm going to try clearing the seos I don't think that's going to fix anything I just want to completely wipe the BIOS in case we have any weird funky settings in there and then we're going to try removing this graphics card and replacing it with a gt1030 one that I know works I just want to Ru the graphics card out right away because a lot of times when you don't get a picture like this it comes down to the discret card if one is involved I'm just hoping that's not the case here this is a very beefy RTX 2070 super and very quickly before I power this off you can see the two debug lights that the owner mentioned are in fact lit they are the CPU and the D LEDs an interesting combo there I wonder if that is an indication that we're running an incompatible bios or something I don't believe we still have the 5500 in here I'll have to check we obviously know the owner did try a 5500 in here but it's not clear if that was left in as like an upgrade or if the original chip was put back in now the easy way to clear the seam on this board is to jump these two pins next to the battery we could also remove the battery itself but I'm just going to jump these pins for about 10 to 20 seconds and give it another go again though I don't expect this to do anything especially given the nature of the blue screen again High memory usage which seems a bit odd this uh isn't like likely to to fix it and while we're waiting for this to likely not post I have quickly looked up the meaning behind the CPU and DRM LEDs being illuminated at the same time on this particular ASRock x570 Mother where it turns out it could either be an unsupported CPU which mean a simple bios update would fix this if we have the original CPU in here though I doubt that's going to fix it because it was working just fine prior and the BIOS hasn't been updated this entire time why would that be the issue uh it could mean that the ram is either not detected or compatible which would mean that maybe one of the modules is not seated properly that would be a quick check or it could mean that the CPU is outright dead so here's what I think's going on if the upgraded CPU the 5500 is still in here it likely just comes down to a simple bios update that would mean though that the original CPU was the problem and even if the original CP is still in here I still think it's the problem because if we were getting a memory limit error like memory usage was too high what I think happened in that moment was that the memory controller on that original CPU died I don't think it could communicate with either dim and as a result the PC freaked out saying oh where's my memory where did it go I think it's it's filled up it has to be filled up because I can't access it anymore when in reality it's actually a CPU is just kind of gaslighting the software to thinking that uh it is a memory issue when in reality it's likely not and that's something we're going to check right away um oh you know what wow this might be an easier fix than I thought yeah the memory is actually not seated properly live reaction uh bit silly I didn't see this sooner I was just about to remove this graphics card when I noticed that the right dim is actually sitting a bit higher than it should in fact if you look up top here you can see that the furthest right tab is not actually uh down all the way and that's an indication that this dim is uh not properly seated so we're going to fix that very quickly and then try powering on again I this could very well fix it I don't know why this would have just popped out in the middle of gaming it seems a bit weird maybe a separate issue you see that there and that is more like it you should hear you should feel an audible click once these dims are fully inserted could it really be that simple let's give it a shot all right power up no problem I do still see both the CPU and the DRM LEDs illuminated though which is interesting yeah doesn't look like we're going to get a post still all righty so one problem fixed another problem to go and I was really hoping that would fix it you can see the two debug LEDs are still illuminated I also hope this module didn't kill anything else in the system it's very unlikely but I've seen weirder I do think if the graphics card was to blame we would at least see a VGA light on the motherboard but a check like this takes literally seconds and it does rule out a very expensive component in the system so let's try this with our trusty gt1030 that we know Works looks like both CPU and DRM lights are still illuminated that's what we expected I think it's safe to say since we were seeing the exact same symptom before and after that the original graphics card is okay I've also tried a single known working stick of ddr4 from my own stash in every single D slot to no avail the two debug LEDs stay illuminated the entire time so they're trying to tell us something different so let's move on then to what we suspect is the root of the problem the CPU here this area either the CPU is bad or we have a bad bios maybe even bad motherboard not going to rule that out this is a ryzen 7 3700x okay so this is the older chip the original chip where the uh where the PC went bad with that blue screen of death so I I'd actually prefer this to be in here because now we can tell for sure if the CP was in fact to blame cleaned it up a bit but I don't see any bent or missing pins at least physically the chip seems fine same goes for the socket nothing cracked nothing clogging any of the pin holes could it be then that our suspicions are correct is this ryzen 7 3700x to blame there's only one way to find out we're going to swap it with a known working one we'll check our handy dandy CPU drawer and oh would you look at that an exact replacement right at the front I'm going to quickly power the system on without a cooler just to uh see if it posts we don't need to have it on for