I woke up yesterday to find that my PC, which was perfectly fine before, won't post anymore. The red VGA light on the motherboard is on, and my monitor is showing no signal. I've got a GTX 1070, R5 2600, a B450 Tomahawk motherboard, a Corsair RM750x power supply, and two SSDs with 16GB of RAM. I've tried a bunch of troubleshooting steps: I've tested the RAM sticks one by one in different slots, used two monitors with various HDMI cables, and cleared the CMOS. I also reseated the GPU and even tried a different graphics card, which powered on but still showed the red VGA light. The only things I haven't swapped out are the power supply (which I think is still good since the fans spin) and the motherboard or CPU. I'm considering getting a new motherboard, but if that's the issue, should I just build an entirely new PC instead?
3 Answers
Also, since you tried unplugging the SSDs, have you checked if all your power connectors are securely plugged into the motherboard? Sometimes, loose connections can lead to boot issues like this. A good wipe-down of the RAM slots might also clear things up!
It sounds like you've done a lot of troubleshooting! Since you already tried a different GPU and PSU without success, the motherboard is likely the issue. You can find B550M boards pretty cheap online, and it might be worth getting one just to test if that’s the problem. If the new motherboard doesn't fix it, then you could look into getting a different Ryzen CPU too, but let's hope it doesn't come to that!
Don't forget to check the simplest things first! You mentioned trying different HDMI cables and monitors, but have you checked if the motherboard has any onboard graphics? If it does, try connecting your monitor to that. If it works, then you can rule out other hardware issues.
Yeah, going for a new budget motherboard makes sense! It's definitely cheaper than taking it to a shop for diagnostics, and like you said, with used CPUs being so affordable, it could be a quick fix without breaking the bank.