Question Replaced CPU, motherboard and PSU - but computer still won't start ?

[Malokor]

i5-12400F (and i5-6500)
AMD RX 480
Corsair CX 550M (and Corsair CX 450M)
MSI B-660M-A (and MSI H-110M PRO-VD Plus)
2x 8 GB Crucial RAM
1 SSD and 1 HDD

I began having issues with my 6 year old computer 9 days ago. I posted here: Question - Computer will not start up, already tried many troubleshooting steps ? | Tom's Hardware Forum (tomshardware.com) . I wasn't able to fix it, so I've been replacing parts. First I tried a new PSU and heat sink/fan - those didn't help. Today I received a new CPU and motherboard (i5 12400F and MSI B660M-A) and the issue is still not resolved.

With the old CPU/MoBo all the fans (CPU, case, GPU, PSU) would turn on, and some of the GPU and motherboard lights would turn on (including the EZ Debug LED labled 'CPU'). With the new CPU/MoBo though, I get nothing - no fans or no lights. I plugged in the old stuff again, and still get the fans/lights. I'm kind of at a loss. What is more likely:

1. My old motherboard went bad and I received a bad new one?
2. My old PSU went bad and I received a bad new one?
3. My RAM went bad - 2 sticks at the same time (I tried testing them 1 at a time in all different slots)?
4. Something else? I don't think I actually need my GPU for the old setup (i5 6500), but maybe something is wrong with that? I've reset all plugs multiple times. I saw no bent pins on my new CPU socket and I saw 1 on my old one and straightened it.

Is there some way I can tell if my RAM is bad? Should ordering new new RAM be my next step? If the RAM were bad, why would it allow fans/lights to turn on with one motherboard, but not the other?

Damn, this is stressful. Thanks for reading this and for any advice you might be able to offer!

 

[white.a.drew]

i5-12400F (and i5-6500)
AMD RX 480
Corsair CX 550M (and Corsair CX 450M)
MSI B-660M-A (and MSI H-110M PRO-VD Plus)
2x 8 GB Crucial RAM
1 SSD and 1 HDD

I began having issues with my 6 year old computer 9 days ago. I posted here: Question - Computer will not start up, already tried many troubleshooting steps ? | Tom's Hardware Forum (tomshardware.com) . I wasn't able to fix it, so I've been replacing parts. First I tried a new PSU and heat sink/fan - those didn't help. Today I received a new CPU and motherboard (i5 12400F and MSI B660M-A) and the issue is still not resolved.

With the old CPU/MoBo all the fans (CPU, case, GPU, PSU) would turn on, and some of the GPU and motherboard lights would turn on (including the EZ Debug LED labled 'CPU'). With the new CPU/MoBo though, I get nothing - no fans or no lights. I plugged in the old stuff again, and still get the fans/lights. I'm kind of at a loss. What is more likely:

1. My old motherboard went bad and I received a bad new one?
2. My old PSU went bad and I received a bad new one?
3. My RAM went bad - 2 sticks at the same time (I tried testing them 1 at a time in all different slots)?
4. Something else? I don't think I actually need my GPU for the old setup (i5 6500), but maybe something is wrong with that? I've reset all plugs multiple times. I saw no bent pins on my new CPU socket and I saw 1 on my old one and straightened it.

Is there some way I can tell if my RAM is bad? Should ordering new new RAM be my next step? If the RAM were bad, why would it allow fans/lights to turn on with one motherboard, but not the other?

Damn, this is stressful. Thanks for reading this and for any advice you might be able to offer!

Did you reset the bios yet? Not with the jumpers but the long way?

 

[Malokor]

Did you reset the bios yet? Not with the jumpers but the long way?

Is that something I can do if nothing is turning on? If you're referring to removing and replacing the CMOS battery - I did that with the old motherboard, but the the new one I don't see a CMOS battery. Is that something I should have to do with a brand new motherboard? Thanks for taking the time to offer me advice.

