So, one night I was watching a sci-fi show (Travelers, 2016 is great btw) then after leaving the PC idle for a brief moment, the screen suddenly went blank and the PC became non-responsive. I had to do a force shutdown by holding the power button. After that, I tried powering on the PC again, thinking it might have just been a software crash but it wouldn't POST; no keyboard lights, wireless mouse was blinking to say it was disconnected. This time even trying to perform a forced shutdown wouldn't work. The power LED would just keep blinking so I had to cut it off from mains instead and used the PSU's main switch.

Trial and Error with Hardware

I looked up the possible hardware that could have failed. My current Fractal Define R6 case didn't have a PC speaker for beeps so that didn't help either. I tried what I could; clearing the CMOS, checking if the battery had expired (it hadn't), tried testing one stick of RAM at a time. Still nothing...

I even tried removing the M2 SSD since they're part of the circuit (presumably) but again, nothing.

Next stop the PSU since underpowered components could also cause the POST to fail. I had a branded Corsair H1000i which was considered high quality so I was sceptical it was the issue. That and the fact I also had blue screen problems 2 years ago with the same build.

I didn't have any spare parts so at this point, I was hoping I didn't have to buy more parts to try at this point...

On closer inspection the PSU had this gooey white stuff around the capacitors and for a moment I thought they had burst and the PSU was the culprit but, looking it up it turns out it was just glue to stabilise any heavy components.

Also noticed the motherboard had this greasy stain near the VRM heatsink which is supposedly harmless.

So anyway, after buying a new PSU by the same brand it was indeed not the issue. I was still not getting a successful POST... So next up, was the Gigabyte Aorus Elite motherboard since I read some people have experienced it suddenly failing.

Really wanted to avoid replacing the motherboard since I would have to pull out all the cables... Cleaning and applying new thermal paste isn't much fun either since I wasn't confident about applying it correctly to keep the CPU cool. I usually buy a new cooler for new builds and the pre-applied thermal paste lasts until it was time to upgrade and replace the core components again.

And so, I started hunting for a replacement motherboard. I wanted to replace it with an equivalent one with 10 rear USB ports but seems the only AM4 boards still available only have 8 now... I had a low budget so I ordered an MSI B550 Gaming Pro which was on sale. Wasn't expecting the MSI board to arrive with nothing. It only came with 2 SATA cables. It's also 7 rear USB ports along with one USB-C to make up the 8 ports but it would have to do.

On the up side, it has "EZ Debug" LEDs so instead of relying on cryptic POST beeps (like I said, my Fractal case doesn't even have a PC speaker so the beeping error code era must be past...), you have something more helpful; boot, GPU, RAM and CPU error lights.

The RAM slots themselves have an interesting difference from the regular board too. Instead of clips on both side you have to press down, one side is a fixed spring and the other is your usual clip.

Problem Solved

Sadly, my PC still wouldn't POST and the CPU error LED lit up which meant it was possibly my 16 core Ryzen 3950X CPU that was busted... Fairly much just rebuilt my PC now and obviously a replacement 16 core isn't going to be cheap =/

After buying a replacement AM4 CPU the machine finally booted up.

Had a thermal paste cleaner that wasn't isopropyl but citric based. Don't know how many decades ago I bought it but still works great. Probably because it's acidic so it doesn't go bad or solidify just like other alcohol based products. My thermal paste on the other hand, wasn't so great and had solidified so had to buy a new tube.

Been building my own machines since having my own income and never had a CPU fail before. Once built, they usually last until I decide to replace the core components although I did have the PSU fail at one point when my machine wouldn't power on so, that was an easy fix.

More Issues

Just when I thought that was my PC problems was over, I had another problem... Something was making a loud buzzing sound inside the case which usually means something was loose and vibrating. Probably because I'd been shifting the PC around as I re-assembled parts.

I noticed the noise only happened when I was moving files between hard drives so, leaving my Fractal Define R6 case open I found the buzzing coming from the hard drive trays. Putting my finger on them would stop the buzzing.

I looked this up to see if anyone else had this issue and they suggested putting in the "transport screws" on the otherside of the case. This improved the issue. It could be a warning a drive was failing but it's mostly replaceable content.

Next was re-activating all the Microsoft software since their authentication is hardware based annoyingly. Good time to upgrade to Windows 11 I guess since 10's support is ending in October.

I had been holding off trying it again due to the taskbar lacking vertical support, which I've been grown accustomed to on today's 16:9 monitors for that extra bit of vertical space. Also don't like the new context menu have to click more to see app menu options.

A Week of Laptop

So all the ordering one component at a time meant I was basically without my main desktop for a week while I was performing my trial and error. Guess it lets me appreciate having a full fledged desktop more. I still like my lightweight 13" laptop though, haha.

Usually I use hibernate on my desktop because even with SSDs I still need to re-open all the apps and sites I use daily. At one point I thought leaving my laptop on standby overnight would be a good idea but looked like the battery was almost drained by morning. Searched to see if there was a built in battery history in Windows 11 like on Android phones but seems there was only a command line "powercfg". After running it confirmed my suspicion that the battery had indeed drained by 60% for some reason which is odd for standby mode...

Well, it was back to the good old hibernate mode.

Think I'll be sticking to MSI motherboards for their EZ Debug lights in the future but hopefully this will be the last time I have to rebuild for a while. Upside, all 4 sticks of RAM are all working again now so I have my full 64GB instead of having to work with 32GB.