I took my PC apart while waiting for a replacement part, leaving the CPU and cooler installed, and now it powers on but never reaches POST or displays an image. The fans spin, and the keyboard and mouse light up. I reseated and swapped the RAM, checked every display output, double-checked all cables, and reset the CMOS battery. The system has an orange light near the GPU slot, but that light has also been present during normal operation. The system uses an ASUS Prime B450M-K motherboard, Ryzen 5 3600X, RTX 4070, 16GB of DDR4 memory, and a GX-850 power supply. What else should I check?
1 Answer
The orange glow near the GPU latch is probably the board’s normal standby lighting rather than a POST error. Since the problem started after reassembly, check for a case-related short or pressure on the motherboard. Make sure the motherboard is sitting only on the correct standoffs and that no loose screw is underneath it. Also reseat the CPU power cable at the top of the board, the GPU power adapter, and test with one RAM stick in the A2 slot. Your Ryzen 5 3600X has no integrated graphics, so the monitor must be connected to the RTX 4070. In this case, the eventual fix was loosening the PSU mounting screw slightly; the pressure or alignment was apparently affecting the system enough to prevent it from posting.
Thanks! Slightly loosening the PSU screw fixed it and the PC posted again.