I recently built my first PC, which took me a ton of time because I was nervous about messing things up. I was able to access the BIOS by connecting to the motherboard directly, but when I tried connecting my display to the GPU, it didn't show anything initially.
I have a Lian Li 011 Dynamic Evo case, and my graphics card is the Hellhound 9070XT. I struggled to seat the GPU in the PCIe slot due to the Phantom Spirit cooler being in the way, and after multiple attempts, I decided to take a break. I laid down for a bit while the PC was running, and to my surprise, when I checked back three minutes later, my monitor was ready for login.
Now, my GPU works perfectly fine, but I'm curious: why did it take so long on the first boot? Is it normal for GPUs to have such a delay? I'm also planning to swap out my air cooler for a Kraken Elite soon, and I'm a bit anxious about having to remove the GPU again.
2 Answers
In AM5 systems, it's normal for them to take longer to boot because they have to train the RAM, and this isn’t necessarily related to the GPU itself. When you first checked the BIOS using the integrated GPU, did you enable EXPO? That could explain the additional delay afterward.
It sounds like your GPU might have been experiencing memory training on the first boot. It's pretty common for a brand new setup to take a little while to get going, especially after any new hardware installation.
Got it! That makes a lot of sense—I've never heard of PCs needing extra time to boot after a GPU change.
I didn’t enable EXPO until after the GPU issue was fixed. My system was already booted with Windows 11 and I had downloaded a few apps like Discord and Chrome, though. Do you think RAM needs to retrain if I install the GPU?