Changed BIOS settings, now motherboard beeps 5 times and won't boot.

[eyesofwrath86]

Hi guys - I'll try and make this a long-story-short.

Gigabyte Aorus Z370 Gaming 7
Intel i7-8700
2x8Gb Corsair DDR4-3000 RAM
Samsung 960 Evo 1TB

I recently upgraded my motherboard, CPU, RAM, and Hard Drive in my PC. I bought a Samsung 960 Evo 1TB SSD, and installed Windows without disconnecting my old SATA HDD because I didn't realise I had to. So Windows installed incorrectly and it would only boot automatically from the SSD 1 in every 3 times - the other times I had to force it from the BIOS.

So I tried to reinstall Windows from the desktop - wouldn't work. I then tried a fresh install from a bootable UEFI USB, and it was telling me my SSD was formatted incorrectly (MBR rather than GPT), and it couldn't reformat it. So I turned CSM off, but it still wouldn't format. I was then fiddling round with the BIOS settings and think I disabled something called the 'UEFI CA' key, and now every time I try to boot I get 5 beeps and the BIOS doesn't load.

I understand this means there is a CPU issue, but I don't understand why that might be the case because the CPU and RAM worked fine up until I touched that BIOS setting. I removed the battery from the BIOS in order to try and reset it but it did nothing.

So basically I've gone from a partially working beast of a computer, to something that literally won't boot the BIOS. I've screwed the pooch, essentially. I'm having a hard time finding advice because the motherboard is quite new, but I was wondering if anyone might have insight into why I'm getting a CPU error warning, and how I might fix it.

Any help with anything else is appreciated as well, but getting my BIOS back up and running is the first priority, obviously.

 

[Endless8]

Hi,
Try to remove your ram and GPU then boot, shutdown, remove the battery again to reset the bios put the GPU back without ram and boot again.
Let's see if there will be a different beep code.

 

[jimthenagual]

Have you tried the Clear CMOS Button on your motherboard?

 

[eyesofwrath86]

Hi,
Try to remove your ram and GPU then boot, shutdown, remove the battery again to reset the bios put the GPU back without ram and boot again.
Let's see if there will be a different beep code.

Hi, and thanks for the advice!

When I realised that there was no obvious solution, I sent it into a computer repair shop rather than make a bad problem worse. Turns out that the GPU decided to die and took the motherboard with it. They're not entirely sure that there hasn't been another component at fault as well, but time will tell.

So no easy solutions here I'm afraid. If anyone finds this in the future, I hope it's a best-case-scenario for you.