PC No Longer Working - No Display (ASUS Z170 Pro Gaming)

[spicysimon]

Turned on and no life. Sometimes single beep.
Tried lots of things (following the video and guides here) - details below.
It was working fine until it stopped working yesterday (OK last weekend).

Current status is that:
- get 'no memory' beeps without DRAM
- evidence of power, e.g. LED's, all fans going, num lock LED on keyboard

Suspect that a component has failed.
Therefore key question is which is the most likely - are there any steps I can take to find out, or do I just buy the cheapest first, replace than and keep going?

motherboard: ASUS Z170 Pro Gaming
CPU: i5-6600K 3.5GHz
DRAM: Corsair Vengeance LPX 8GB DDR4 2666MHz C16 Red
PSU: Corsair VS Series 450W
CPU fan: Artic Cooling Freezer I11 Compact

It did also have (now disconnected/removed):
graphics card: Zotac NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6GB
SSD, HDD and DVD drive

Purchased and build 6/4/2016. No problems except DRAM needing reseating once or twice.

Have tried:
- removing and replacing graphics card
- disconnecting and reconnecting SSD, HDD
- different monitor, keyboard, mouse
- DRAM in other slots
- resetting BIOS RAM (incl. removing the battery)
- VGA, DVI and HDMI outputs

Have yet to try:
- reseating the CPU
- full rebuild

It's my son's PC so he's rather dismayed at present.

 

[Jwpanz]

Right off the bat, your RAM sticks out to me. Is this dual channel or single channel RAM (1 or 2 sticks)? If you've had to continually reseat it then perhaps your RAM is not compatible or simply faulty. The other option may be to simply reseat your CPU as the contact pins in the socket could be off-set. I have a 6600k with an Asus Z170-AR and have ran into this same problem. Reseating the CPU and not overtightening your cooler may do the trick (it did for me, at least).

The other issue I'm seeing is your power supply. The VS series is a bit weak and at 450 watts with that system setup you may be stressing it too much.

Lastly, it could be a bad motherboard. These sudden stoppages of an otherwise functioning system are tell-tale signs of bad motherboards.

Cheapest option first would be reseat the CPU. If that fails then borrow another power supply (or use one you have lying around or from another system) and swap it out. Test the system with it and if it fails move on to the next cheapest option.

Swap motherboards out. You may need to buy one but it could fix the issue. If it doesn't, return it and try new RAM sticks. Verify the RAM is on the QVL list for the motherboard for compatible RAM. You can view that list here: https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/Z170-PRO-GAMING/HelpDesk_QVL/

Try some of these things out and let us know what happens.

 

[spicysimon]

Thanks very much for the suggestions. I managed to fix it and so I'm very pleased (I think my son is too).

It turned out that the DRAM was fine, as were the motherboard, CPU and PSU.
Along the way I bought another motherboard (which took a bit of thinking about as I might want to use it to build another PC if this wasn't the issue) and another PSU (likewise).
Initially I had the new m/b and PSU + existing CPU and DRAM breadboarded on my desk. The system worked fine, which was really great to see (=> CPU good).
I then put the system into the box only to find that it no longer worked!

*** I tracked this down to a faulty reset button. ***

Of course, I then released that I could get the original system to work too (albeit with the reset button now disconnected) and so I did.