Question Desperately need help with new PC that's died.

[TheRealMacDaddy]

Hi all
I built a new PC 4 weeks ago and the PC would restart itself every few days randomly, under no strain, heavy strain, everything.

A few days ago it completely died on me and I couldn’t even boot it up. It stuck itself in a boot loop.

The current furthest into the PC I can get is here:

https://imgur.com/a/20f5lBz

View: https://imgur.com/gallery/20f5lBz
- this happens when my SSD is removed.
If I leave my SSD in, I get to the 'ARSENAL GAMING' logo, and then it dies and restarts itself. Then it goes to 'ARSENAL GAMING' preparing automatic repair, and dies again. If I tried to force restart 3x to get into advanced setup, nothing happens, and it continues this cycle.

Could the GPU be dead or could it be a different issue? If it’s the GPU, I believe I’m like 1 day over my 30 day warranty from CCLonline due to them not replying over the weekend. Can I still RMA it?

Also, I think (not sure) but I may have installed MSI drivers on this graphics card which is a Gigabyte 5700 XT. Could this have caused the GPU to die? Further, I potentially may have plugged a keyboard into the FLASH BIOS USB slot. I'm not 100% of this but I may have done it without realising, if I had done, would this have caused any issues?

I’ve tried sourcing professional help and no one seems to know how to fix it. I’ve spent days trying to get this sorted and nothing will work. Any help would be massively appreciated. If anyone can recommend a good professional support system who can offer advice I’m happy to pay for it. This computer cost me so much money and it’s died after 4 weeks!

Whilst waiting for the loading screen to spin, my PC no longer connects my keyboard. The keyboard has RGB and the RGB turns itself off (implying the keyboard is turned off), but the loading circle continues to spin. Can this still be related to my GPU or does it sound like a deeper issue?

No EZ debug lights are lit.

Specs: Radeon 5700 XT Ryzen 5 3600 2x8GB Corsair RAM B450 Tomahawk MAX mobo 650w Corsair PSU
Things I’ve tried:

• tried both ram sticks, 1 ram stick, the other ram stick, nothing works
• tried unplugging all cables from PSU and replugging
• tried unplugging CPU power and replugging
• tried unplugging mobo and replugging
• tried reseating GPU and replugging
• tried removing SSD and trying to boot from USB (crashes when trying to do this)
• resetting CMOS

I should add that after leaving the PC to try and boot up on the screen linked in the IMGUR, the GPU feels very hot to touch. Hotter than any other pieces of hardware in the case. The case itself has 3 fans with an additional cool master CPU fan. I’m also doing these tests with no cover on the side of the case so there is plenty of airflow.

Removed by Mod. I’m really getting desperate now. Any help would be massively appreciated!

 

[QwerkyPengwen]

Drivers are drivers and they come from AMD for their GPU. There is no difference between brands. The only thing different between brands is what cooling design they use, and whether or not they've binned the chips on their cards and/or done any overclocking in it before hand, and sometimes they customize the circuit board to have more power phases and whatnot for better overclocking, but the GPU itself is AMD so drivers for it are handled by AMD and not the board partner resellers.

As for you having plugged a USB device into a USB slot on you board, it makes no difference, it just happens to be that when they designed the board, they chose one of the USB ports to be the one the BIOS reads from for BIOS updating and whatnot, but it's still a normal USB port.

Now, as for the SSD issue, I am assuming Windows is not installed on it and this SSD you mention is just simply an additional drive?
If so, (or rather regardless) if you have more than one drive installed and plugged in when you install Windows, what Windows so intelligently does is when you select one drive for installing it, it will install what's called the MBR (master boot record) into the other drive, and make it so that if you remove the additional drive, you can no longer boot into Windows.

I know..... It's the dumbest thing ever right?
When installing Windows you should always only ever have the drive you are installing to be the only drive that is plugged in. Add additional storage after you've installed Windows.