 

[white.a.drew]

Is that something I can do if nothing is turning on? If you're referring to removing and replacing the CMOS battery - I did that with the old motherboard, but the the new one I don't see a CMOS battery. Is that something I should have to do with a brand new motherboard? Thanks for taking the time to offer me advice.

Some new boards come pretested and have an old cupid registered to it because of this so adding a new CPU can confuse it and not allow boot and yes unplug the psu then remove the lithium battery from the Mobo and hold the power button for 30s x2s then reseat battery and power cable.... Yes your new Mobo has a lithium battery, 99% consumer boards have one

 

[white.a.drew]

Is that something I can do if nothing is turning on? If you're referring to removing and replacing the CMOS battery - I did that with the old motherboard, but the the new one I don't see a CMOS battery. Is that something I should have to do with a brand new motherboard? Thanks for taking the time to offer me advice.

Have you made sure all the psu cable are plugged in securely to the back of the psu? And the board? Are you using any old cables or using all the cables that came with the new psu? Are you trying to test boot with a single stick of ram CPU and GPU or are you trying to boot all at once? CPU ram GPU ssd's hdd's everything set up?

 

[Malokor]

Wow, I'm so stupid. In my search for the CMOS battery, I discovered the JFP1 pins. I plugged my front panel stuff into an unlabeled identical pin set that just happened to be in same location as the JFP1 pints on my old motherboard. Now the fans and lights are turning on and there's no red CPU light lit on the motherboard! There is a white VGA light though, so I'm guessing that means my GPU is bad. Thanks for all your suggestions!

 

[Malokor]

My screen does say "HDMI 2 is connected" but it's receiving no signal. The GPU does have a blue LED on, so it's receiving power. Is there anything I should check to adjust/fix my GPU? I should note that the original issue I had was my computer not outputting to screens - this is even before the Red CPU light on the old motherboard. I just came home Friday night to find it that way. I hadn't been fiddling around with the computer's insides before that.

EDIT: Could my PSU be causing my GPU to not work? I'll have to try the replacement one again.

 

[white.a.drew]

My screen does say "HDMI 2 is connected" but it's receiving no signal. The GPU does have a blue LED on, so it's receiving power. Is there anything I should check to adjust/fix my GPU? I should note that the original issue I had was my computer not outputting to screens - this is even before the Red CPU light on the old motherboard. I just came home Friday night to find it that way. I hadn't been fiddling around with the computer's insides before that.

EDIT: Could my PSU be causing my GPU to not work? I'll have to try the replacement one again.

GPU maybe dead or the bios could be set to legacy by default most new cards require uefi

 

[Malokor]

I tried resetting the bios by placing a screwdriver between the 2 pins. I pushed the power button for 30s twice while doing this. Is removing the CMOS battery likely to be effective when this isn't? I sent MSI support a message asking where the CMOS battery is on the B660M-A, so once I hear back from them, I can give it a try.

I'm still guessing my GPU is the issue. It does have a blue light on (it's red if only receiving power from the pci slot and not also from the PSU cable), but the fans aren't on, and there's no signal. The blue light is giving me hope that it's salvageable, but is it not really a good indicator that the GPU is not dead?

 

[Karadjgne]

Gpu is doubtfully the issue. The issue is more likely you not wanting to fix stuff, wanting to instead load the parts cannon and pull the trigger.

Where is the monitor plugged into. It should be the gpu slot Not the motherboard slot.

 

[Malokor]

Gpu is doubtfully the issue. The issue is more likely you not wanting to fix stuff, wanting to instead load the parts cannon and pull the trigger.

Where is the monitor plugged into. It should be the gpu slot Not the motherboard slot.

What does that even mean? How am I not wanting to fix things? When I first had an issue I went through many troubleshooting checklists as I described in my first post on an older thread (linked in the first post of this thread). I had a red CPU light on my motherboard. I reseated all connections, reset the CMOS battery, installed a new CMOS battery, tried RAM 1 stick at a time in all slots, tried a 2nd PSU, etc. None of that worked, so I got the new CPU and motherboard. No more red CPU light. After fixing my big JFP1 mistake, I still get no output to screen. This is the same initial issue I had before I first started taking things apart - I came home after a storm and I had no output signal. What steps did a skip here trying to fix things?

