I recently helped my friend set up a second-hand PC. After a factory reset, I installed the necessary drivers and updated the BIOS from a 2019 version to the latest March 2025 update. We decided to swap out the Ryzen 7 2700 with my old Ryzen 5 3600, which should give him better gaming performance. The PC itself has a 3060 GPU and 16GB of RAM, so it should be adequate for his gaming needs. However, after installing the 3600, the PC doesn't boot at all; the screen remains black, and there's no boot screen. I'm wondering if I need to downgrade the BIOS version back to when the 3000 series was better supported. Both RAM sticks are working fine. What could be the issue here, and how can we fix it?
1 Answer
When you switch CPUs, sometimes you need to reset the BIOS defaults. It can also help to reinstall the operating system, though that seems a bit extreme just for a CPU change. Worth a shot, though!
Why would a full OS reinstall be necessary?