Now for the GPU, it shouldn't be running super hot like that, but then again, the system isn't booting correctly.

You say you've tried a CMOS reset.

Now it's time for you to answer a couple of questions so that I can get a better understanding of what's going on.

Those graphical glitch lines on your display.
Are they there from the moment you turn on the PC and get to the BIOS splash screen and then onto the windows logo?
Or is it only when the windows logo appears?

Second thing, have you tried booting into a flash drive that has Windows installer on it to wipe things clean and reinstall Windows?

 

[TheRealMacDaddy]

Drivers are drivers and they come from AMD for their GPU. There is no difference between brands. The only thing different between brands is what cooling design they use, and whether or not they've binned the chips on their cards and/or done any overclocking in it before hand, and sometimes they customize the circuit board to have more power phases and whatnot for better overclocking, but the GPU itself is AMD so drivers for it are handled by AMD and not the board partner resellers.

As for you having plugged a USB device into a USB slot on you board, it makes no difference, it just happens to be that when they designed the board, they chose one of the USB ports to be the one the BIOS reads from for BIOS updating and whatnot, but it's still a normal USB port.

Now, as for the SSD issue, I am assuming Windows is not installed on it and this SSD you mention is just simply an additional drive?
If so, (or rather regardless) if you have more than one drive installed and plugged in when you install Windows, what Windows so intelligently does is when you select one drive for installing it, it will install what's called the MBR (master boot record) into the other drive, and make it so that if you remove the additional drive, you can no longer boot into Windows.

I know..... It's the dumbest thing ever right?
When installing Windows you should always only ever have the drive you are installing to be the only drive that is plugged in. Add additional storage after you've installed Windows.

Now for the GPU, it shouldn't be running super hot like that, but then again, the system isn't booting correctly.

You say you've tried a CMOS reset.

Now it's time for you to answer a couple of questions so that I can get a better understanding of what's going on.

Those graphical glitch lines on your display.
Are they there from the moment you turn on the PC and get to the BIOS splash screen and then onto the windows logo?
Or is it only when the windows logo appears?

Second thing, have you tried booting into a flash drive that has Windows installer on it to wipe things clean and reinstall Windows?

Hello!

First of all I want to say a MASSIVE thanks for taking your time to compile the message for me.

So windows IS installed on the SSD. I've used the PC for about 4 weeks and experience periodic restarts. The PC has a 1TB SSD which has everything installed on it, and a backup 2TB HDD which has nothing on it, but has been partitioned. The SSD is acting as my main drive.

And wow, that's smart from Windows... not... so if I remove the SSD, I basically can't boot Windows at all? I guess you live and you learn... I installed windows on the SSD and the HDD was plugged in - didn't even know this would be an issue! (It's my first build)

So as for the graphical glitches: it only happens when the SSD is removed, or I try booting from another disk. If I leave the SSD in, the PC boots, crashes, boots, crashes and repeats without showing graphical glitches (video at the bottom)

I (think) I've tried to install it from a USB. I have a 16GB Sandisk USB, which I've downloaded windows installation media onto. If I plug the USB into the computer, mash F11, I get the boot startup menu. I can select either Windows boot manager, SSD, HDD, Sandisk Partition 1 or Sandisk. Regardless of what I select I experience crashes. However, I don't know if the PC is reading my USB, or if it's 'flashed' or anything. I believe it needs to be formatted in a specific way for windows to read it?

Realistically I'm happy to completely wipe the entire PC, it hasn't got anything on it I need to keep. I just can't get into the advanced recovery to wipe everything. If I could just wipe everything from the BIOS/another way, I'd be happy to try that.

To give some extra info, throughout all of this, I had ONE occasion yesterday where I managed to boot into windows and actually log in, before crashing after a couple of minutes. Other than that, I had TWO occasions where the PC booted itself to advanced recovery. One time I tried to run /dskscn/ in the command prompt, which got to 99% and failed, and the other time I restarted from advanced recovery and it booted me into windows. Other than these occasions, I've been unable to boot into advanced recovery. Mashing F8 doesn't work, nor does force-restarting the PC 2/3/4/5/6 times.

