[SOLVED] Green QLED for Boot Issue After Swapping CPU

Dec 11, 2020
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Hey Tommys.

So I built this...

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 3.7 GHz 6-Core Processor
CPU Cooler: NZXT Kraken X42 Rev 2 98.17 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (Purchased For $0.00)
Motherboard: Asus ROG Strix X570-I Gaming Mini ITX AM4 Motherboard ($245.96 @ Amazon)
Memory: G.Skill Trident Z RGB 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory ($87.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 970 Evo 1 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive ($129.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: EVGA GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11 GB FTW3 HYBRID GAMING Video Card ($1139.00 @ Amazon)
Case: Phanteks Enthoo EVOLV SHIFT X Mini ITX Tower Case (Purchased For $0.00)
Power Supply: Corsair SF 600 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular SFX Power Supply (Purchased For $0.00)

Now... initially I had a Ryzen 5 3600 in there and everything was working fine. Then I get myself a 5600x. When I swapped it out I couldn't get the machine to post, it just sat at the yellow-green QLED for boot.

Steps I've taken...

  • Swapped out the 5600x and put the 3600 back in, no help.
  • Took out the evo, and put in an old sata SSD, no help.
  • Unplugged all drives, no help.
  • Plugged in a usb boot drive only, no help.
  • Unplugged ram, when I did this it stuck at the orange DRAM Qled, so that's good?
  • Removed ram and reset CMOS by trying to jump it, no help.

Not sure how it worked with the 3600, then not with the 5600, then not with the 3600... I see no other issues with the board, all LEDs running, fans going fan. Just this boot issue...

Do I swap the mobo out at microcenter?
 
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Solution
If the VGA LED light is always ON after power on, then there is an issue with the Graphics Card.
Check that the GPU is seated properly and the power cables are connected properly.
It should work if it says "ryzen 5000 series ready."
Power off the computer. power off the PSU, unplug power cord and press the power button for 15-20 seconds.
Remove the CMOS battery from motherboard... wait 5 minutes and install the CMOS battery back.
Disconnect all disks.
Install the Ryzen 5 3600
Power up...it could take up to 3 minutes for the BIOS configuration to work and to display on the screen...do not interfere with it.
 
Dec 11, 2020
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It should work if it says "ryzen 5000 series ready."
Power off the computer. power off the PSU, unplug power cord and press the power button for 15-20 seconds.
Remove the CMOS battery from motherboard... wait 5 minutes and install the CMOS battery back.
Disconnect all disks.
Install the Ryzen 5 3600
Power up...it could take up to 3 minutes for the BIOS configuration to work and to display on the screen...do not interfere with it.

I feel ridiculous asking this, do you know where the battery is on the Asus Strix X-570-I? I don't see it in the manual, just the clear CMOS pins to short. I see a battery connection referenced, but no actual battery. Perhaps it is on the back of the board, which I'm not able to see without removing entirely.

I may have found it, but if I did... unsure how to remove it. This battery is wrapped in a tight, black plastic filament. It's also semi-enclosed and so there's no easy way to pop it out; and even if I did manage to pop it out, not sure how I'd get it back in. Photos attached...

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I feel ridiculous asking this, do you know where the battery is on the Asus Strix X-570-I? I don't see it in the manual, just the clear CMOS pins to short. I see a battery connection referenced, but no actual battery. Perhaps it is on the back of the board, which I'm not able to see without removing entirely.
The CMOS battery is hidden between the Rog Strix plate and the Ethernet port.
There is a 2-pin cable (black & white wires) connecting the CMOS battery to the motherboard.
If you look closely, the CPU lever is pointing on the direction of the CMOS 2-pin...see if you can unplug it.
 
Dec 11, 2020
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The CMOS battery is hidden between the Rog Strix plate and the Ethernet port.
There is a 2-pin cable (black & white wires) connecting the CMOS battery to the motherboard.
If you look closely, the CPU lever is pointing on the direction of the CMOS 2-pin...see if you can unplug it.

Are you able to see it in my photos? I think I see it, it's a really really tiny cable/head.

I was able to locate it by removing the housing/plate. I had to unscrew two screws from the back to loosen it after removing the top strix plate over the I/O ports. Then with some tweezers I disconnected. Currently letting it rest for the recommended 5 minutes.

Thanks for the help Jojesa, appreciate your hand through this. Shocked that they made the CMOS battery so hard to deal with in such a premium board.
 
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Are you able to see it in my photos? I think I see it, it's a really really tiny cable/head.

I was able to locate it by removing the housing/plate. I had to unscrew two screws from the back to loosen it after removing the top strix plate over the I/O ports. Then with some tweezers I disconnected. Currently letting it rest for the recommended 5 minutes.

Thanks for the help Jojesa, appreciate your hand through this. Shocked that they made the CMOS battery so hard to deal with in such a premium board.
Yes, you could see the battery above, wrapped in black.
 
Dec 11, 2020
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Yes, you could see the battery above, wrapped in black.

After giving the 5+ minutes of the battery out I put the ram, PSU cables and fan headers all back into the mobo. The first three times i powered it up it stopped at the white QLED for VGA. On the fourth power-up it went to the green boot and I'm currently sitting there.

No disk drives (SATA or m.2) are currently connected.

Still no joy. What's my next move?
 