And of course the monitor is plugged into the GPU and not the motherboard. I've tried 2 different monitors with both DisplayPort and HDMI connections.

 

[Karadjgne]

You'd be surprised at the number of even skilled pc builders who do stupid stuff without thinking. Even Linus from Linus tech tips stuck a cpu cooler on a cpu, without first taking off the protective film from the cooler and hot stumped temporarily as to why the high temps.

Plugging the monitor into the motherboard is quite a common error.

You had a red cpu light. Most common cause of that is cooler installation error, ppl tightening the top right corner before seating the rest of the screws, can often give dram debug light errors as well. Just reseating the cpu/cooler could have been the fix.

You plugged the front i/o wiring into the wrong header. At that point, to me, everything is suspect, not because of any lack of expertise, but simply due to human error/oversight. Ppl get in a hurry because they got parts, the fix and several hours of gaming are minutes away, and they make mistakes. It happens to everyone at times.

Plug the gpu into the 2nd slot. See if that makes a difference. Many times bios gets an issue with pcie gens and can fail at output. That's bypassed with the 2nd slot as that's chipset pcie, not cpu pcie. The fix being a small bios setting change if it works.

 

[Malokor]

You'd be surprised at the number of even skilled pc builders who do stupid stuff without thinking. Even Linus from Linus tech tips stuck a cpu cooler on a cpu, without first taking off the protective film from the cooler and hot stumped temporarily as to why the high temps.

Plugging the monitor into the motherboard is quite a common error.

You had a red cpu light. Most common cause of that is cooler installation error, ppl tightening the top right corner before seating the rest of the screws, can often give dram debug light errors as well. Just reseating the cpu/cooler could have been the fix.

You plugged the front i/o wiring into the wrong header. At that point, to me, everything is suspect, not because of any lack of expertise, but simply due to human error/oversight. Ppl get in a hurry because they got parts, the fix and several hours of gaming are minutes away, and they make mistakes. It happens to everyone at times.

Plug the gpu into the 2nd slot. See if that makes a difference. Many times bios gets an issue with pcie gens and can fail at output. That's bypassed with the 2nd slot as that's chipset pcie, not cpu pcie. The fix being a small bios setting change if it works.

Thanks for your suggestion. I tried the 2nd slot and I'm still having the same issue. I did have to unplug the hard drives from the motherboard to get it to fit there, but it should be able to get to BIOS without a boot drive, assuming there's a signal from the GPU, right?

 

[Malokor]

One piece of information I've neglected to include in all of my posts is that I (used to) usually have 3 outputs connected to my GPU - my 2 computer monitors, and a AVR with my TV connected to that. I'd usually just use the AVR for audio, but sometimes I'd use the TV too, and not-infrequently, turning the TV on with the GPU input selected on the AVR would give me a green screen and the audio would stop working. It was usually fixed by one of a few methods: 1) turn the AVR and TV off and back on again; 2) go into my AMD software and toggle some setting for the AVR output (usually something like GPU scaling); 3) restart the computer. So, my point is, I'm not sure if that green screen is an indicator that I was stressing the GPU too much. I did have the AVR/TV output set to mirror my 2nd 1080p display, so I wasn't outputting at 4k or anything.
It looks like I bought my 40' HDMI cable in late 2019, so I've been using this slightly problematic setup for nearly 3 years.

 

[Malokor]

Gpu is doubtfully the issue.

Does the fact that the blue GPU LED comes on lead you to this conclusion? Other than popping out the CMOS battery (which I think requires removing heat sinks and/or other components from the motherboard to access), I'm not sure what to try other than replacing the GPU. I guess I could try new RAM, but I think it's far less likely that both RAM sticks went bad at the same time than that the GPU went bad.