Below I've attached a video of what my EZDEBUG shows throughout the boot process/restart process:

https://imgur.com/a/9OLiawQ

View: https://imgur.com/gallery/9OLiawQ

Edit: it's kind of difficult to see, but when the screen is blue that's AFTER the PC has crashed. I appreciate it's hard to see what's going on but it was tricky to record the screen to show it crashing whilst still showing the EZDEBUG lights.

I hope everything I've said is somewhat clear, please don't hesitate to ask anything to clarify. I'm eternally grateful for you taking your time out to help me - this has been a big stress for me after saving up and forking out for the PC only for it to die on me so soon!

 

[poorbugger]

Okay just to make sure your components are working well. Remove the ssd or any drives connected to your pc including any usb drives. Only connect mouse and keyboard. Upon booting spam f2 or del key. See if what happens next.

 

[QwerkyPengwen]

Do as stated above to make sure you can boot into the BIOS.

But after that, if you can boot into the BIOS, take the flash drive you have, plug it into another working computer, and format it then download the Windows Media Creation Tool from Microsoft and make a fresh bootable USB.

Then while your main PC is off, plug the flash drive in, and turn it on, then go to the boot menu and select the flash drive and see if you can boot into the Windows installer without any issues.

If you cannot, then there is definitely something wrong, try a different USB port to make sure that's not the issue.

If you can boot into the installer without any issues, then turn off the PC, and plug in only one of your storage drives, and boot into the installer again.
I would say start with the SSD.

If you encounter no issues, then turn off, unplug the SSD, and plug in the HDD and boot into the flash drive again.

If no issues with any of the drives, then something else is afoot.

If you do encounter an issue with one of the drives, then we can safely say that the one drive you get issues with is faulty and you should use warranty to get it replaced.

 

[TheRealMacDaddy]

Do as stated above to make sure you can boot into the BIOS.

But after that, if you can boot into the BIOS, take the flash drive you have, plug it into another working computer, and format it then download the Windows Media Creation Tool from Microsoft and make a fresh bootable USB.

Then while your main PC is off, plug the flash drive in, and turn it on, then go to the boot menu and select the flash drive and see if you can boot into the Windows installer without any issues.

If you cannot, then there is definitely something wrong, try a different USB port to make sure that's not the issue.

If you can boot into the installer without any issues, then turn off the PC, and plug in only one of your storage drives, and boot into the installer again.
I would say start with the SSD.

If you encounter no issues, then turn off, unplug the SSD, and plug in the HDD and boot into the flash drive again.

If no issues with any of the drives, then something else is afoot.

If you do encounter an issue with one of the drives, then we can safely say that the one drive you get issues with is faulty and you should use warranty to get it replaced.

I used this (https://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-SD...ocphy=1006490&hvtargid=pla-309593040160&psc=1) USB to install windows the first time round so I'm sure the USB works, but will it be formatted properly or whatever for this purpose? Or do I need to do anything additional?

I can get into the BIOS even with the SSD plugged in by spamming F11 to get to the boot setup, going to enter setup, then it puts me into the BIOS.

If I try this, and neither of the drives are causing the issue, what's my next step? I'll try these steps tomorrow.

 

[QwerkyPengwen]

if having either drive installed and it doesn't cause issues with the PC rebooting or anything, then according to what your main issue is, which is graphical issues when windows loads up, and booting into Windows, then you just need to make a fresh bootable USB drive for installing Windows 10, then boot into it, and delete ALL partitions on BOTH drives in the custom install screen.

After you've wiped both drives this way, turn the system off, and disconnect the HDD leaving only the SSD, then boot it up into the USB drive again and install a clean copy of Windows to the SSD.