that long this is a really weird way of installing CPU and if this doesn't fix it and the only other culprit I could think of would be the motherboard I don't suspect this is a power play issue again it was already swapped according to the owner but the symptoms we're seeing just don't they don't seem power supply related here we go again this is only going to be on for a few seconds it's not going to harm the this CPU they don't get that hot that fast just want to see if we see the same debug LEDs and they are still on we still have a CPU debug illuminated we still have a dam debug illuminated I I guess the motherboard is to blame I'm curious if the chip is getting Hot Chip is hot so it is receiving power from the motherboard a few moments later yeah uh you know maybe I should connect ddr4 that would be important I connected this fan thinking maybe the motherboard wasn't playing nice without a CPU fan connected but yeah we we just have bare slots there that that's not what you want to see let's try this again with our known working dim I like to keep original parts out of here that we've already swapped just to make sure that we don't have multiple issues like if I had his original memory still in here and that was also bad for some reason then I could be misled by what we see next so that's why I want to keep stuff that I know Works uh in here usually from my own stash just to help rule out uh multiple issues those are always difficult to troubleshoot that's just my way of doing it let's see both debug lights are still on all right so likely not memory related alth it is interesting actually that we're getting the exact same symptom with and without memory installed I think we have a board issue so perhaps the board is what's keeping the CPU from communicating with the D that could explain it your guess is as good as mine now the closest board I have on hand to replace with his is actually a gigabyte orus Elite ax V2 this is only a b550 chipset and as most of you know that is a slight downgrade from his x570 steel Legend from ASRock there are a few other things worth considering here though I know we always get a few comments oh Greg you downgraded them oh that's you're doing him a disservice we're doing this for free first off this would cost him money either way if he went somewhere else or did it himself so we're going to give him a board that still gives him pretty much all of the same features that this x570 does you can still overclock with this uh you can still overclock memory you can use Wi-Fi that's built in here you have multiple m.2 slots it also doesn't have the annoying x570 fan so I think that's a win actually but the fact is this is here in the office it'll get him back up and running as quickly as possible which is important let's see what this does for us then the only component from his original rig that is in this uh little makeshift system is his original ryzen 7 3700x I'm going to jump the power pins we're not going to actually see anything move because there's no fan at all with this rig but I can tell you right away that the chip is getting hot and that we should be seeing a post momentarily I hope we do if we don't then we have a dead CPU and a dead motherboard there we go though so that's a post you see there on camera the glare is awful sorry about that go a and power this off again we don't have a cooler attached so good new his CPU actually survived whatever happened in his rig which uh we see a lot of dead CPUs in this playlist it's I'm happy to report this one's actually working at least it allows us to post which is further than we got before so I'm going to replace the original board and then we'll throw all of his other Hardware back into the rig and cross our fingers but first very quickly I'd like to address something that some of you might be screaming into your cell phones and monitors right now Greg why are you not checking the BIOS revision we could have an incompatible bios here we could have a corrupt bios don't write off the entire board simply because they're not playing nicely with the two chips you have here and to that I have a few points to make firstly again we've confirmed that the owner CPU Works in a separate platform in fact actually his is the one in here now and these chips work natively with all b550 and x570 motherboards there's no bios I know of that strip support for Zen 2 because well these came out at the same time they were made to work with each other so that right there tells me we aren't dealing with the BIOS in compatibility I've even gone so far as to check with ryzen 520 600 still no post ryzen 7 I think it was a 1700 that didn't work either there's no chip in existence that's going to work or play nicely anymore with this motherboard now in the off chance the BIOS decided to randomly corrupt itself just out of nowhere maybe it just exploded internally it it doesn't want to play nicely with anything anymore I mean we could try resoldering a replacement bios chip honestly the easier thing for me would just be to replace a motherboard it's it's just way more straightforward I'm not as familiar with flashing bioses without a bios flashback function by the way this board doesn't support something like that there's no bios flashback equivalent on the back of this board which means we can't connect a USB drive and attempt to update the BIOS without a CPU installed that can be very useful in cases where you don't already have a compatible chip on hand but this board doesn't support that either funny enough though his replacement motherboard does have this if you're curious It's called Q flash Plus in gigabytes case all that to say it certainly doesn't smell like a bios issue so we're going to get this board replaced to get him back up and running ASAP first things first we got to get this cooler transferred to the replacement sit like that there now