Question My PC won't start up after transporting, Mobo says error code 55

Jan 21, 2020
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I recently carted my tower PC around in the back of a car, and now I'm having trouble getting it to turn on. My specs are as follows:



- Motherboard: gigabyte ga-z170x-ud3

- CPU: Intel i5 6600k (not overclocked)

- GPU: MSi GTX 1070

- PSU: Corsair CX650M

- CPU cooler: Cooler master hyper 212 EVO

- RAM: 2x16 DDR4



When I power on, the computer starts, but before it gets to booting windows, the whole thing shuts down (takes about 5 seconds). Then, a couple seconds later, it powers back on and tries again. The process repeats until I forcibly shut it off. The motherboard's LED display gives the error code 55, which according to the manual is the code for a memory initialization error.


Things I've tried:

- Re-seating the RAM to make sure it's installed properly (no effect)

- Checking all wire connections and re-seating the GPU: This actually worked for about a day and a half. The PC started as normal, and ran fine, but every few hours it would suddenly freeze and require a force-shutdown. There was no obvious cause for the freeze, sometimes it would occur while I was out of the room, sometimes while I was in the middle of using it. Eventually though, it froze, then froze again during windows startup, then went back to the same error-55 startup loop it was doing originally.



Any ideas? I suspect it's a connection, and I doubt it's a problem with the CPU seating (why would my earlier fix have worked for 36 hours if this were the case?) Short of using trial and error on every part in the box, I don't know how to approach this. I'm also worried that this problem could be caused by the fact that I left my PC in a cold car overnight during transport.



NOTE: A lot of people online recommend fiddling with BIOS settings, but my computer shuts down before the monitor even receives input, so I don't know how I would be able to do this.
 
Pull the CPU out of the socket, check the socket for bent or broken pins, place it back in carefully if none are found and repaste the CPU. Moving computers around that have Intel CPUs can sometimes shift the CPU heat-sink and cause the CPU to shift out of place, causing it to not work. It's usually a common cause of memory slots not working, but will also cause boot looping or crashes if you manage to boot.