Everything after that would be like normal with installing drivers and software.

Turn off PC after you've gotten all Windows updates installed and then plug in the HDD.

After you've gotten the second drive installed, it won't show up in Windows Explorer because you'll have to format it.

To format the HDD you can do it manually with command prompt or through partition manager in Windows.

doing it using command prompt is easy though and only takes a couple of short commands.
I can tell you them if you ask.

For performing a proper and clean install of Windows 10, refer to this guide.

How To - Windows 10 clean install tutorial

If you are looking for the Windows 11 Clean install tutorial, you can find that here: Windows 11 Clean install tutorial (Click here) Otherwise, welcome to the Windows 10 Clean install tutorial This tutorial is intended to help you, step by step, to perform a clean install of Windows...

forums.tomshardware.com

However...... if after remaking the bootable drive, you have issues loading into the installer properly, let us know.

 

[TheRealMacDaddy]

if having either drive installed and it doesn't cause issues with the PC rebooting or anything, then according to what your main issue is, which is graphical issues when windows loads up, and booting into Windows, then you just need to make a fresh bootable USB drive for installing Windows 10, then boot into it, and delete ALL partitions on BOTH drives in the custom install screen.

After you've wiped both drives this way, turn the system off, and disconnect the HDD leaving only the SSD, then boot it up into the USB drive again and install a clean copy of Windows to the SSD.

Everything after that would be like normal with installing drivers and software.

Turn off PC after you've gotten all Windows updates installed and then plug in the HDD.

After you've gotten the second drive installed, it won't show up in Windows Explorer because you'll have to format it.

To format the HDD you can do it manually with command prompt or through partition manager in Windows.

doing it using command prompt is easy though and only takes a couple of short commands.
I can tell you them if you ask.

For performing a proper and clean install of Windows 10, refer to this guide.

How To - Windows 10 clean install tutorial

If you are looking for the Windows 11 Clean install tutorial, you can find that here: Windows 11 Clean install tutorial (Click here) Otherwise, welcome to the Windows 10 Clean install tutorial This tutorial is intended to help you, step by step, to perform a clean install of Windows...

forums.tomshardware.com

However...... if after remaking the bootable drive, you have issues loading into the installer properly, let us know.

Awesome, thanks for the comprehensive response!

So just to confirm, to make sure I do it correctly, and to make it clear for anyone in the future who may need this, I need to:

1. Turn PC off, remove PSU etc.
2. Remove SSD, and HDD, and any USB drives.
3. Download windows installation media from a different PC onto a 16GB+ USB Drive.
4. Put USB drive into broken PC
5. Boot PC, mash F11, get to 'Select Boot up menu'
6. Select (Partition 1, or regular San Disk?) part of USB that has installation media on it
7. If installation begins, turn off PC
8. Reinstall SSD to PC, see if it boots
9. Remove SSD, reinstall HDD, see if it boots
10. If boots, delete all partitions/data on both hard drives
11. Remove HDD and reinstall windows through USB onto SSD
12. Reinstall HDD and manually format

If this correct? I got confused at step 7. So if the USB successfully boots when the SSD and HDD are removed, what are my next steps? Reinstall the SSD and wipe it? Then reinstall HDD and wipe it?

Could you clarify please? Apologies for all the questions, just want to make sure!

 

[QwerkyPengwen]

No need to remove PSU.
Just flip the switch on the back of the PSU then press and hold the power button for 10 seconds if you want.
You only need 8GB+ flash drive, so 16GB is more than enough.
Select the partition option most likely.
Everything else seems legit.

The reason for removing both drives and booting into the flash drive is make sure there isn't some other kind of issue with other hardware that causes an issue when reading from storage of some kind.

Then trying each drive by themselves is to confirm whether or not there would be any issues with either one plugged in to determine if one of the drives is bad.

