[SOLVED] New x470 Taichi Ultimate won't post

[DRaelrich]

I'm essentially rebuilding my PC. Components are as follows:

Motherboard: ASRock X470 Taichi Ultimate
CPU: RYZEN 5 3600
GPU: Sapphire Radeon Pulse RX 5500 XT
Memory: G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 16GB (2 x 8GB)
PSU: Antec NeoECO 620W
Storage: Samsung 860 QVO 1TB Solid State Drive
Case: NZXT H510

I put these pieces together, powered the thing on, and... the machine powered up, the LEDs started a slow pulse, but the screen stayed dark. After a moment of the fans whirring, the machine powered off, only to power itself back on again. This continued indefinitely until I turned off the power myself and messaged some friends.

The sharp-eyed among you will have noticed what I came to learn: the x470 needs a BIOS update before it can deal with the Ryzen 3000 series. Rather than wait for the process to get a boot kit from AMD, I opted to just buy a cheap older CPU from Newegg. A few days later I installed an AMD Athlon 3000G and tried to start it up... only to have the same cycle, except this time the LED numbers at the bottom of the board gave me what appeared to be a 61 error code.

From what I've read that's a chipset initialization error, so I pulled the CMOS battery, waited for an hour, replaced it and hit reset, to no change. So far, what I've tried:

-CMOS reset button
-CMOS physical battery removal
-reseating all power cables and data cables
-removing one RAM stick and reseating a single stick in each of the four slots
-removing both RAM sticks
-Reseating CPU
-Reseating GPU
-Removing GPU (tried to cover every single base imaginable here)

My IT friends were at a loss. They decided that it had to be a defect with the motherboard, and the only available option left was to replace it. But something is nagging at me. Am I missing something?

photos of the rig and the error code:

https://imgur.com/a/tDzJYmY

View: https://imgur.com/a/tDzJYmY

 

[boju]

Wondering if it's still the same deal about Bios version. Does the motherboard have a sticker on the Bios chip indicating what version it has? 3000G requires from P3.50.

https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/X470 Taichi Ultimate/index.asp#CPU

Actually, 3600 has support from P3.20. 3000G requiring even a later version seems to be the problem. Need a cpu that says support on all Bios versions or hopefully there's a sticker indicating which cpu is possible.

 

[DSzymborski]

Yeah, the inclination to buy an older, cheap Athlon was the right one, but you bought the newest one!

 

[DRaelrich]

Yeah, the inclination to buy an older, cheap Athlon was the right one, but you bought the newest one!

Well damn. Others have now pointed this out to me as well; shows how unfamiliar I am in this area. I'm looking to get this one instead; the list provided by some helpful folks seems to indicate it will work?

https://www.newegg.com/p/274-000M-001D2?Item=9SIA2W0B9U2579

ASRock > X470 Taichi Ultimate

Supports AMD AM4 Socket Ryzen™ 2000, 3000, 4000 G-Series, 5000 and 5000 G-Series Desktop Processors; Supports DDR4 3466+ (OC); 2 PCIe 3.0 x16, 1 PCIe 2.0 x16, 2 PCIe 2.0 x1; NVIDIA Quad SLI™, AMD Quad CrossFireX™; 7.1 CH HD Audio (Realtek ALC1220 Audio Codec), Supports Purity Sound™ 4 & DTS...

www.asrock.com

 

[DSzymborski]

There's a list of options that might be preferable to buying yet another CPU.

https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/pa-100

 

[DRaelrich]

There's a list of options that might be preferable to buying yet another CPU.

https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/pa-100

Ah yes! I did look through those early on; I'd opted for getting the CPU because the x470 Taichi apparently doesn't support any BIOS update options without a compatible CPU installed. I had thought that by the time I went through the process of getting a boot kit loan of an A5 9600 I would already be done with it if I bought a CPU, used it to upgrade, and then returned it.

 

[boju]

Do you have a PC service centre near you? There would be a fee to update Bios for you but shouldn't be much. Could be more convenient for you this way and return the 3000G.

 

[DRaelrich]

Do you have a PC service centre near you? There would be a fee to update Bios for you but shouldn't be much. Could be more convenient for you this way and return the 3000G.

It seems there IS computer repair store nearby! This is a good point. I'll hold off on the purchase until I can talk to them tomorrow.

 

[boju]

Yeah, and any PC stores too usually have technicians, not meaning only service/repairs shops if that's what you thought i meant.

Keep us posted 🙂

 

[DRaelrich]

Yeah, and any PC stores too usually have technicians, not meaning only service/repairs shops if that's what you thought i meant.

Keep us posted 🙂

So update, the Micro Center in my area had a 5-day wait for service and immediately tried to upcharge me.

At this point I'm not even going to try to make this work. I'm returning all the CPUs and just ordering an R5 2600, which I probably should have done as soon as I figured out the problem.

 

[boju]

Didn't expect that, what a shame. Maybe it's the way they do things normally, I don't know. We don't have them here in Australia. Or their practices are different now due to current situations.

 

[DRaelrich]

Didn't expect that, what a shame. Maybe it's the way they do things normally, I don't know. We don't have them here in Australia. Or their practices are different now due to current situations.

From what the person I talked to said, it's definitely related to the times; it seems they've had a huge uptick in service requests and have a backlog of machines to work on as a result.

My 2600 should get here by tomorrow or Monday though, and I hear it's not that big a gap between that and the 3600.