Question Red CPU and orange DRAM lights on after successful boot?

[SashaSanguine]

My new PC using an AMD R9 7950X3D, NVIDIA RTX 4090, and MSI X670E Tomahawk motherboard is failing to boot to bios. I had turned it off after successfully booting to windows with the plan to change the boot drive to a new SSD I had, so I changed the boot priority to a USB drive I had with the Windows ISO on it to install to the new SSD. After changing boot priority to UEFI USB, now the PC will not boot, but it will power on. The red CPU light is on, which I read indicates poor seating or hardware damage, but this was working just fine before I went in the bios. The cables did not come loose. I swapped out thr sticks of RAM to test only one. I even reset the BIOS by pulling the battery and popping it back in. Still nothing. I am lost on solutions here and can't really do anything if it won't boot. Any ideas?

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

In order to clear the CMOS, disconnect from the wall and display, then remove the battery, then press and hold down the power button for 30secnds t drain any residual power. If you're able to get to BIOS, you don't need to set the bot priority to anything, leave it as is. Instead you let the OS installer on your USB drive do it's thing so long as you fabricated the bootable USB installer instead of just copying over the ISO to the USB drive.

I had turned it off after successfully booting to windows
Did you recycle the older OS and it's drive?

 

[SashaSanguine]

I did reuse the old drive and OS.

I tried to reset the bios to no avail, the PC would not post. So I took it to a repair shop to have a diagnostic done on the parts. The CPU was found to be defective (and power supply arced when switched on and plugged in but that wasn't believed to have caused the problem). No bent or burnt contacts on the mobo or CPU though.

I since RMAed the CPU, power supply, and motherboard (just in case). This should resolve my issue in the immediate future.