I have a home-built desktop running as a Debian stable home server. After roughly 63 days of uptime, I rebooted it following some system updates, but it never became reachable again by SSH or ping.
There is no video output at all—not even a BIOS/UEFI splash screen. I tested both the motherboard's HDMI connector and the graphics card's mini-DisplayPort output using an adapter. The CPU is an AMD Ryzen 3 4100, which has no integrated graphics, so the motherboard video output is expected not to work. Removing the dedicated GPU also made no difference.
The system's power LED stays on and the hard drives sound normal. However, the server does not appear in the router's DHCP or connected-device list, and its MAC address is not visible. I previously had a problem where adding the GPU caused systemd to rename the network interface, but this time the machine appears not to be booting far enough for that to be the issue.
The motherboard is an ASRock A520M-HDV with two 4 GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 2666 MHz DDR4 modules. It has no diagnostic LEDs or POST display, and I do not currently have a motherboard speaker or POST diagnostic card. What would be the best way to determine whether the problem is the GPU, RAM, motherboard, power supply, or another hardware component?
1 Answer
Check the motherboard manual for the clear-CMOS procedure and reset the firmware. Disconnect the drives and all unnecessary USB devices, leave one RAM module installed, and try to reach POST with only the CPU, cooler, GPU, and power supply connected. If it still gives no display or other POST indication, the likely suspects are the power supply, motherboard, RAM, or GPU rather than Debian or a renamed network interface.
The board does not have built-in diagnostic LEDs or a POST display, so a motherboard speaker or inexpensive POST card could help distinguish a memory, graphics, or CPU failure. I’ll also try clearing CMOS and testing the components one at a time.