I was looking to upgrade my system's mobo, CPU, and RAM. I have done builds like these in the past, though my older system (which I'm still using to type this on) has held up for so well for so long that it has been a while since I've done it.
Initially I got a:
MSI B350 Gaming Plus motherboard (AM4 socket, DDR4 RAM slots)
AMD Ryzen 2700X CPU
2x 8GB XPG DDR4 RAM (AX4U240038G-16-DRG)
My other components are:
750W XFX TS PSU
Nvidia Geforce 980 (Gigabyte)
1 SSD, and 2 HDDs,
So I hooked everything up, everything was plugged in correctly. No post, or video output. My keyboard also lights up when the computer is booting up successfully, and it was dark as well. The MSI board has a couple of handy LEDs which light up when a particular component has a problem. The CPU LED lights up as soon as you boot up, but then goes dark (suggesting no problem). It still will not show me a BIOS screen. I tried and retried everything, ensuring no shorts, clearing CMOS, everything. No go. I borrowed a still-new AMD Ryzen 2700 CPU (which has a significantly lower power draw than the 2700X) and had the same exact problem.
So I get a new mobo, this time a:
ASRock X370 Pro
This is where things get... weird. So I get everything hooked up to the ASRock motherboard and I finally see a BIOS screen! Success! I manage to get into the UEFI BIOS settings but... nothing works. Keyboard and mouse lights are on but neither do anything on the settings screen. So I restart, and this time go to the boot menu, and keyboard and mouse both work on that screen. Then I try to boot from my normal drive and this is where things get weird again. Sometimes it simply goes to a black screen and stays there, sometimes it goes to a blinking cursor, and sometimes it will tell me that it can't boot off of that drive.
So instead of booting I try to go through BIOS settings through the boot screen, and now I can actually use my keyboard and mouse. Hooray. So I start tinkering around with various settings, seeing if it will boot. I end up turning CPM off entirely, and suddenly the whole situation changes. It now boots much more consistently to BIOS, I have a 4K monitor, and it gave me the BIOS screen in 4K where it wasn't before. But it didn't recognize my SATA SSD so I couldn't boot to that. I then tried to just turn off certain CPM settings, and at that point I must have messed something up because while the computer booted to BIOS (keyboard/mouse light was on) it was now not giving me video input, so I couldn't do anything.
While all that is interesting, it's not terribly relevant now it seems, because I cleared the CMOS to try and get things back to defaults, and it stopped POSTing at that point. It's doing the same exact thing the MSI mobo is doing, powering on, fans on, now video output, no keyboard/mouse lights (the keyboard light does turn on when I press a key, but goes back off). Now I don't know what to do. Sounds like it could be a power problem, but my power supply works just fine with my old setup. It seems impossible that it doesn't have enough wattage at 750. I've tried clearing and re-clearing the CMOS as well as replacing the battery several times now. The whole situation has been both expensive and baffling as to why this is happening. I would think if the AM4 mobos are having issues with Pinnacle Ridge CPUs it would be all over the forums of every tech site, but for some reason I seem to be the only one having this issue. I'm pretty darn sure I'm putting these mobos together right because I've had to switch out the new ones for the old ones several times and my old configuration boots right up with no issues.
Initially I got a:
MSI B350 Gaming Plus motherboard (AM4 socket, DDR4 RAM slots)
AMD Ryzen 2700X CPU
2x 8GB XPG DDR4 RAM (AX4U240038G-16-DRG)
My other components are:
750W XFX TS PSU
Nvidia Geforce 980 (Gigabyte)
1 SSD, and 2 HDDs,
So I hooked everything up, everything was plugged in correctly. No post, or video output. My keyboard also lights up when the computer is booting up successfully, and it was dark as well. The MSI board has a couple of handy LEDs which light up when a particular component has a problem. The CPU LED lights up as soon as you boot up, but then goes dark (suggesting no problem). It still will not show me a BIOS screen. I tried and retried everything, ensuring no shorts, clearing CMOS, everything. No go. I borrowed a still-new AMD Ryzen 2700 CPU (which has a significantly lower power draw than the 2700X) and had the same exact problem.
So I get a new mobo, this time a:
ASRock X370 Pro
This is where things get... weird. So I get everything hooked up to the ASRock motherboard and I finally see a BIOS screen! Success! I manage to get into the UEFI BIOS settings but... nothing works. Keyboard and mouse lights are on but neither do anything on the settings screen. So I restart, and this time go to the boot menu, and keyboard and mouse both work on that screen. Then I try to boot from my normal drive and this is where things get weird again. Sometimes it simply goes to a black screen and stays there, sometimes it goes to a blinking cursor, and sometimes it will tell me that it can't boot off of that drive.
So instead of booting I try to go through BIOS settings through the boot screen, and now I can actually use my keyboard and mouse. Hooray. So I start tinkering around with various settings, seeing if it will boot. I end up turning CPM off entirely, and suddenly the whole situation changes. It now boots much more consistently to BIOS, I have a 4K monitor, and it gave me the BIOS screen in 4K where it wasn't before. But it didn't recognize my SATA SSD so I couldn't boot to that. I then tried to just turn off certain CPM settings, and at that point I must have messed something up because while the computer booted to BIOS (keyboard/mouse light was on) it was now not giving me video input, so I couldn't do anything.
While all that is interesting, it's not terribly relevant now it seems, because I cleared the CMOS to try and get things back to defaults, and it stopped POSTing at that point. It's doing the same exact thing the MSI mobo is doing, powering on, fans on, now video output, no keyboard/mouse lights (the keyboard light does turn on when I press a key, but goes back off). Now I don't know what to do. Sounds like it could be a power problem, but my power supply works just fine with my old setup. It seems impossible that it doesn't have enough wattage at 750. I've tried clearing and re-clearing the CMOS as well as replacing the battery several times now. The whole situation has been both expensive and baffling as to why this is happening. I would think if the AM4 mobos are having issues with Pinnacle Ridge CPUs it would be all over the forums of every tech site, but for some reason I seem to be the only one having this issue. I'm pretty darn sure I'm putting these mobos together right because I've had to switch out the new ones for the old ones several times and my old configuration boots right up with no issues.
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