But after confirming which drive is bad, or if neither are bad, you want to wipe both drives clean of any and all data, but then remove the HDD so that only the SSD is installed when you go to install Windows to avoid the MBR (Master Boot Record) problem that I mentioned before.

If the SSD is a 2.5" SSD, you only need to unplug the SATA connector just so that they aren't being accessed during boot.
Same deal with the HDD.
No need to unplug the power connector and remove them.
If your SSD is an M.2 SSD, then yes, take it out.

 

[DSzymborski]

I'm not sure why step 9 is in there. You're not installing Windows on the HDD. How will it boot without the drive with Windows on it?

 

[QwerkyPengwen]

I'm not sure why step 9 is in there. You're not installing Windows on the HDD. How will it boot without the drive with Windows on it?

when he says "see if it boots" he's referring to his PC in general.
if you have a bad drive installed, it causes PC booting issues, and sometimes boot loops.
I personally had this issue once when one of my extra storage HDD's went bad.

Not talking about booting into Windows.

 

[TheRealMacDaddy]

when he says "see if it boots" he's referring to his PC in general.
if you have a bad drive installed, it causes PC booting issues, and sometimes boot loops.
I personally had this issue once when one of my extra storage HDD's went bad.

Not talking about booting into Windows.

Hello again!

Okay - so - I did as you suggested.

It rebooted about 10 times, with the same issues as previously. It had the same artefacts as when I removed the SSD. Windows logo would load with artefacts at the bottom, loading circle would spin, and boom, it would turn off and reboot and repeat.

However, after leaving it to do this about 10 times, it eventually got to the Windows Installer screen. At this point, there's no SSD, no HDD and no aretfacting. I had tried to choose to boot setup with both SanDisk partition 1 and Sandisk with no results, it just continued to reboot.

https://imgur.com/a/xLU7T2p

View: https://imgur.com/gallery/xLU7T2p


However, as mentioned, after about 10 times of auto-rebooting it got the the windows installation menu. I progressed through it a little bit before it restarted and dying again.

Now, I'm currently in the windows boot menu and it hasn't restarted/rebooted and I've been here for about 5 minutes. Although there's no drives inside the PC, so I can't progress any further from here.

Edit: After about 5 minutes it died again and reloaded to windows logo + spinning wheel with artefact, but after loading passed the artefact stage, it put me back to windows launcher.

Does this help at all?

So to summarise:

• SSD + HDD removed
• One change I made was moving my PCI-e (which was connected to GPU) from PSU to a different PCI-e slot in the PSU, so I basically just changed where in the PSU it was plugged into, however it hasn't seem to made a different to artefacting
• Reset CMOS
• Booted into PC choosing the option to 'run as normal' from CMOS screen
• Tried booting normally, windows logo + spin wheel but artefacting at bottom (same as video in OP)
• Tried booting into SanDisk Partition 1, and SanDisk, nothing.
• Tried booting without choosing boot disk > Windows logo + spinning wheel with artefacting, then to Windows installer
• Then it sits on windows installer for a couple of minutes before dying again.
• From here, I can get into the advanced troubleshooting menu. Would now be a good time to try and re-add the SSD and see if I can replicate the same loading screens? My worry is that if I re-add the SSD, it will just try and boot into the SSD. By not having the SSD in the PC, and by not choosing the specific USB, it seems to allow me to boot into windows installer (albeit with artefacting beforehand)

What are my next steps from here? Does it scream any specific issues to you? From this specific menu I can enter the troubleshooting advanced recovery, so I can access startup repair/command prompt/system restore etc.

I should add: the CPU is VERY hot to touch on the plastic top. I would estimate 70-80 degrees. It's not burning my hand but 3-4 seconds is hot enough for me to want to take my hand away. I'm sitting in the conservatory (the only place where we have hard flooring), which is warm in itself, and the temperature in the UK is 26 degrees Celsius. This could be contributing to the heating issue, but could this point to a faulty GPU?