going back in and also huge shout out to integrated rear iio Shields also I just have to ask is this thermal paste I think it yep it is yeah must have gotten there when the owner was swapping CPUs himself and get everything reconnected and we'll reinstall his original graphics card like that there and that should be the last of it still very messy but I'm keing to try this as quickly as possible I've kind of gambled a bit just reassembled everything right off the cuff we could have added components one by one to this just make sure we don't have any other failures but I don't see how that could be just again based on that main symptom so uh let's give it a shot uh that's not good why is it not powering on the power strip is on oh okay there we go y interesting delay I'll make sure that's not repeatable before we give this back so we are looking for a post I expect we'll have one I hope we'll have one come on come on give us something okay sounds like it's power cycling probably training memory and there we go that is post that's uh that's a huge relief okay so all of his original stuff is in here just to recap save the replacement motherboard and that ultimately was what held us back and after resetting TPM we load straight into Windows this is repeatable by the way at this point I have power cycled several times we load straight into Windows every single time save the recovery environment that loads every third odd or so uh Power Cycle so uh this is great news it's exactly what I wanted I didn't see any m do2s in the motherboard I think we're just running off of a 2 and half in SATA drive which is still fast enough today you also have to remember this was an older system when it was first built I think from cyber power PCS I'm not sure if it was upgraded along the way it's very likely this was the original storage drive that came with the machine it is a shame that more can't be done for this original motherboard those two debug lights being on I think that's just telling us that the board is completely breaked it's obviously not a CPU issue again we discussed why it's likely not a bios issue and it's not a d issue in fact his original kit is back in the system without problems I was even able to uh enable docp there so uh it just looks like the board itself was the culprit just randomly decided to Brick itself even stripping her down to Bare PCB I'm just I'm not seeing anything that suggests there was like a a massive power Spike no burn marks or anything like that especially around the VR mosfet area this is uh just a very random fluke thing it looks like I do wish I had more to say about this but the important thing is the system is back up and running and that's thanks to that replacement gigabyte orus Elite motherboard also want to give gigabyte a shout personally because uh they send out every few months or so just a huge stash of motherboards to use for this playlist and for builds and it's just very convenient having replacement boards on hand for situations like this where yeah uh other boards decide to just give up the ghost randomly if you guys enjoyed this one be sure to let me know by give this one a thumbs up that would be greatly appreciated consider subscribing if you have not already let me know in the comment section below what you thought of this one and be sure to stick around for the next one is there anything else I want to plug check out our public Discord server totally free to join plenty of uh really great knowledgeable folks there they can help you if you have your own issues with rigs uh please don't bother emailing us if you have like a random issue with a system and you don't live close to Florida uh if you do live close to Florida we have a form in the description that you can fill out uh and we'll do our best to get to you as soon as possible okay I think that's all for this one my name is Greg thanks for learning with meone day I was playing Watch Dogs 2 and got a notification that was something along the lines of quote high memory usage or something similar shortly thereafter my game an entire PC froze and a still image of the game remained on the screen but that was all after that the system would only Power Cycle and display the CPU and Dam lights when powered on see picture also when I connected a USB keyboard the keyboard would not power on since then I have tried switching from display port to HDMI different HDMI cables different monitors different power supply different CPU this caed a return to the power cycling issue which I rute to an out ofate bios but I have no way to fix that since the motherboard doesn't have bios flashback this here is that viewer's broken gaming PC and though my this one is a handful I know at times viewer descriptions can be convoluted you have to dissect to interpret what they're trying to say what they're trying to tell you they've already done and the issues they're experiencing the gist of it for this rig is that he was playing a game and all of a sudden he had a high memory usage warning that resulted in a freeze and since then the PC has not posted apparently he tried part swapping a few things the power supply being of them though to no avail and I wouldn't have assumed a power supply swap would have fixed this anyway just based on the symptom we read in the description if the system's powering on just not sending a picture to a monitor not posting that's usually not a power display issue that we have seen weirder the other thing he tried swapping was the CPU now the CPU he swapped 2 was a 5500 that's a Zen 3 chip and the owner bought this system brand new I believe several years ago he's never updated the bios so it is possible that a CP swap will fix this he just had no way of confirming that because the BIOS was not up up to date and so he didn't get a picture out which is that's kind of the original problem we just created that same