[SOLVED] PC freezes almost instantly upon startup, or fails at connecting to the monitor

[hennil93]

Roughly a week ago my PC crashed while I was doing nothing particularly strenuous for the system. The image froze for a couple of seconds, and then the monitor lost its connection to the PC, however the PC was still running just the same as before. I waited a few minutes and then shut it off manually as it did not connect back up to the monitor.

Upon restarting I would experience the same issue, and I tried a different monitor but there was no change at all. Following this I have tried troubleshooting the PC by changing around the 2 sticks of RAM that are in the PC, and trying them one at a time. Unless both of them are broke, they should not be the issue. A change of GPU showed no difference in behavior. I tried swapping out the PSU for an older one with less power (500W vs the one I've used earlier on 650W), upon which the monitor came alive again. However it experienced strange issues such as freezing, not having any connection to the mouse and/or keyboard, and yet again not connecting to the monitor upon every time I would restart it.

Whilst doing this I realized I had also moved my SSD since it was placed a bit awkwardly, and swapped back to my usual PSU and tried swapping the SSD cables. Lo and behold, the PC fired up as intended! It proceeded to work as it should for the following 15 minutes, and then lost its connection to the monitor yet again. After trying to restart several times again, I keep getting the same two issues. Sometimes I get no connection to the monitor, and sometimes the PC freezes pretty much instantly upon startup (either I get to the "MOBO" screen where you can choose if you want to enter BIOS or not and it freezes, or it will freeze before this leaving me with a black screen).

I'm starting to think it is the motherboard causing this issue, simply because I have been troubleshooting everything else (of course I have tried unplugging mouse & keyboard too, leaving only the monitor plugged in). Is there any way I can verify (or exclude) that it is indeed the motherboard causing this issue?

I built the PC about 3-4 months back from hardware that I bought, below is a list of the current specs:
I'll leave a list of my current specs below:
OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Home
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600
Motherboard: MSI B450-A PRO MAX
RAM: 2x 8GB Corsair Vengeance LPX Black 3600 MHz
GPU: XFX Radeon RX 5600 XT THICC II PRO
SSD: Crucial MX500 500GB
PSU: Corsair CV650

TL;DR: PC freezes instantly or does not connect to monitor upon startup. I have troubleshot the RAM, GPU, PSU and monitor. I have also left everything except the monitor unplugged. Could the issue be anywhere else but in the motherboard? If it could be, how can I verify whether it is the motherboard or not?

 

[SteveRX4]

Roughly a week ago my PC crashed while I was doing nothing particularly strenuous for the system. Did you get an error code?

Try a bios reset.

 

[hennil93]

Roughly a week ago my PC crashed while I was doing nothing particularly strenuous for the system. Did you get an error code?

Try a bios reset.

Forgot to mention that, but I have tried resetting the BIOS by unplugging the round battery from the motherboard. No change unfortunately. And no, as I said the monitor just lost connection to the PC so if there was an error code I could unfortunately not see it.

EDIT: I also forgot to mention I tried swapping out the SSD (when I was trying to troubleshoot the SSD) for an old HDD that I had lying around, and after entering BIOS settings and changing the boot settings to be able to boot into a USB memory that I have Windows 10 installed on, I kept getting the error message "0xc000000f". Yesterday I tried replacing the SSD with the HDD yet again, but I can't seem to get to the same stage even as the problem with freezing or not connecting to the monitor persists even after that change. I've simply disregarded the SSD as being the issue here, but maybe that doesn't have to be the case?

 

[SteveRX4]

It has a clear cmos jumper. Try that.

The error code hints drive was not found.
Does the drive gets detected in BIOS?

Can you get into bios?

 

[hennil93]

It has a clear cmos jumper. Try that.

The error code hints drive was not found.
Does the drive gets detected in BIOS?

Can you get into bios?

Unfortunately I do not have a jumper cap as I did not get one with the motherboard. However, I've read somewhere online that you need to simply connect them and that you could for example use a flathead screwdriver for this, and I have done so in the past. I tried to do it again just now, and it managed to show me a screen saying the CMOS has been cleared, and I could press F1 to choose how to start it up, or F2 to start with default values. I chose F2, upon which the PC yet again froze. I restarted it, and cleared CMOS through the jumper again, and have since tried restarting the PC several times without any luck at all, it starts up but with no connection to the monitor.

Unfortunately as of right now it seems impossible getting into BIOS. I did however succeed when I previously had the HDD plugged in, and I remember seeing that one being detected by the system.

 

[SteveRX4]

Can you do a bios update?

 

[hennil93]

Can you do a bios update?

The few times that the monitor actually gets a proper connection the PC tends to freeze within a few seconds. So there is really no way I can get into the BIOS nor update it unfortunately.

 

[hennil93]

Alright, so I have an update and I hope someone can help me out a bit here. I managed to get a hold of a case speaker, and upon starting up the PC with everything hooked up there are no sounds from it.

Following the following article on msi BIOS one beep indicates a successful system boot (which is not the case here):
https://forum-en.msi.com/faq/article/bios-beep-codes

Taking both sticks of RAM out made it beep 3 times (showing that there is a problem with the RAM), however looking at the list it is supposed to do 5 short beeps + 1 long beep if no memory is detected, which is the case here. So the error code seems to be wrong somehow?

Following this I tried putting one stick of RAM back in, and removing the GPU. Again, the speaker does not make a sound at all. I'm not sure it is supposed to though, as I cannot see any code indicating an issue with the GPU (which seems strange to me, but I have never done this before so if someone could verify that would be much appreciated).

I also have 4 lights on the MOBO for easy troubleshooting, namely BOOT, VGA (for troubleshooting GPU), DRAM, and CPU. Upon starting with everything in place the CPU one lights up for a few seconds and then goes out, and none of the other LEDs are showing anything faulty.

However, when the GPU is out it again starts by putting the CPU LED on for a few seconds, after this it has acted differently each time I have restarted it. The first time the GPU LED went on and off again, then the VGA LED went on for around 10 seconds or so, then it went out and the BOOT led went on. Eventually I shut it off and during the second startup it just put the CPU LED on for a few seconds, then nothing came on. The same thing happened on the two following startups, and then on the fifth startup the CPU LED came on for a few seconds, followed by the VGA LED (which was then on for about a minute or two until I again turned off the PC).

Seeing how the LEDs are acting up like this my belief that it is indeed the motherboard that is faulty is strengthened. However, is it enough to verify that the motherboard is what is faulty here? Anything else I could try?

 

[Eric Baker]

Thats a GPU issue
Try to run PC without GPU and test it

 

[hennil93]

Thats a GPU issue
Try to run PC without GPU and test it

Read the post above again, the 5 restarts that I did was with everything in place except the GPU which had been taken out. I have also tried putting the GPU into another PC and it has started up as intended.

 

[SteveRX4]

Try a bios reset.
If that doesn't work then I'd do an RMA. These days that can take a long time. It might be an idea to do a deal with your supplier where you buy a replacement mobo off them and they give you credit for the RMA mobo. My PC was no go for 3 months while waiting for a replacement x570 taichi. I bought an Aorus Master and after a couple of months got the credit back on the RMA.