Question Powering up with wrong memory fried NVMe SSD

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Pextaxmx

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Jun 15, 2020
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What happened:

My high school senior cousin was building a PC with some used and new parts
Board: ASUS B250M-A
CPU: i7-6700
RAM: 1X 16GB SK hynix HMA82GR7JJR8N-VK (this is a brand new ECC REG ram he bought by mistake. The board won't take it)
SSD: SAMSUNG 970 PRO 512 brand new (Christmas present from me)
GPU: Gigabyte GTX 1660 Super single fan
PSU: Corsair 500W

The first boot up didn't do anything, obviously, but even without any beep. Only the CPU fan was running, no screen, no beep.
He tried to kill (by holding the on/off switch long seconds) and turn back up at least 4 times.

Then he called me and we figured out the memory was not right. The Samsung SSD has been on the board all time.

We ordered brand new Cricual 16GB non ECC unbuffered.

When received it, seemed to work fine until the first boot for Windows 10 installation. We got "Windows could not prepare the computer to boot into the next phase of installation. To install Windows, restart the installation." error.

I tried DiskPart to clean the SSD and start over, but the diskpart couldn't see the SSD (strangely there was no Disk 0, Only Disk 1 which was the USB stick for Windows 10 installation.)

Went ahead anyway with installation and tried to delete partitions and create a new one but the existing partitions couldn't be deleted by the Windows 10 installation disk manager.

The SSD is under warranty so we will get a replacement but I am really curious whether this is something normally expected for powering up a board with a wrong memory stick. Any thoughts?

Thanks,
 
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Flayed

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Jun 23, 2015
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Pextaxmx said:
What happened:

My high school senior cousin was building a PC with some used and new parts
Board: ASUS B250M-A
CPU: i7-6700
RAM: 1X 16GB SK hynix HMA82GR7JJR8N-VK (this is a brand new ECC REG ram he bought by mistake. The board won't take it)
SSD: SAMSUNG 970 PRO 512 brand new (Christmas present from me)
GPU: Gigabyte GTX 1660 Super single fan
PSU: Corsair 500W

The first boot up didn't do anything, obviously, but even without any beep. Only the CPU fan was running, no screen, no beep.
He tried to kill (by holding the on/off switch long seconds) and turn back up at least 4 times.

Then he called me and we figured out the memory was not right. The Samsung SSD has been on the board all time.

We ordered brand new Cricual 16GB non ECC unbuffered.

When received it, seemed to work fine until the first boot for Windows 10 installation. We got "Windows could not prepare the computer to boot into the next phase of installation. To install Windows, restart the installation." error.

I tried DiskPart to clean the SSD and start over, but the diskpart couldn't see the SSD (strangely there was no Disk 0, Only Disk 1 which is the USB stick for Windows 10 installation.)

Went ahead anyway with installation and tried to delete partitions and create a new one but the existing partitions couldn't be deleted.

The SSD is under warranty so we will get a replacement but I am really curious whether this is something normally expected for powering up a board with a wrong memory stick. Any thoughts?

Thanks,
Click to expand...
Maybe an unrelated issue to the memory thing.
 
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Lutfij

Lutfij

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Corsair is the brand of the PSU, 500 is the wattage, you will need to include the model for the PSU. By any chance is it a green label CX unit? How old is the unit? If so, that's your first mistake. Since you have an iGPU on the processor, work without the discrete GPU and then use the stick of ram on any slot.

You might want to check and see which BIOS version you're currently on for your motherboard.
 
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Pextaxmx

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Lutfij said:
Corsair is the brand of the PSU, 500 is the wattage, you will need to include the model for the PSU. By any chance is it a green label CX unit? How old is the unit? If so, that's your first mistake. Since you have an iGPU on the processor, work without the discrete GPU and then use the stick of ram on any slot.

You might want to check and see which BIOS version you're currently on for your motherboard.
Click to expand...

Yes exactly green CX from September 2017.
The BIOS is most recent (but dated May 2018 - I guess they stopped supporting it)
The manual didn't specify which RAM slot to use for single stick - can you please elaborate a bit for me? How is iGPU related to the different RAM slots? Also there was a discrete GPU installed as well.
 
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DSzymborski

DSzymborski

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I can't see these two things being connected.

And the PSU is not very good. And given the manufacturing dates, it was probably sitting in a warehouse collecting dust for three years before purchase. Corsair greatly improved their CXs with their new line in 2015.
 
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Pextaxmx

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Jun 15, 2020
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DSzymborski said:
I can't see these two things being connected.

And the PSU is not very good. And given the manufacturing dates, it was probably sitting in a warehouse collecting dust for three years before purchase. Corsair greatly improved their CXs with their new line in 2015.
Click to expand...

The 2017 date is the purchase date - so it is possible that the PSU was a Newegg old stock (thus the deep rebate). I can't check the manufacturing date on the label right now.

How bad is this PSU? What should I (and my cousin) look out for? Is this bad enough to consider buying a new PSU for him?
The 500W budget is OK for a 65W TDP CPU and 1660 Super, no HDD (or am I wrong?).

Anyway, most of you seem to think (1) due to the bad CX PSU or (2) the Samsung SSD was defective to begin with (which is surprising for a name like Samsung... especially when 970 PRO is their flagship line)
 
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uzujzh

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Pextaxmx said:
The 2017 date is the purchase date - so it is possible that the PSU was a Newegg old stock (thus the deep rebate). I can't check the manufacturing date on the label right now.

How bad is this PSU? What should I (and my cousin) look out for? Is this bad enough to consider buying a new PSU for him?
The 500W budget is OK for a 65W TDP CPU and 1660 Super, no HDD (or am I wrong?).

Anyway, most of you seem to think (1) due to the bad CX PSU or (2) the Samsung SSD was defective to begin with (which is surprising for a name like Samsung... especially when 970 PRO is their flagship line)
Click to expand...
did you put a cooling pad and a heat sink on the ssd? NVME SSDs are very fast so they tend to get very hot.
 
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Pextaxmx

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uzujzh said:
did you put a cooling pad and a heat sink on the ssd? NVME SSDs are very fast so they tend to get very hot.
Click to expand...

well, I agree that the NVMe stick might have gotten hot after surge of writings for Windows installation right before the first reboot. But that should not kill the SSD permanantly. That only would be a good enough reason already for an RMA. The case was a relatively roomy FractalDesign mATX tower with the side door wide open.
 
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