Dec 11, 2020
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If the VGA LED light is always ON after power on, then there is an issue with the Graphics Card.
Check that the GPU is seated properly and the power cables are connected properly.

It's not.

I ended up taking the mobo back to microcenter where the tech was able to get it to post, and flash the bios for me no issue. He also pointed out that the green QLED should be on, it means that it's running and posting.

So I've taken it home, set it up again, and I got it to post once. Oddly, while it saw the m.2 drive it wouldn't let me boot to it (which it should). So I restarted and now I'm back where I started, sitting at a blank screen, with a computer showing me green across the board. The motherboard seems like it's posting, but I'm not getting any video feed from the GPU or the mother board. (I've tried plugging the display port in to the motherboard directly, with the GPU unplugged. When that happens I jsut get the white QLED).

Despite doing nothing but turning it off and on again, I was able to get to a bios screen.

New problem, my formatted and windows loaded m.2 drive shows up in bios, but not as a bootable drive.... should I start a new thread for a different problem?

Thanks again for all your help.
 
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I ended up taking the mobo back to microcenter where the tech was able to get it to post, and flash the bios for me no issue. He also pointed out that the green QLED should be on, it means that it's running and posting.

To show you that the main components (CPU, RAM, GPU, HDD/SSD) are functioning during POST (BOOT), the Q-LED light up in a sequence and they go off. When the motherboard thinks any of those components have an issue, then its corresponding LED light will remain lit until the issue its corrected.

Despite doing nothing but turning it off and on again, I was able to get to a bios screen.

New problem, my formatted and windows loaded m.2 drive shows up in bios, but not as a bootable drive.... should I start a new thread for a different problem?

Thanks again for all your help.
In the BIOS , Boot Option #1 should be 'Windows Boot Manager' and in parenthesis it might list the boot disk.

If you installed Windows on a disk while an additional disk was connected, then Windows installation might write boot files to both disks.
If that's the case, make sure the disks are connected as they were before try to boot into Windows.
 
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To show you that the main components (CPU, RAM, GPU, HDD/SSD) are functioning during POST (BOOT), the Q-LED light up in a sequence and they go off. When the motherboard thinks any of those components have an issue, then its corresponding LED light will remain lit until the issue its corrected.


In the BIOS , Boot Option #1 should be 'Windows Boot Manager' and in parenthesis it might list the boot disk.

If you installed Windows on a disk while an additional disk was connected, then Windows installation might write boot files to both disks.
If that's the case, make sure the disks are connected as they were before try to boot into Windows.


It was, oddly it wouldn't boot to it. It actually still isn't however once I enabled compatibility mode it let me boot to it via Boot Override.

Now the current issue is that, despite Boot Option #1 being that drive, and being able to boot to it via Override, the system doesn't boot to it after posting.

I've reached out to Asus who asked me to fill out a more in-depth report.
 
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The Boot Option #1 should be 'Windows Boot Manager' for the system to boot properly.
You could perform a Windows boot repair or you might need to reinstall Windows and if you do any of these, make sure only one disk is installed.

I went in and did a sfc /scannow in command prompt and corruption was found and repaired.

Restarted the computer, made it back to windows and ran the same scan again, came up allgood.

I'm still not seeing "Windows Boot Manager' as an option for Boot Option #1.

When I try to use the windows troubleshoot tool and repair start up windows isn't able find any issue or repair. Does this mean I need format the drive and reinstall windows?
 
Disable 'Fast Startup' in Windows and reboot.
Sometimes it could be a BIOS bug and updating the BIOS or even installing the same BIOS version again could fix the issue.
If there is an issue with the Windows installation then the BIOS might not be detecting the disk as bootable.
 
Dec 11, 2020
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Disable 'Fast Startup' in Windows and reboot.
Sometimes it could be a BIOS bug and updating the BIOS or even installing the same BIOS version again could fix the issue.
If there is an issue with the Windows installation then the BIOS might not be detecting the disk as bootable.

Any way to determine if there was an installation issue beyond what I've already done test-wise?

I disabled fast boot and it didn't fix. Going to try and installing the same version of bios to see if that resolves things.

Updated bios and no joy. Issue persists. Seems like my only other option is to reinstall windows, huh?
 
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Before reinstalling Windows could you use Windows Reliability Monitor to see events that is causing this issue.
Click the Start menu and type 'reliability' then click on 'View reliability history'

Check the events, and click on any of them to see what happened during the time it restarted.
 
Dec 11, 2020
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Before reinstalling Windows could you use Windows Reliability Monitor to see events that is causing this issue.
Click the Start menu and type 'reliability' then click on 'View reliability history'

Check the events, and click on any of them to see what happened during the time it restarted.

Yep. "Windows was not properly shut down" and "Windows failed to start because of a problem with the hard disk"

For description: Windows could not detect the problem. The boot status indicated that windows booted successfully.
 
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Make sure the disk is inserted properly and check if there is any firmware update for the Samsung NVMe SSD .
You might need to reinstall Windows to see if the issue is caused by a corrupted Windows installation..
After installing Windows, allow it to update fully before installing any drivers and apps.
Install the AM4 x570 chipset drivers from AMD website then Samsung NVMe drivers.

Well this got me back Windows Boot Manager as an option, however the motherboard continues to go to that post screen asking me to hit F1 for SETUP...

Motherboard issue?