I built my PC about six months ago, and it has been running smoothly until this weird issue popped up about a month back. Every time I shut it down for the night and try to boot it up the next morning, I face a problem. When I press the power button, the fans spin, but the LEDs don't turn on—except for the memory RAM LED. My CPU fans and the additional fans I have don't light up either. The only way to get it to boot again is by cutting the power from the PSU and waiting about a minute. If I try to boot it up right after the fans stop spinning, it just doesn't work. My setup includes Windows 11, an AMD Ryzen 5 7600X, an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070, and a 850W PSU from FRACTAL ION. Has anyone experienced this?
6 Answers
It sounds like you might have a faulty power supply. Another thing to try is disabling "fast startup" in Windows since it can put your PC in a hibernation mode that could mess with your boot process. Your PSU isn't the highest quality, so it could be experiencing issues. If it has a design flaw, that might explain why you're facing this difficulty.
I reckon the issue could be linked to the power settings or BIOS. Also, be careful when making system changes since they can lead to data loss. Make sure your backups are up to date before experimenting.
It's hard to say for sure, but I would also recommend checking for any driver issues. I recently tried updating my Nvidia drivers and things got stuck mid-install. The screen went black, and the RGB on my keyboard started acting weird. It might be worth reinstalling Windows if the problem doesn’t go away.
Have you considered replacing the CMOS battery? Sometimes if the battery is low or failing, it can cause boot issues, though it sounds like you've already tried that.
I replaced the CMOS battery yesterday, but it still has the same problem. I even turned off the PC to film the boot issue, and then it booted up normally without any problems. It's so random!
Just to give you an idea of what's going on, here's how it looks when my PC successfully boots up. The red light only shows during boot and goes off afterwards. I'm not sure what that means though. Here's the link to the image: [boot up image](https://imgur.com/a/bJgx7Oo)
It's not common, but your PSU could have a design flaw that affects the modern sleep states. Since you mentioned that the fans spin up without any lights, that might just confirm that something's off with the PSU.
I noticed that even after turning off my PC, I could still hear something running for like 30 seconds. I'm guessing it might be the PSU still doing some protection thing. I had fast startup enabled, but just turned it off to see if that helps.