problem Again by doing something else that's if the CPU does fix this but that at least gives us a nice starting point I think I'm going to focus primarily on the CPU and motherboard area just generally the platform I don't believe the graphics card is to blame though that would be a very quick check by itself but I digress I'm turning into Jay slowly but surely this should be a fun one and I hope you'll stay with me if you're planning your next PC build then consider checking out our sponsor VIP SCD key their Windows 10 and 110 M Keys sell for a fraction of retail and will unlock the full potential of your OS it'll also remove those pesky activation watermarks click the links below to get started today and be sure to use our special offer code skgs for a sweet discount on a variety of options including Windows 10 and 11 Pro and home and more hey there and welcome to fixer flop if you're new just know that everything you see us do in these videos is free of charge to the owners in question and that's thanks to your viewership the fact that you watch is why we can do this for free we don't charge for labor or Hardware any of that and uh I I'm frankly surprised we've been able to do this for almost five full seasons this is the final episode of season five of fixer flop I I thought maybe we'd get two three seasons deep at most so thank you so much for that support I'm uh I'm I'm hoping we can end on a high note here hope we get this one fixed it sounds doable so we're going to turn this thing on and see if we can replicate the issue described by the owner if I can figure out where the power button is there we go so I'm expecting it to power on which it obviously has and to not send a signal to a monitor it's looking that way so far so it it actually sounds like the system has toned down a bit like the fan curves kicked in it sounds like it's posted to be honest with you but we very clearly are not getting a signal to our display so first thing I'm going to do I'm going to try clearing the seos I don't think that's going to fix anything I just want to completely wipe the BIOS in case we have any weird funky settings in there and then we're going to try removing this graphics card and replacing it with a gt1030 one that I know works I just want to Ru the graphics card out right away because a lot of times when you don't get a picture like this it comes down to the discret card if one is involved I'm just hoping that's not the case here this is a very beefy RTX 2070 super and very quickly before I power this off you can see the two debug lights that the owner mentioned are in fact lit they are the CPU and the D LEDs an interesting combo there I wonder if that is an indication that we're running an incompatible bios or something I don't believe we still have the 5500 in here I'll have to check we obviously know the owner did try a 5500 in here but it's not clear if that was left in as like an upgrade or if the original chip was put back in now the easy way to clear the seam on this board is to jump these two pins next to the battery we could also remove the battery itself but I'm just going to jump these pins for about 10 to 20 seconds and give it another go again though I don't expect this to do anything especially given the nature of the blue screen again High memory usage which seems a bit odd this uh isn't like likely to to fix it and while we're waiting for this to likely not post I have quickly looked up the meaning behind the CPU and DRM LEDs being illuminated at the same time on this particular ASRock x570 Mother where it turns out it could either be an unsupported CPU which mean a simple bios update would fix this if we have the original CPU in here though I doubt that's going to fix it because it was working just fine prior and the BIOS hasn't been updated this entire time why would that be the issue uh it could mean that the ram is either not detected or compatible which would mean that maybe one of the modules is not seated properly that would be a quick check or it could mean that the CPU is outright dead so here's what I think's going on if the upgraded CPU the 5500 is still in here it likely just comes down to a simple bios update that would mean though that the original CPU was the problem and even if the original CP is still in here I still think it's the problem because if we were getting a memory limit error like memory usage was too high what I think happened in that moment was that the memory controller on that original CPU died I don't think it could communicate with either dim and as a result the PC freaked out saying oh where's my memory where did it go I think it's it's filled up it has to be filled up because I can't access it anymore when in reality it's actually a CPU is just kind of gaslighting the software to thinking that uh it is a memory issue when in reality it's likely not and that's something we're going to check right away um oh you know what wow this might be an easier fix than I thought yeah the memory is actually not seated properly live reaction uh bit silly I didn't see this sooner I was just about to remove this graphics card when I noticed that the right dim is actually sitting a bit higher than it should in fact if you look up top here you can see that the furthest right tab is not actually uh down all the way and that's an indication that this dim is uh not properly seated so we're going to fix that very quickly and then try powering on again I this could very well fix it I don't know why this would have just popped out in the middle of gaming it seems a bit weird maybe a separate issue you see that there and that is more like it you should hear you should feel an audible click once these dims are fully inserted could it really be that simple let's give it a shot all right power up no problem I do still see both the CPU and the DRM LEDs illuminated though which is interesting