Question Probably faulty motherboard: bios or board or gfx ?

[Tritous]

I'm having woes with (I think) my Gigabyte Aorus x570 Xtreme (rev 1) motherboard. It's had weeks of not starting, with the q codes making no sense and sending me down false paths (and the manual has a lot of reserved codes but they are happening). At first I thought it was the gfx card but I think it is more likely the mobo given it also bugs with a spare gfx card I have.

Most of the time it doesn't even bring the screen on, I've had a 4 code cycle, I've had it sit on 45, I've had it sit on 44 (and went through swapping around all the ram 1 by 1), 3e, I've reset the bios with the CMOS switch unknown number of times now, but the baffling thing is a few times it did start up normally.

During one of these times I took a chance to try updating the bios (I know, don't trust @bios, sorry) and windows. It went through another round of not working, then it did and didn't again. Despite the CMOS clear button when it did start again it claimed to have the latest bios from Feb. Naturally being gigabyte the bios says very little. I did have a problem for a while when trying to enter bios it got stuck at the American megatrends logo, until someone suggested pressing y to accept the off screen prompt (confused by qhd monitor)

The most concerning thing is the power button doesn't respond, even the one built onto the mobo. It had worked fine for years, I don't update bios until things break and it was a dead stable build. I have a feeling it might be a bios battery looking around, but joy of the Xtreme is that full mobo heatsink makes getting at anything a nightmare. It may need me to fully remove the board and remove things front and back to get to so I'm looking for advice on if this is worth trying or if it's a dead mobo. It was expensive and I hoped to keep it at least 3 more years so if a battery would do it I'll take that

Before the latest not start issue, there was a phase where it had a couple of blue screens, where the screen was quarter of the display, distorted and had hyper noise on the rest. That's why I initially thought it was a gfx card but I'm less convinced of that now

Full build: https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Tritous/builds/#view=xmbXsY

Apologies for the scrambled timeline, the events have been annoying confusing the whole way, and I am never at my best with my tech denied me

 

[Tritous]

Update, managed to get it to run ubcd and ramcheck86+ found 200 faults in 10 hours, looks like half a dozen small addresses with a single bit crossed on the address line (only shows with some alternate patterns). I'm not convinced this is going to have anything like the effect me problems show, in fact a few addresses I think is normally in the scope of the OS to handle isn't it?

 

[CountMike]

Update, managed to get it to run ubcd and ramcheck86+ found 200 faults in 10 hours, looks like half a dozen small addresses with a single bit crossed on the address line (only shows with some alternate patterns). I'm not convinced this is going to have anything like the effect me problems show, in fact a few addresses I think is normally in the scope of the OS to handle isn't it?

Even one fault is too much, it looks like you have 2 separate RAM kits which could be a problem on it's own. Another problem is high speed RAM with both memory controller channels (4 RAM sticks) being overloaded. Try testing with RAM at base speed (2133MHZ) first and then at lower XMP available.

 

[Tritous]

Even one fault is too much, it looks like you have 2 separate RAM kits which could be a problem on it's own. Another problem is high speed RAM with both memory controller channels (4 RAM sticks) being overloaded. Try testing with RAM at base speed (2133MHZ) first and then at lower XMP available.

I think the actual buy was a set of 4, but the tool only had the pairs in the search. I do roughly not overclocking, but the processor was meant to be able to handle far faster than I had it at: I went more for underutilising and keeping the machine running cool rather than burning it out young (look how well that's worked for me >.<)

In any case the speeds have worked for me for years and I've kept away from overclocking (that and I remember this chip didn't support both CPU and RAM overclocking, only one or the other).

Do you think that the issues seen can be related to bad RAM then? especially not getting to BIOS and the power off button not working (I recall the fault was quite high in the RAM addresses, and I did try booting up with each ram stick one at a time)

If it is the RAM, that would be by far the cheapest fix. That and I need a mobo speaker, if I can even find where to plug it in on this board (it's on the front panel array). What I'm not sure is if the beep codes would give more feedback than the q-code (although when the q-code comes out with numbers the manual says are reserved that really no help)

 

[Tritous]

Ok, returning my old gfx card (need to tidy the home office up for working from home) and it doesn't start again,qcode 45 instantly and doesn't change), doesn't turn off it you hit the power button (and if you hold it for 5 seconds it starts flashing the power led but doesn't turn off. That doesn't feel like ram to me.

Multiple faults?