[SOLVED] Possible dead motherboard? B450f gaming ryzen 7 3800x

[Interluxx]

So, I have a black screen with a solid underscore on the left hand side (not flashing.) I cannot find any information on this so ill give a quick run down.

I was playing halo and its started to get super choppy. It crashed and gave me the BSOD SYSTEM_SERVICE_EXCEPTION. I turned it back on and it ran well for about 20 minutes and it happened again.

After that I went through updating all drivers and bios. Didnt make it all the way through.

After that it pretty much crashed for good. I've been able to get to the bios maybe 3 times over 7 hours. Most of the time ot will just be that black screen with the SOLID white underscore.

I have:
Cleaned the ram.
Tried using one ram stick for boot up with each stick, no changes.
Reseated the CPU to check for dirt or damages. Fine.
Unplugged my gpu. I don't have onboard graphics so I couldn't see anything but the indicator light on the motherboard were repeating exactly what they had been for hours.
Pulled the NVME boot drive and it booted perfectly in my Alienware laptop. Uplugged storage drives.
Reset bios via cmos battery.
Without NVME it says I need to add a boot drive so I know I'm pulling the right boot drive.
I have restarted after every single step mention here with the same outcome.

The only thing I can think of is it being my MOBO. All lights are on, fans rotating, no beeps etc. PSU is fine.

What is weird is I can't find any information on this specific (seemingly catastrophic) type of failure.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[drea.drechsler]

More things to do, no particular order:

You've already reset CMOS. That's good, while troubleshooting leave settings in full default conditions not even enabling XMP.

Uninstall any and all motherboard utilities...like the Armoury Crate thing that tries to install. Even if you uninstall it it will leave behind it's services; it's a Trojan horse with a backdoor into your system that Asus can send anything to it they want or monitor anything they want. BIOS tries to reinstall it at every boot, changing a setting stops it and that's one you should change. But even after disabling that I had to do a clean install of Windows to completely clear this garbage out.

Uninstall your GPU drivers with DDU. Reinstall fresh/new drivers only from AMD or Nvidia web site.

Uninstall chipset drivers. Reinstall fresh/new drivers only from AMD web site.

In command prompt w/admin type "SFC /scannow" and hit enter.

Right click on the boot drive in My Computer...Properties/Tools/Check... to check the boot drive for logical file system errors...if it needs to fix them up it will need a restart into a repair mode.

Create a new account with admin priviledges and start using it. If all problems go away, your main account is corrupted.

Check the Windows System Store for corruption: in command prompt w/admin type:
"Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth"

also: "Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth"

If it reports it's corrupted, there are ways to repair (sometimes) but you're probably better off with a clean re-install.

Bottom line: consider a clean install of Windows the best solution. It fixes anything that may be wrong and makes a clean break from previous errors (like letting the Armoury Crate trojan get installed). You should certainly do this before declaring your motherboard dead.

 

[Interluxx]

More things to do, no particular order:

You've already reset CMOS. That's good, while troubleshooting leave settings in full default conditions not even enabling XMP.

Uninstall any and all motherboard utilities...like the Armoury Crate thing that tries to install. Even if you uninstall it it will leave behind it's services; it's a Trojan horse with a backdoor into your system that Asus can send anything to it they want or monitor anything they want. BIOS tries to reinstall it at every boot, changing a setting stops it and that's one you should change. But even after disabling that I had to do a clean install of Windows to completely clear this garbage out.

Uninstall your GPU drivers with DDU. Reinstall fresh/new drivers only from AMD or Nvidia web site.

Uninstall chipset drivers. Reinstall fresh/new drivers only from AMD web site.

In command prompt w/admin type "SFC /scannow" and hit enter.

Right click on the boot drive in My Computer...Properties/Tools/Check... to check the boot drive for logical file system errors and fix them up.

Create a new account with admin priviledges and start using it. If all problems go away, your main account is corrupted.

Check the Windows System Store for corruption: in command prompt w/admin type:
"Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /ScanHealth"

also: "Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /CheckHealth"

If it reports it's corrupted, there are ways to repair (sometimes) but you're probably better off with a clean re-install.

Bottom line: consider a clean install of Windows the best solution. It fixes anything that may be wrong and allows a clean break from previous errors (like letting the Armoury Crate trojan get installed). You should certainly do this before declaring your motherboard dead.

Id love to try this but it literally will not do anything other than go to the black screen with the white line. Does not even let me go in to bios. It shows no MB or windows logo. It turns on and goes right to the black screen with the white underscore.

 

[drea.drechsler]

Id love to try this but it literally will not do anything other than go to the black screen with the white line. Does not even let me go in to bios. It shows no MB or windows logo. It turns on and goes right to the black screen with the white underscore.

Tried another GPU? Or move the GPU to another x16 slot?

It won't work great there but it will be a clue to where the problem really is. If it's still bad I'd say the problem is more likely the GPU. But if it works now and you get display and into Windows...then I'd say it's more likely the CPU. That's because the PCIe lanes come from the CPU in the primary slot and from the chipset in a secondary x16 slot.

 

[Interluxx]

Tried another GPU? Or move the GPU to another x16 slot? It won't work great there but it will be a clue to where the problem really is.

I don't have another to try but I did remove it and the lights on the mobo cycled the same as previously. No on-board graphics so I wasn't able to have anything come up on the monitor.

 

[drea.drechsler]

I don't have another to try but I did remove it and the lights on the mobo cycled the same as previously. No on-board graphics so I wasn't able to have anything come up on the monitor.

I added above...try moving it to a secondary x16 slot to use the lanes from the chipset. The second slot should work if you don't have a bunch of SATA drives or a 2nd NVME installed. But it will likely be only wired in x4 even though it's x16 physical, so will be slower.

 

[Interluxx]

I added above...try moving it to a secondary x16 slot to use the lanes from the chipset.

I'll try before I completely tear it down when I get home.

 

[Bjg13190]

I'll try before I completely tear it down when I get home.

Did you have any luck resolving your issue?