yeah doesn't look like we're going to get a post still all righty so one problem fixed another problem to go and I was really hoping that would fix it you can see the two debug LEDs are still illuminated I also hope this module didn't kill anything else in the system it's very unlikely but I've seen weirder I do think if the graphics card was to blame we would at least see a VGA light on the motherboard but a check like this takes literally seconds and it does rule out a very expensive component in the system so let's try this with our trusty gt1030 that we know Works looks like both CPU and DRM lights are still illuminated that's what we expected I think it's safe to say since we were seeing the exact same symptom before and after that the original graphics card is okay I've also tried a single known working stick of ddr4 from my own stash in every single D slot to no avail the two debug LEDs stay illuminated the entire time so they're trying to tell us something different so let's move on then to what we suspect is the root of the problem the CPU here this area either the CPU is bad or we have a bad bios maybe even bad motherboard not going to rule that out this is a ryzen 7 3700x okay so this is the older chip the original chip where the uh where the PC went bad with that blue screen of death so I I'd actually prefer this to be in here because now we can tell for sure if the CP was in fact to blame cleaned it up a bit but I don't see any bent or missing pins at least physically the chip seems fine same goes for the socket nothing cracked nothing clogging any of the pin holes could it be then that our suspicions are correct is this ryzen 7 3700x to blame there's only one way to find out we're going to swap it with a known working one we'll check our handy dandy CPU drawer and oh would you look at that an exact replacement right at the front I'm going to quickly power the system on without a cooler just to uh see if it posts we don't need to have it on for that long this is a really weird way of installing CPU and if this doesn't fix it and the only other culprit I could think of would be the motherboard I don't suspect this is a power play issue again it was already swapped according to the owner but the symptoms we're seeing just don't they don't seem power supply related here we go again this is only going to be on for a few seconds it's not going to harm the this CPU they don't get that hot that fast just want to see if we see the same debug LEDs and they are still on we still have a CPU debug illuminated we still have a dam debug illuminated I I guess the motherboard is to blame I'm curious if the chip is getting Hot Chip is hot so it is receiving power from the motherboard a few moments later yeah uh you know maybe I should connect ddr4 that would be important I connected this fan thinking maybe the motherboard wasn't playing nice without a CPU fan connected but yeah we we just have bare slots there that that's not what you want to see let's try this again with our known working dim I like to keep original parts out of here that we've already swapped just to make sure that we don't have multiple issues like if I had his original memory still in here and that was also bad for some reason then I could be misled by what we see next so that's why I want to keep stuff that I know Works uh in here usually from my own stash just to help rule out uh multiple issues those are always difficult to troubleshoot that's just my way of doing it let's see both debug lights are still on all right so likely not memory related alth it is interesting actually that we're getting the exact same symptom with and without memory installed I think we have a board issue so perhaps the board is what's keeping the CPU from communicating with the D that could explain it your guess is as good as mine now the closest board I have on hand to replace with his is actually a gigabyte orus Elite ax V2 this is only a b550 chipset and as most of you know that is a slight downgrade from his x570 steel Legend from ASRock there are a few other things worth considering here though I know we always get a few comments oh Greg you downgraded them oh that's you're doing him a disservice we're doing this for free first off this would cost him money either way if he went somewhere else or did it himself so we're going to give him a board that still gives him pretty much all of the same features that this x570 does you can still overclock with this uh you can still overclock memory you can use Wi-Fi that's built in here you have multiple m.2 slots it also doesn't have the annoying x570 fan so I think that's a win actually but the fact is this is here in the office it'll get him back up and running as quickly as possible which is important let's see what this does for us then the only component from his original rig that is in this uh little makeshift system is his original ryzen 7 3700x I'm going to jump the power pins we're not going to actually see anything move because there's no fan at all with this rig but I can tell you right away that the chip is getting hot and that we should be seeing a post momentarily I hope we do if we don't then we have a dead CPU and a dead motherboard there we go though so that's a post you see there on camera the glare is awful sorry about that go a and power this off again we don't have a cooler attached so good new his CPU actually survived whatever happened in his rig which uh we see a lot of dead CPUs in this playlist it's I'm happy to report this one's actually working at least it allows us to post which is further than we got before so I'm going to replace the original board and then we'll throw all of his other Hardware back into the rig and cross our fingers but first very quickly I'd like to address something that some of you might be screaming into your cell phones and monitors right now Greg why are you not