I just finished my first PC build, but I'm running into two problems. The system starts normally and runs for around 10 minutes before shutting down. The motherboard appears to remain powered, with its lights still on, while the other components turn off. Occasionally, trying to start it again causes it to shut down almost immediately.
I'm also unable to get a display signal. The first time I powered it on, the monitor showed a language-selection screen, but now it only flashes a white light as if it is sleeping and reports no signal over either DisplayPort or HDMI. The monitor is connected to the graphics card rather than the motherboard.
The parts are:
- AMD Ryzen 7 7700X
- Thermalright Aqua Elite V3 liquid cooler
- ASRock B650 Steel Legend WiFi ATX AM5 motherboard
- Barracuda 2TB hard drive
- Crucial Pro Overclocking 32GB DDR5-6000 memory
- Crucial P310 with Acronis 4TB SSD
- ASRock Steel Legend Radeon RX 9070 XT 16GB
- HYTE Y60 Snow White case
- Thermaltake Toughpower GF A3 850W Gold modular power supply
- Koorui 34E6UC curved monitor
I haven't been able to reach the BIOS or install Windows, so I'm trying to determine whether this is a cable, power, cooling, memory, graphics card, or motherboard issue.
3 Answers
Start by checking every power and data connection carefully. Reseat the 24-pin motherboard cable, the CPU EPS cable near the top of the board, the GPU power connectors, RAM, and the graphics card itself. Also make sure the modular PSU cables are plugged into the correct sockets and are fully inserted. If the problem remains, check the motherboard’s debug LEDs while powering on; they may identify whether the issue is CPU, memory, VGA, or boot-related.
If you can get into the firmware setup, check the CPU temperature because an incorrectly mounted cooler or pump connection could cause a shutdown. Since you currently can’t reach BIOS, try a minimal boot: disconnect the drives and unnecessary USB devices, use one RAM stick in the recommended slot, and connect only the motherboard, CPU, cooler, PSU, and GPU. Clear the CMOS first, then test again. Make sure the liquid cooler’s pump is connected to the appropriate header and that the radiator fans are running.
A Windows or graphics-driver problem is unlikely here because the system hasn’t reached the operating system or completed the installation. Focus on basic hardware troubleshooting first: reseat the GPU and memory, verify the CPU power cable, inspect the motherboard debug indicators, and test with a single RAM module. You can also try connecting the monitor with the other cable type and confirming the monitor is set to the correct input. If it still powers down before showing POST, the PSU, motherboard, cooler installation, or another core component may be defective.
That makes sense; I haven’t gotten far enough to install Windows from the USB drive, so this appears to happen during startup rather than because of a driver.
I can’t reach the BIOS screen at all—the display goes to no signal before I get that far.