After nearly a year of working normally, my PC began failing to start intermittently. It would power on and attempt to POST, but get stuck with no video output while the motherboard's red BOOT light stayed on. Repeated attempts occasionally worked, but now it will not boot at all. I removed both NVMe drives to see whether it could at least enter the BIOS, but the behavior did not change. I have also tried different display cables, BIOS Flashback, clearing things, and reducing the system to the CPU and RAM. The system uses an ASRock B650 HDV/M.2 motherboard, a Ryzen 7 9800X3D, 64 GB of Crucial DDR5-5600, an RTX 5070, and a Gigabyte 850 W 80+ Gold PSU. There is still no video output, and the red BOOT light remains lit.
2 Answers
Since the NVMe drives are already removed, they probably are not the cause. A BOOT LED can be expected when there is no boot drive, but you should still be able to enter the BIOS. Test with one RAM stick at a time in the board’s recommended slot, then repeat with the other stick. Reseat the 24-pin motherboard cable, 8-pin CPU cable, and GPU power cables, and clear the CMOS properly. Because the 9800X3D has integrated graphics, you can also remove the RTX 5070 and connect the monitor directly to the motherboard video output. If it still never reaches the BIOS after those tests, the motherboard, RAM, PSU, or CPU becomes more likely than the SSDs.
The fact that it worked only after repeated power-ons and then gradually stopped points more toward a marginal hardware or power problem than a bad operating-system drive. Double-check that the board is not shorting against an extra case standoff, inspect the CPU socket for bent contacts, and test with only the motherboard, CPU, cooler, one RAM stick, and onboard graphics connected. Leave all USB devices and storage disconnected. If that minimal setup still cannot enter BIOS, testing with another known-good PSU or another compatible DDR5 kit would help isolate it; otherwise the motherboard is a strong suspect.
I already tried one RAM stick at a time, cleared the CMOS, and tested without the GPU, but it still only shows the red BOOT light and gives no picture.