checking the BIOS revision we could have an incompatible bios here we could have a corrupt bios don't write off the entire board simply because they're not playing nicely with the two chips you have here and to that I have a few points to make firstly again we've confirmed that the owner CPU Works in a separate platform in fact actually his is the one in here now and these chips work natively with all b550 and x570 motherboards there's no bios I know of that strip support for Zen 2 because well these came out at the same time they were made to work with each other so that right there tells me we aren't dealing with the BIOS in compatibility I've even gone so far as to check with ryzen 520 600 still no post ryzen 7 I think it was a 1700 that didn't work either there's no chip in existence that's going to work or play nicely anymore with this motherboard now in the off chance the BIOS decided to randomly corrupt itself just out of nowhere maybe it just exploded internally it it doesn't want to play nicely with anything anymore I mean we could try resoldering a replacement bios chip honestly the easier thing for me would just be to replace a motherboard it's it's just way more straightforward I'm not as familiar with flashing bioses without a bios flashback function by the way this board doesn't support something like that there's no bios flashback equivalent on the back of this board which means we can't connect a USB drive and attempt to update the BIOS without a CPU installed that can be very useful in cases where you don't already have a compatible chip on hand but this board doesn't support that either funny enough though his replacement motherboard does have this if you're curious It's called Q flash Plus in gigabytes case all that to say it certainly doesn't smell like a bios issue so we're going to get this board replaced to get him back up and running ASAP first things first we got to get this cooler transferred to the replacement sit like that there now going back in and also huge shout out to integrated rear iio Shields also I just have to ask is this thermal paste I think it yep it is yeah must have gotten there when the owner was swapping CPUs himself and get everything reconnected and we'll reinstall his original graphics card like that there and that should be the last of it still very messy but I'm keing to try this as quickly as possible I've kind of gambled a bit just reassembled everything right off the cuff we could have added components one by one to this just make sure we don't have any other failures but I don't see how that could be just again based on that main symptom so uh let's give it a shot uh that's not good why is it not powering on the power strip is on oh okay there we go y interesting delay I'll make sure that's not repeatable before we give this back so we are looking for a post I expect we'll have one I hope we'll have one come on come on give us something okay sounds like it's power cycling probably training memory and there we go that is post that's uh that's a huge relief okay so all of his original stuff is in here just to recap save the replacement motherboard and that ultimately was what held us back and after resetting TPM we load straight into Windows this is repeatable by the way at this point I have power cycled several times we load straight into Windows every single time save the recovery environment that loads every third odd or so uh Power Cycle so uh this is great news it's exactly what I wanted I didn't see any m do2s in the motherboard I think we're just running off of a 2 and half in SATA drive which is still fast enough today you also have to remember this was an older system when it was first built I think from cyber power PCS I'm not sure if it was upgraded along the way it's very likely this was the original storage drive that came with the machine it is a shame that more can't be done for this original motherboard those two debug lights being on I think that's just telling us that the board is completely breaked it's obviously not a CPU issue again we discussed why it's likely not a bios issue and it's not a d issue in fact his original kit is back in the system without problems I was even able to uh enable docp there so uh it just looks like the board itself was the culprit just randomly decided to Brick itself even stripping her down to Bare PCB I'm just I'm not seeing anything that suggests there was like a a massive power Spike no burn marks or anything like that especially around the VR mosfet area this is uh just a very random fluke thing it looks like I do wish I had more to say about this but the important thing is the system is back up and running and that's thanks to that replacement gigabyte orus Elite motherboard also want to give gigabyte a shout personally because uh they send out every few months or so just a huge stash of motherboards to use for this playlist and for builds and it's just very convenient having replacement boards on hand for situations like this where yeah uh other boards decide to just give up the ghost randomly if you guys enjoyed this one be sure to let me know by give this one a thumbs up that would be greatly appreciated consider subscribing if you have not already let me know in the comment section below what you thought of this one and be sure to stick around for the next one is there anything else I want to plug check out our public Discord server totally free to join plenty of uh really great knowledgeable folks there they can help you if you have your own issues with rigs uh please don't bother emailing us if you have like a random issue with a system and you don't live close to Florida uh if you do live close to Florida we have a form in the description that you can fill out uh and we'll do our best to get to you as soon as possible okay I think that's all for this one my name is Greg thanks for learning with me\n"