Dead mobo or CPU?

Stoly

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So I'm checking a friend's PC that won't boot.
Its a gigabyte B550 mobo coupled with a Ryzen 5 5600G

The pc will turn on, fans will spin, but it won't boot, I tested the ram PSU,, SSD and videocard separately and they all work fine. Thing is the CPU will not get hot at all, also the PC won't turn off with the on/off button after 5+ seconds, I have to switch off the PSU.

Unfortunately, I don't a spare mobo or CPU to test which one is faulty.

I tend to side with the mobo since CPU deaths are rare, the CPU Heatspreader was quite dusty, but I've seen worse.

Thoughts? recommendations?
 
Stoly said:
So I'm checking a friend's PC that won't boot.
Its a gigabyte B550 mobo coupled with a Ryzen 5 5600G

The pc will turn on, fans will spin, but it won't boot, I tested the ram PSU,, SSD and videocard separately and they all work fine. Thing is the CPU will not get hot at all, also the PC won't turn off with the on/off button after 5+ seconds, I have to switch off the PSU.

Unfortunately, I don't a spare mobo or CPU to test which one is faulty.

I tend to side with the mobo since CPU deaths are rare, the CPU Heatspreader was quite dusty, but I've seen worse.

Thoughts? recommendations?
Click to expand...
Wait the heat spreader was DUSTY like dust settled on it? Good lord the throttling. Could be CPU OR Motherboard but I would lean to mobo as well.
 
Any debug LED's on the mobo? I would think mobo first but I seen in some repair vids that ryzen CPU's do die (seen 3 or 4 dead ones in around 20 vids orso)
 
Denpepe said:
Any debug LED's on the mobo? I would think mobo first but I seen in some repair vids that ryzen CPU's do die (seen 3 or 4 dead ones in around 20 vids orso)
Click to expand...
My thought too. It could be either, but much better odds of it being a motherboard than CPU
 
I actually do have a B550 motherboard lying around but I'm not sure it works either: it behaves exactly the same as the other one.

My friend is getting a new mb to test the cpu, worst case he'll get a Ryzen 7 5700.

he doesn't have the budget to upgrade to the 7000 series much less 9000 series.

he doesn't do much gaming other than WoW and LoL.
 
Denpepe said:
Any debug LED's on the mobo? I would think mobo first but I seen in some repair vids that ryzen CPU's do die (seen 3 or 4 dead ones in around 20 vids orso)
Click to expand...

In my 35+ years as a pc enthusiast I've only seen 2 dead CPUs a P4 and an AMD Duron from clients.
In my mind intel CPU are for all means and purposes, inmortal.

My friend's fear is that it might end up being both. Very unlikely, but not out of the question.
 
Stoly said:
In my 35+ years as a pc enthusiast I've only seen 2 dead CPUs a P4 and an AMD Duron from clients.
Click to expand...
Personally I only seen one, my own i7 7820X, replaced by intel without much hassle.
 
Can't say I've truly ever seen a CPU die either. I'm sure they do under the right conditions such as getting fried from a powersurge or improper cooling but despite a dozen or so personal builds, and few on the side, and several prebuilts that I've upgraded relentlessly until none of the original parts were left aside from a case, I've only seen it happen once and I'm pretty I caused it to happen from not properly cooling an ancient P4. I've maintained well over a hundred at my day job that includes servers, laptops, surface pros, and desktops with generational tech going back two decades as well.

All that being said, of course check each component. I have seen situations where a GPU or PSU can cause similar issues. Seen a multitude of workstations behave this way after their PSUs tanked. I've also seen stupid things like a sticky power button give grief or a case wire to the mobo was plugged into the wrong pin. On that note, can you disconnect the case and get it to POST? Is the mobo one that can have the BIOS flashed w/o a CPU? Maybe something got botched there and needs a reset. It's kind of a wild goose chase but yeah, sometimes its something really simple and for sure it might be the mobo.
 
Peter_Brosdahl said:
Can't say I've truly ever seen a CPU die either. I'm sure they do under the right conditions such as getting fried from a powersurge or improper cooling but despite a dozen or so personal builds, and few on the side, and several prebuilts that I've upgraded relentlessly until none of the original parts were left aside from a case, I've only seen it happen once and I'm pretty I caused it to happen from not properly cooling an ancient P4. I've maintained well over a hundred at my day job that includes servers, laptops, surface pros, and desktops with generational tech going back two decades as well.

All that being said, of course check each component. I have seen situations where a GPU or PSU can cause similar issues. Seen a multitude of workstations behave this way after their PSUs tanked. I've also seen stupid things like a sticky power button give grief or a case wire to the mobo was plugged into the wrong pin. On that note, can you disconnect the case and get it to POST? Is the mobo one that can have the BIOS flashed w/o a CPU? Maybe something got botched there and needs a reset. It's kind of a wild goose chase but yeah, sometimes its something really simple and for sure it might be the mobo.
Click to expand...

I took everything off the case and tested it individually. I tested the mobo/cpu with a different PSU and RAM, won't post, won't turn off.

Tested the RAM/SSD/PSU/GPU on a fully working setup. Everything runs fine.

My friend is tight on money right now, so it might take a while till he gets the parts.
 
Sounds like you pretty much covered all the bases and back to the same question mobo or CPU. Sorry couldn't be more helpful. Every now and then I hear stories of a bent pin or a socket issue which might be the culprit, sometimes even a bad solder point (saw that happen on a motherboard a real long time ago where one gave after years of service).
 
Peter_Brosdahl said:
Sounds like you pretty much covered all the bases and back to the same question mobo or CPU. Sorry couldn't be more helpful. Every now and then I hear stories of a bent pin or a socket issue which might be the culprit, sometimes even a bad solder point (saw that happen on a motherboard a real long time ago where one gave after years of service).
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, the mobo is too big to fit on my toaster/oven. The idea of "baking it" crossed my mind.
 
So the mb has a button, I tought it was a power button but did nothing. Turns out its a bios flash button, I figured maybe the bios was corrupt, pretty common with gigabyte mb IME. I got the latest bios, flashed it into a USB and gave it a try.

Couldn't make it work. I tried several guides, but pressing the flash button didn't do anythong

I should be getting a new mobo tomorrow.
 
Ok this is where the plot thickens.

So I got the new mobo (Asus B5550 Wifi), set it up and it gives me a RAM beep, I try 4 ram sticks same thing, they all work on my own rig.

I clean all of them with an eraser, try one... beep, 2nd one... beep, third one, BOOT UP finally. I double check everything is working.

So just for kicks I try old gigabyte mobo, nope nada, not even a beep, sometimes fans won't even spin. I tried the same tricks again, removing the battery, clearing cmos, reseating the cpu/memory, nada. I press the qflash buttons for like 10 secs, nope, turn off the psu and I figure one last try before I quit.

Miraculously, it boots up. I'm shocked, turn it off and back on boots again, even tried other memory sticks, works like a charm.
Still not sold on it, so I'll do some more testing later.
 
Man, its been a long time since I had to do the eraser trick on the contacts. I'm talking decades. It's funny I was watching an episode of Ghosts recently where one of the characters made a joke about that.
 
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