[SOLVED] Struggling to assemble new PC. Continuous beeps, and nothing on screen.

Nov 17, 2018
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First of all, I am sorry if this is not the right subforum.

Basically, I have been struggling for the last couple of days trying to assemble a PC from parts. It is something I have done several times, but there is something wrong with this one and I can't figure out what it is.

It's a AMD Ryzen 5 2600 in a Biostar Racing B350GT3 Motherboard, a 16GB DDR4 2667Mhz ram stick, and then a couple hard drives, and a 1050Ti graphics card.

I assembled all the components, hit the power button... and nothing happened. A led in the motherboard lighted up, and also the led on the power button, but it didn't respond, and the fans were not moving. I tried the PSU alone, jump starting it by shorting the green and black cables, and the fan didn't spin. So I got another PSU from another brand. This time I plugged it and the PSU and the CPU fans started turning... but nothing appeared on screen. I made sure all the cables were well connected, all by one. I even disconnected everything non-essential (hard drives, external graphics card, front USB ports, etc., leaving only the two PSU cables, the CPU and the CPU fan and heatsink. Same thing, nothing on screen.

At that point, I grabbed a motherboard speaker I had lying around and I connected it. After ~15 seconds after pressing the power button, the speaker started beeping continuously. According to the motherboard manual, that meant "Memory sizing error or Memory module not found". So I assumed it was a defective ram module, went to the store this morning, and got a new module. Plugged it, turned it on... and the beeps were still there.

I went to a relative's house who has a similar build, tried my ram module in his PC and worked just fine. I tried his module (8GB in this case, but same specs) and the beeps were still there. So it's not the RAM.

I removed the motherboard from the case, in case there was any short or something. I removed and placed again the CPU in case there was some bent pin (there wasn't, it looked perfectly fine). (Turning it on still produces the same beeps (BTW, it doesn't beep if the CPU cable is not connected). Turning it on without the ram module produces the same beeps, but immediately instead of waiting 15 seconds, which tells me it somehow is aware there's a ram module in there. I also tried the ram module in all 4 slots (I already did that several times).

At this point, I am lost. I would hate to go to the store a third time (I am building this PC as a favor for a relative), specially if I am not sure where is the source of error (the motherboard maybe? what about the CPU? what if the memory stick is not compatible?). I went through all points of this post https://forums.tomshardware.com/thr...ng-about-post-boot-no-video-problems.1285536/, but I didn't see anything relevant that changed anything.

So, any ideas? Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
 
Solution
First of all, I am sorry if this is not the right subforum.

Basically, I have been struggling for the last couple of days trying to assemble a PC from parts. It is something I have done several times, but there is something wrong with this one and I can't figure out what it is.

It's a AMD Ryzen 5 2600 in a Biostar Racing B350GT3 Motherboard, a 16GB DDR4 2667Mhz ram stick, and then a couple hard drives, and a 1050Ti graphics card.

I assembled all the components, hit the power button... and nothing happened. A led in the motherboard lighted up, and also the led on the power button, but it didn't respond, and the fans were not moving. I tried the PSU alone, jump starting it by shorting the green and black cables, and the fan didn't...
First of all, I am sorry if this is not the right subforum.

Basically, I have been struggling for the last couple of days trying to assemble a PC from parts. It is something I have done several times, but there is something wrong with this one and I can't figure out what it is.

It's a AMD Ryzen 5 2600 in a Biostar Racing B350GT3 Motherboard, a 16GB DDR4 2667Mhz ram stick, and then a couple hard drives, and a 1050Ti graphics card.

I assembled all the components, hit the power button... and nothing happened. A led in the motherboard lighted up, and also the led on the power button, but it didn't respond, and the fans were not moving. I tried the PSU alone, jump starting it by shorting the green and black cables, and the fan didn't spin. So I got another PSU from another brand. This time I plugged it and the PSU and the CPU fans started turning... but nothing appeared on screen. I made sure all the cables were well connected, all by one. I even disconnected everything non-essential (hard drives, external graphics card, front USB ports, etc., leaving only the two PSU cables, the CPU and the CPU fan and heatsink. Same thing, nothing on screen.

At that point, I grabbed a motherboard speaker I had lying around and I connected it. After ~15 seconds after pressing the power button, the speaker started beeping continuously. According to the motherboard manual, that meant "Memory sizing error or Memory module not found". So I assumed it was a defective ram module, went to the store this morning, and got a new module. Plugged it, turned it on... and the beeps were still there.

I went to a relative's house who has a similar build, tried my ram module in his PC and worked just fine. I tried his module (8GB in this case, but same specs) and the beeps were still there. So it's not the RAM.

I removed the motherboard from the case, in case there was any short or something. I removed and placed again the CPU in case there was some bent pin (there wasn't, it looked perfectly fine). (Turning it on still produces the same beeps (BTW, it doesn't beep if the CPU cable is not connected). Turning it on without the ram module produces the same beeps, but immediately instead of waiting 15 seconds, which tells me it somehow is aware there's a ram module in there. I also tried the ram module in all 4 slots (I already did that several times).

At this point, I am lost. I would hate to go to the store a third time (I am building this PC as a favor for a relative), specially if I am not sure where is the source of error (the motherboard maybe? what about the CPU? what if the memory stick is not compatible?). I went through all points of this post https://forums.tomshardware.com/thr...ng-about-post-boot-no-video-problems.1285536/, but I didn't see anything relevant that changed anything.

So, any ideas? Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

So you:
Changed PSU
Changed RAM
Re-seated the CPU
tested the components in another rig

What I assume you've done:
Plugged in the CPU and mobo power connections
Placed the CPU in the proper orientation

And the issue persists. I'm pretty sure you know the answer, change the board man. It's dead, kicked-the-stackoverflow, pushing up copper daisies, shuffled off its nickle coil. I can go on, but you know the answer yourself at this point.

I assume you can't even post to try and flash the bios. And with the fans working in and out it looks like power isn't flowing through the board properly. Dead board is my verdict.
 
Solution
Nov 17, 2018
5
0
10
Thanks for going through my wall of text :).

Yep, I also re-plugged the CPU and motherboard connectors several times, and I re-seated the CPU (the triangle goes with the triangle corner, etc.). I also reset the CMOS using the jumper, and I switched to the second BIOS (there's a selector on the board). None of that made a difference.

By the way, my ram stick is not among the officially supported ram modules in the motherboard's website. https://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/introduction.php?S_ID=870#memorysupport. Should I be worried? Mine is an ADATA AD4U2666316G19-S DDR4 16G U-DIMM. I don't think that's the cause, as usually they only list a bunch of ram modules they have tested, and most rams within specification should work. At least I have never had many problems with that in the past.

I also think it has to be the motherboard... But I would hate to change it if that's into really the issue, like what happened with my ram.