- Sep 15, 2021
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Sorry if this is the wrong forum to ask this question in, but I'm really not sure what is causing the issue here. There's a lot of strange behavior coming from my PC, and I really don't know how to even begin to diagnose it.
So about a year ago, I upgraded from an i5-4460/gtx 970 to a ryzen 3900x/gtx 1080ti. (Obviously) this meant that I had to upgrade my motherboard, get new ram, and with the increased power consumption, I figured it was time to move on from my cx500 power supply. So I guess you could call it an entirely new build, just with some old hard drives in it.
The total specs are here:
CPU: Ryzen 3900x
Mobo: Asus Prime x570-p (not the pro)
Ram: 32gb T-Force Vulcan Z (ddr4-3200, 2x16gb, cl16)
GPU: PNY GTX 1080ti (Blower-style, the one without the LEDs)
PSU: Be Quiet Straight Power 11 BN619 750W
Storage:
The events leading up to my problems are a bit unorganized, so I apologize for the cluttered and hard-to-follow text. I also don't remember the exact order in which these events occurred, as it was a few months ago and I've just been dealing with it until today.
Theory 1: Windows-related issue
I believe my problems started when I installed a linux distro alongside windows to dual-boot. Being a software developer, I was a bit too confident in my lack of experience with linux, and started with Arch. I'm guessing that was the event that led to me completely messing up my windows boot manager. Eventually I realized I was in over my head with Arch, and opted for a more-user-friendly distro (I believe it's Kubuntu). When that was successfully installed, I tried to boot back into windows, and realized my boot manager was screwed up. Not wanting to lose my data, I did some sketchy reinstallation of windows to another drive, and copied all the data over. I don't remember exactly what I did, but something led to something, and I believe now my boot folder is located on the Kingston drive, with all of the windows data on my m2 drive.
Theory 2: Motherboard-related issue
When I tried to boot into windows, it worked, but it took almost an hour to get to my desktop. If things haven't sounded confusing enough, I don't even think it's a windows-related problem. Upon turning the computer on, it would show the ASUS splash screen, and freeze up for 30-40 minutes. Pressing delete to get into the bios seems to only work in the allotted time in the bios, but it still takes 30+ minutes to get through the screen. (If that doesn't make sense, here's an example: When it shows "press delete to enter bios", it will always show that screen for 30+ minutes. However, it only lets me enter the bios if I press delete within the first 3 seconds of the screen showing up. If I wait 10 seconds for example, then press delete, it will just boot into windows 29 minutes and 50 seconds later). When I do get into the bios, it feels extremely laggy. There's a 1-2 second delay between clicking and something registering, and that was leading me to believe it was possibly a motherboard issue.
Theory 3: Dead/Dying HDD-related issue
Around this time, it came to my attention that one of my Seagate drives died (or was on the brink of death). I can't read or write to it, it's only detected maybe 15% of the time, and it shows the "format this drive" screen most of the time when I turn my PC on. So I was guessing that maybe my PC was trying to detect it on boot up, and it was just getting frozen up because it's only able to semi-detect its existence.
Theory 4: M2 SSD-related issue
As I said though, for the most part I've been ignoring these problems. They didn't seem to affect my day-to-day use (as long as I didn't shut my computer off the night before, which usually isn't a problem because as a software developer, it's a bit of a pain to launch all the required applications I need every morning). Occasionally I'd have a problem where I couldn't open a folder on my desktop, or couldn't launch a .exe file, but a simple restart would usually fix this issue. But I would assume those problems would point towards the drive they're on (the sabrent rocket m2) being faulty.
