[SOLVED] Bad Ryzen 5 3600 CPU causing boot loop?

[DonJaime777]

So I have the Ryzen 5 3600 in a MSI B550 Tomahawk and it's bread boarded. When I jump the power, the EZ Debug LED starts to light up in a sequence starting at DRAM, then VGA, then Boot, then flashes back to DRAM and repeats. The CPU LED is not lit up at any point. The CPU fan will begin to spin and stop during this. 1 stick of RAM is in the DIMMA2 slot (G.Skill Ripjaws V 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3600 CL16) and I've tested with both sticks that I have by themselves. CPU power and ATX connectors are properly connected. The only other component connected is the PSU. I've tested with a known working PSU as well.

When everything was connected earlier (GPU, all fans, etc.), I got the same results which led to this particular test.

I previously tried to use a MSI B450 Bazooka which caused no EZ Debug LEDs to light up at all and even tested with the known working PSU which is currently powering the PC I'm using.

As none of the pins appear to be bent and are free of thermal paste and whatnot, am I sane in concluding I've got a faulty CPU?

 

[Flayed]

Sounds reasonable to return the cpu as faulty

 

[g-unit1111]

The only way to determine if the CPU is faulty is if you have another CPU that you can try in the board. It's very difficult to break a CPU. The only thing I can think of is if you're running the components outside of the case, that something could have been shorted out somewhere, or something was not hooked up properly. Alternately if you do determine that the CPU is the culprit, something could have got bent (as in bent pins on the CPU itself) / broken during the installation process and that's what is causing your difficulties.

 

[Flayed]

If you have replaced every other component I guess the process of elimination works too.

 

[DonJaime777]

So upon installation of a new CPU, she's up and running.

Lucky me, I get a hardware fault in the least likely candidate!