Hey everyone,
I recently built a new PC with a Ryzen 9 9900X and an MSI B850 Tomahawk MAX WiFi motherboard. Initially, everything was fine; I even accessed the BIOS yesterday before installing the CPU cooler. However, after putting the cooler in, the situation changed drastically. Now, when I power on the PC, it gets stuck with red and yellow debug lights for the CPU and DRAM. There's no display, no POST, and not a single beep from the system.
I've noticed that the power button doesn't respond while the CPU is installed, which isn't an issue when the CPU is out. The debug lights stay lit continuously, even after 10 minutes. I've done a few things to troubleshoot:
- Cleared the CMOS, but it just shuts down the PC immediately.
- Tried booting with only the CPU and one RAM stick in various slots.
- The BIOS Flashback LED blinks for about 10 seconds without success.
- I've checked the CPU and socket pins, both look perfect, and I've reseated the CPU multiple times with fresh thermal paste.
I'm stuck wondering if the motherboard is faulty, if something happened to the CPU during installation, or if I'm just unlucky and need to consider an RMA. Can anyone offer some insight or suggestions? Here are my specs:
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9900X
- GPU: Zotac RTX 4070 Ti SUPER
- Motherboard: MSI MAG B850 Tomahawk MAX WiFi
- RAM: Corsair Vengeance DDR5 32GB (2x16GB)
- PSU: Corsair RM850x 80 Plus
Thanks for any help you can provide!
2 Answers
It might be best to remove everything from the case and reassemble outside of it, like a test bench. This way, you can ensure nothing is shorting out. What type of cooler are you using?
I've read that sometimes when you install a CPU cooler, it might be putting too much pressure on the socket pins. Have you tried loosening the screws on the cooler a bit? It could help relieve that pressure and allow things to work again. Also, when I built my Ryzen set-up, I had some issues but they were related to BIOS compatibility rather than the CPU itself after I flashed it. Just something to consider!
I did try loosening the cooler, but that didn't resolve the issue. I forgot to mention I upgraded from an Intel i9 too.
I'm using a Cooler Master 212 for the CPU.