Theory 5: PSU-related issue
This morning, I did the normal morning routine-- turned my amp, dac, and monitors on, and sat down. I tried to move my mouse and nothing happened. I assumed it just got unplugged, so being lazy and having an extremely cluttered desk, I just decided to live without my mouse for the day instead of following the wire to plug it back in. So I pressed the windows key to navigate my pc with my keyboard, and the start menu didn't open. That's when I tried to turn on caps lock (just to see if my keyboard was receiving power), and the LED on my keyboard didn't come on. Followed both my keyboard wire and mouse wire to my PC and found they were both plugged in. Tried unplugging/re-plugging my mouse (my keyboard is ps/2), and that didn't fix it. That's when I decided "okay I'll wait 30 minutes for it to turn on", and tried to restart it. That's when the strangest behavior I've seen to date happened. I pressed the power button, and nothing happened. I held the power button down for 4 seconds, and nothing happened. I did the same thing for 10 seconds, which turned to 20, and 30, and still nothing. Realizing there was no other option, I shut it off using the switch on the back of the power supply.
Theory 6: GPU-related issue
After getting my PC off, I decided it was time to actually try to fix this mess. I moved my PC to a more-suitable area for working on it, and decided that testing the HDD theory was the easiest first step. Just to make sure it wasn't an issue that would solve itself, I moved my PC to a suitable place to work on it, and fired it up normally. It took about 10 minutes, but eventually it turned on. However, it didn't display the ASUS splash screen, nor the windows screen. It showed no signal until it got to the windows sign-in screen. Thought it was a bit weird, but no problem. At least there wasn't a power surge that killed my PC, and at least there wasn't a problem caused by shutting my PC off with the PSU switch a few minutes prior. So after that, I went and unplugged every drive except my m2, and tried turning it on again. This time, absolutely nothing happened. It's just showing no signal. It's been like this for probably an hour and a half, and I would've thought at least a "no bootable media found" screen would've popped up if I did take out the boot drive.
So after writing all of this out, I'm starting to think it might be a motherboard related issue. It wouldn't make sense for any other part to be causing all of these issues, and it would make even less sense if every part was causing its own issue. Does that sound right to anyone, and what sort of steps should I take to properly diagnose and fix these issues? I'm honestly at a total loss at this point, I've never had a problem so inconsistently and unpredictably annoying, where new issues seem to pop up randomly. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
So about a year ago, I upgraded from an i5-4460/gtx 970 to a ryzen 3900x/gtx 1080ti. (Obviously) this meant that I had to upgrade my motherboard, get new ram, and with the increased power consumption, I figured it was time to move on from my cx500 power supply. So I guess you could call it an entirely new build, just with some old hard drives in it.
The total specs are here:
CPU: Ryzen 3900x
Mobo: Asus Prime x570-p (not the pro)
Ram: 32gb T-Force Vulcan Z (ddr4-3200, 2x16gb, cl16)
GPU: PNY GTX 1080ti (Blower-style, the one without the LEDs)
PSU: Be Quiet Straight Power 11 BN619 750W
Storage:
- Sabrent Rocket 500gb m.2/pcie4 (used as a boot drive)
- Kingston 240gb ssd (the cheapest one you can find on amazon)
- WD Green 1tb ssd
- Seagate 1tb caviar blue hdd
- Seagate 1tb caviar blue hdd
The events leading up to my problems are a bit unorganized, so I apologize for the cluttered and hard-to-follow text. I also don't remember the exact order in which these events occurred, as it was a few months ago and I've just been dealing with it until today.
Theory 1: Windows-related issue
I believe my problems started when I installed a linux distro alongside windows to dual-boot. Being a software developer, I was a bit too confident in my lack of experience with linux, and started with Arch. I'm guessing that was the event that led to me completely messing up my windows boot manager. Eventually I realized I was in over my head with Arch, and opted for a more-user-friendly distro (I believe it's Kubuntu). When that was successfully installed, I tried to boot back into windows, and realized my boot manager was screwed up. Not wanting to lose my data, I did some sketchy reinstallation of windows to another drive, and copied all the data over. I don't remember exactly what I did, but something led to something, and I believe now my boot folder is located on the Kingston drive, with all of the windows data on my m2 drive.
