[SOLVED] Sudden black screen, PC doesn't boot anymore and VGA LED is on ?

Nov 26, 2021
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Hello everyone,
so about the circumstances. I bought a prebuilt PC with a:

  • RTX 3080 Ti MSI Gaming X Trio
  • Ryzen 7 5800X
  • Asus ROG Strix B550-F Gaming
  • 4 x 8GB 3200 RAM
  • be quiet Straight Power 11 Platinum 850W
The System turned off while gaming (No hard computing- just league of legends)
I played more advanced games before and they ran fine.
A few hours before I tweaked Fan Speeds and changed to DOCP just to look what it does.
While Troubleshooting the qLEDs show two different things. Either the white LED for VGA is on or it cycles between the LEDS for DRAM, CPU and VGA.
Whenever the White Light for VGA is on all Fans in the system get really slow

Things that I tried:

  • Unplugged everything from the PSU and replugged it
  • Cleared CMOS by shorting pins and taking out the Battery
  • Tried to overwrite Bios via Bios Flashback button (Couldnt overwrite )
  • Changed GPU into different PCIe Slots
  • took out and swapped around RAM
  • Checked if the problem with Monitor Boot Times (Even if it obviously worked before)
  • Tried around to make sure the GPU was seated properly.
The whole system is really new (less than a month), Could the gpu have broken?
What else could i try?

Kind regards and excited for answers :)
 
Solution
What else could i try?

  1. 2nd, known to work GPU.
  2. 2nd good, known to work PSU.
  3. RMA your whole prebuilt under warranty claim.

Could the gpu have broken?

Either GPU died on his own, or PSU did that for GPU.

While your Be Quiet! unit has reviewed well (came out in 2020), it only having 5 years of warranty is suspicious. Other companies give far longer warranties for their 80+ Platinum units, e.g Corsair HX850 with 10 years of warranty, Seasonic Focus PX-850 with also 10 years of warranty or Seasonic PRIME PX-850 with 12 years of warranty.

Warranty length is an indicator of PSU's longevity, namely how much the brand trusts their PSU to last.

Aeacus

Titan
Ambassador
What else could i try?

  1. 2nd, known to work GPU.
  2. 2nd good, known to work PSU.
  3. RMA your whole prebuilt under warranty claim.

Could the gpu have broken?

Either GPU died on his own, or PSU did that for GPU.

While your Be Quiet! unit has reviewed well (came out in 2020), it only having 5 years of warranty is suspicious. Other companies give far longer warranties for their 80+ Platinum units, e.g Corsair HX850 with 10 years of warranty, Seasonic Focus PX-850 with also 10 years of warranty or Seasonic PRIME PX-850 with 12 years of warranty.

Warranty length is an indicator of PSU's longevity, namely how much the brand trusts their PSU to last.
 
Solution
Nov 26, 2021
2
0
10
I bought the PSU new less than a month ago independently from the system. And I sadly dont have another GPU to test with.
Are there any other things i could try before sending back to the manufacturer?
Could it be possible that the Bios didnt clear even after shorting the pins and taking out the battery?
 

Aeacus

Titan
Ambassador
I bought the PSU new less than a month ago independently from the system.

Just because it's new, doesn't mean it doesn't fail. After all, that's why hardware comes with a warranty, where when it happens to fail within certain period, you can return it to be repaired/replaced. If none of the components ever fails, we don't need warranty at all.

Are there any other things i could try before sending back to the manufacturer?

No.

Since you can't make your PC to even POST, without replacement hardware, there's nothing else to do. Also, replacement hardware, GPU and PSU, help to identify which of the two is the culprit. Oh, it is possible that the MoBo also died, albeit in this kind of situation it is rare, it is still a possibility. Last ditch effort would be trying with different monitor, in the slim chance that it was your monitor that died. But i don't think so, especially since the PC itself shut down, not that only the monitor shut off.

And I sadly dont have another GPU to test with.

That's the downside of Ryzen CPUs. None of them come with iGPU, which would be invaluable at this kind of situation. Now, Ryzen APUs (G suffix) and Intel CPUs (except F suffix), have built-in iGPU and are great to troubleshoot this kind of issue.
This lack of iGPU is also a reason why i won't get Ryzen CPU for myself, despite all that cheap price and loads of cores/threads.

Could it be possible that the Bios didnt clear even after shorting the pins and taking out the battery?

Very unlikely. CMOS battery is the thing that helps to keep the BIOS settings in place and shorting CMOS pins will wipe all user made settings back to factory default.

You not seeing anything means PC isn't able to POST, where one of the key hardware fails to initialize (CPU, GPU, RAM or MoBo).