Question PC won't POST, really strange

[Twenny]

Hi guys,

I have ran into a really strange issue recently and have tried everything I can think of. Hoping someone here may have some ideas.

First off the specs:
CPU - i5-9600k
GPU - RTX-2080 (now replaced with RTX-3070ti...)
MOBO - Asus z390-f
PSU - EVGA 850W G2
RAM - 16GB G-Skill Tridentz
Windows 10

I built this machine about 3 years ago and have never had any issues until last week. I have been working from home due to COVID so have been using my PC to RDP into my work machine. I often have meetings via Microsoft Teams which I have running locally as I have issues getting the mic to work over RDP sometimes.

Last week during a teams meeting the call dropped out, at which point I discovered teams had crashed and would no longer open. After a few minutes the computer black screened and locked up. After a hard reset the PC would not POST anymore. At this point my first thought was GPU, as I had a similar issue once before. I removed the GPU and the PC booted up and ran. I now started having really strange issues though, could not run any applications, chrome & edge would crash with out of memory and AVs and other generally strange behavior. The PC would also have strange artifacting and other graphical glitches (note still on integrated graphics at this point). Chkdsk and memtest both showed no obvious issues.

Within a few hours the PC was unusable so I decided to do a fresh install of windows. After the reinstall everything worked perfectly. I even decided to bite the bullet and buy a new 3070ti, as I was still under the assumption that maybe that was the cause. For the next week the PC ran better than ever, until today...

I was in another teams call which dropped out just like last time, teams had crashed and then the computer locked up. Tried the same as before but this time no POST with or without the GPU. It turns on, the CPU & DRAM LEDs on the motherboard light up and go out as expected but the VGA light does not come on at all. There is absolutely no display output.

I have tried resetting CMOS, moving RAM sticks around, reseating everything etc.

Possible motherboard failure? Teams just a strange coincidence?

Thanks in advance

 

[drivinfast247]

Run memtest86 on the RAM for a few passes.

The symptoms lead me towards the CPU failing, but let's do the easy thing and test the RAM.

 

[Twenny]

Run memtest86 on the RAM for a few passes.

The symptoms lead me towards the CPU failing, but let's do the easy thing and test the RAM.

Thanks for the reply. As I mentioned, last week when the failure first occurred I ran memtest and it was fine. After this second failure I am completely unable to even reach the BIOS let alone run memtest. There is no display output at all 🙁

 

[drivinfast247]

Thanks for the reply. As I mentioned, last week when the failure first occurred I ran memtest and it was fine. After this second failure I am completely unable to even reach the BIOS let alone run memtest. There is no display output at all 🙁

The symptoms of the graphical artifacts on iGPU lead me to believe the CPU is bad. But statistically the motherboard is more likely to randomly go bad vs. the CPU.

Please wait for others to chime in with additional information.

 

[Twenny]

Yeah I am leaning towards motherboard too. I just find it weird how all the artifacts etc were seemingly fixed after reinstalling windows and it ran perfect for a week until today. Surely it's a coincidence but both times this happened I was in a teams call... (Although I had a few others with no issue)