I tried contacting CCL online, who I purchased the GPU from, who said returning it will result in a 7-10 day wait to check if its faulty, followed by up 28 days of repairs by the manufacturer. This is a total of 38 days (nearly 8 weeks) of time it'll take to get the GPU fixed...after paying £400...

Edit: I managed to sit in the advanced recovery area for around 10 minutes with no issues. I decided to turn off the PC as I was worried the GPU was getting a bit too warm, however, it's a step in the right direct that it didn't crash for 10 mins.

https://imgur.com/a/N9nhmk1

View: https://imgur.com/gallery/N9nhmk1

 

[TheRealMacDaddy]

when he says "see if it boots" he's referring to his PC in general.
if you have a bad drive installed, it causes PC booting issues, and sometimes boot loops.
I personally had this issue once when one of my extra storage HDD's went bad.

Not talking about booting into Windows.

Hi again!

So, further to my message above:

I removed the HDD, reinstalled the SSD (with a USB in the PC).

Windows booted first time straight into my windows screen, no artefacting, no restarts, nothing.

I sat on Windows home screen for approx 10 mins with no issues. I touched my GPU to feel it's temperature and again, it felt hot to touch. It's much later in the day now so it's cooler, and the GPU is still hot to touch. The fans on the GPU weren't spinning either. I then tried to run CPU-Z to see if I could see what the temperature of the GPU was (I now realise it doesn't show it anyway...), which caused the PC to crash.

I could reboot it straight into windows again. I then booted into safe mode just to try and avoid any further issues. Sat in safe mode for a while and it was fine, so rebooted regular windows.

I notice that the GPU fans spin on power up, but after a while on the desktop, they stop spinning. Is this normal? Could this be use to incorrect drivers being installed causing them to run hotter than usual (and maybe overheat)?

At this point, I seem to be able to stay on the windows desktop with no issues. What's my best bet from this situation? Since having returned it on, the only crash has come from CPU-Z. I tried again to load CPU-Z, and it was fine. However, it shows there's still some kind of issue somewhere given there was a crash despite the HDD being removed.

Do you have any suggestions from here? I'm happy to completely wipe everything, files, windows, drivers, anything/everything.

This is a step in the right direction. It's the first time in 4 days I've been able to get into my desktop, so from the bottom of my heart - THANK YOU! - I've never been so stressed about a PC, but you explained everything so thoroughly and it worked.

Any further advice would be appreciated - if there's a way from the dump files or if there's any tests I can do to see what's causing the crashes I'd be happy to do anything!

Thanks again!

 

[TheRealMacDaddy]

when he says "see if it boots" he's referring to his PC in general.
if you have a bad drive installed, it causes PC booting issues, and sometimes boot loops.
I personally had this issue once when one of my extra storage HDD's went bad.

Not talking about booting into Windows.

Hey!

Apologies for bugging you - but do you have any idea what my next steps should be? I'm tempted to wipe the computer completely and try and reinstall windows, but I'm worried that if the computer has a hardware issue and that's causing it to not boot (rather than corrupted windows/drivers), that I'll never be able to get back into the PC because it'll just keep failing to boot!

Given I can get into the desktop now, are there any specific tests I should run, things I should delete, or things I should install?

Thanks again for the help!

 

[QwerkyPengwen]

when the GPU gets to be too hot, it's supposed to kick the fans in to cool it down, and this is supposed to be handled on a BIOS level inside the card.

And the fans do work and spin apparently, so what I recommend is to wipe everything, and do a clean install as I had mentioned how to do before.

After the clean install, you can then do Windows Updates if there are any, and download and install proper drivers from AMD website.

And then see if anything works like it should, you can also adjust fan curve on the GPU with AMD software, or using third party software like MSI Afterburner.

Just make sure you made a clean fresh USB installer, wiping away any data on the drive from the previous installer you made with it.

 

[bignastyid]

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/new-pc-died-after-4-weeks.3613481/