Theory 2: Motherboard-related issue
When I tried to boot into windows, it worked, but it took almost an hour to get to my desktop. If things haven't sounded confusing enough, I don't even think it's a windows-related problem. Upon turning the computer on, it would show the ASUS splash screen, and freeze up for 30-40 minutes. Pressing delete to get into the bios seems to only work in the allotted time in the bios, but it still takes 30+ minutes to get through the screen. (If that doesn't make sense, here's an example: When it shows "press delete to enter bios", it will always show that screen for 30+ minutes. However, it only lets me enter the bios if I press delete within the first 3 seconds of the screen showing up. If I wait 10 seconds for example, then press delete, it will just boot into windows 29 minutes and 50 seconds later). When I do get into the bios, it feels extremely laggy. There's a 1-2 second delay between clicking and something registering, and that was leading me to believe it was possibly a motherboard issue.
Theory 3: Dead/Dying HDD-related issue
Around this time, it came to my attention that one of my Seagate drives died (or was on the brink of death). I can't read or write to it, it's only detected maybe 15% of the time, and it shows the "format this drive" screen most of the time when I turn my PC on. So I was guessing that maybe my PC was trying to detect it on boot up, and it was just getting frozen up because it's only able to semi-detect its existence.
Theory 4: M2 SSD-related issue
As I said though, for the most part I've been ignoring these problems. They didn't seem to affect my day-to-day use (as long as I didn't shut my computer off the night before, which usually isn't a problem because as a software developer, it's a bit of a pain to launch all the required applications I need every morning). Occasionally I'd have a problem where I couldn't open a folder on my desktop, or couldn't launch a .exe file, but a simple restart would usually fix this issue. But I would assume those problems would point towards the drive they're on (the sabrent rocket m2) being faulty.
Theory 5: PSU-related issue
This morning, I did the normal morning routine-- turned my amp, dac, and monitors on, and sat down. I tried to move my mouse and nothing happened. I assumed it just got unplugged, so being lazy and having an extremely cluttered desk, I just decided to live without my mouse for the day instead of following the wire to plug it back in. So I pressed the windows key to navigate my pc with my keyboard, and the start menu didn't open. That's when I tried to turn on caps lock (just to see if my keyboard was receiving power), and the LED on my keyboard didn't come on. Followed both my keyboard wire and mouse wire to my PC and found they were both plugged in. Tried unplugging/re-plugging my mouse (my keyboard is ps/2), and that didn't fix it. That's when I decided "okay I'll wait 30 minutes for it to turn on", and tried to restart it. That's when the strangest behavior I've seen to date happened. I pressed the power button, and nothing happened. I held the power button down for 4 seconds, and nothing happened. I did the same thing for 10 seconds, which turned to 20, and 30, and still nothing. Realizing there was no other option, I shut it off using the switch on the back of the power supply.
Theory 6: GPU-related issue
After getting my PC off, I decided it was time to actually try to fix this mess. I moved my PC to a more-suitable area for working on it, and decided that testing the HDD theory was the easiest first step. Just to make sure it wasn't an issue that would solve itself, I moved my PC to a suitable place to work on it, and fired it up normally. It took about 10 minutes, but eventually it turned on. However, it didn't display the ASUS splash screen, nor the windows screen. It showed no signal until it got to the windows sign-in screen. Thought it was a bit weird, but no problem. At least there wasn't a power surge that killed my PC, and at least there wasn't a problem caused by shutting my PC off with the PSU switch a few minutes prior. So after that, I went and unplugged every drive except my m2, and tried turning it on again. This time, absolutely nothing happened. It's just showing no signal. It's been like this for probably an hour and a half, and I would've thought at least a "no bootable media found" screen would've popped up if I did take out the boot drive.
So after writing all of this out, I'm starting to think it might be a motherboard related issue. It wouldn't make sense for any other part to be causing all of these issues, and it would make even less sense if every part was causing its own issue. Does that sound right to anyone, and what sort of steps should I take to properly diagnose and fix these issues? I'm honestly at a total loss at this point, I've never had a problem so inconsistently and unpredictably annoying, where new issues seem to pop up randomly. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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