@@GregSalazar Yeahh it's nice seeing you're ok after storm Greg always watching your channel on new uploads regularly, being from the UK may not be around for uploads when they drop but always tune in to watch every single one you post. :)
Hi Greg, just a short note. I recently had the exact same problem, I decided to change the CMOS battery before throwing out the motherboard which fixed the problem. Battery was faulty, despite showing 3.1 V on the multimeter. It pays to always try a new battery.
My computer would not power up and I thought it was because of the coolant leak, however I didn’t see any on the motherboard. I changed power supply thinking the leak which got on and killed it, but got same result. I thought my computer was dead, but after some research a suggestion is to change the 3.1v battery. Note that I haven’t used my computer for a few years as I stop gaming and do most of my online things on an iPad. As it turned out, replacing the 3.1v battery solved the power up problem.
To add to the funky cmos battery anecdotes.. I bought a barebones Alienware Aurora R9 from marketplace during the Ronapocalypse for cheap(dude just wanted the CPU, GPU and SSD), and after I got replacement parts and started it up, it would throw a different blink code every time I powered it on. No rhyme or reason to the codes whatsoever. Did some reading online and apparently it was not an uncommon issue with R9s. Computer was less than 2 years old at the time. Just crap batteries.
I'm with the others this is sounds like the CMOS battery going bad and the memory settings is probably tied to clock resetting in the BIOS. Had that happen to me back in 92. If any of you kids remember 486x CPUs
Although I've had problems with some Gigabyte hardware over the years, I do give kudos to them for sending you hardware to help with your Fix or Flop series.
I had issues once with a new one but this was forever ago(moving off of Slot A to Socket A) which after i got more skills did end up working in a lower end build for a friend, I've also had a 990FX-Gaming with an FX-8350 with zero issues, and currently have an Aorus X570 Master, also without any issues.
@@Galiant2010 As far as motherboards go, Gigabyte has been good to me, had 3-4 of theirs so far, My one Asus board came in DOA. I have a x570 aorus master in my pc and a aorus ultra in the family pc i built.
Dear Greg, I am from Bangladesh, and I have been watching your videos for a long time. You helped me identify my PC problem all by myself, saving me quite some money and giving me enough knowledge to fix my PC myself. I wish you all the best in the world and keep up the good work for the greater good of the PC enthusiasts out there.
Hi Greg, erasing the BIOS chip and programming it again, it's totally worth it. I brought back what used to be my primary gaming PC as a secondary rig with an MSI X570 Gaming Edge WiFi + 2 x 16Gb Oloy RAM @ 3600Mhz and a Ryzen 9 3900X (Which I dropped). Basically, every day, it was less stable until it stopped booting, at one point I thought it was because I dropped the CPU while troubleshooting the instability, it was so bad that the power button with the CPU installed, was unresponsive. Later on, I remembered that my cousin yeeted a R7 2700X from his bedroom (3rd floor), and I went after it. After fixing some bent pins, it worked perfectly. That made me realise that it was impossible that my CPU was dead because I dropped from an altitude of around 3-4ft. I erased the BIOS chip and flashed again with the programmer, and it's fully working, no instability issue anymore, no booting issues or black screens.
It’s amazing how many people in the comments are trying to give advice but they are just complaining instead. It’s sad to say half your fan base is just bots. This is the best PC series on YT by far! Glad you are safe from the storm Greg.
I'm sorry you had to deal with people complaining you gave the owner a downgrade. Those people are the same people who would think you owed them the moment you offered something for free. Keep on trucking Greg. This is my favorite series from your channel yet. Hoping for a new season soon.
I don't know how going from "not working" to "working" is a downgrade in any situation. The at issue parts is identified, if the owner wants to replace like for like, they can, now that the problem have been identified?
They could even sell the motherboard Greg gave to them for free and upgrade, saving some money as well. People who are complaining reminds me of anecdote where a guy finds a wallet, opens it and complains there is only 100 dollars in it.
Fix or Flop is one of the most important and informative PC builder content series on RUclips. That and the electonics engineer fixing content like northwestrepairs. More important than the endless graphs and benchmark obssessed reviewers at the top of the youtube hill
@GregSalazar 14:41 the scenario you experienced was explained by the user at 0:32 under the bracket where he mentiones 'Different power supply'. This wasn't important at all but i felt like to tell just becasue owner did experience the same thing and maybe the case has some faulty buttons.
I have watched every episode of Fix or Flop and is actually almost the only thing I watch from your channel Greg, So hope to see another 5 seasons to come
I digress. I'm turning into Jay! Jay's hilarious. He's moved into a nice new shop and is setting up his own lab. It seems like everyone's getting labs nowadays, but hey, if you feel like you need it, growing is good!
eating lunch and watching a new fix a flop vid, cant get better than this lol. thanks for helping the people and teaching us while you do it, you're really the best Greg.
i wonder if the unseated RAM may have fried the mobo, it may have been just making a connection for a while then eventually slipped out over time and caused a bit of a power spike or sent power to a diff pin that fried it.
Gaming when the error happens indicates heat issue that eventually fried the motherboard. I wouldn’t be surprised if their some components on that old motherboard have slightly bloated capacitors. Ultimately the motherboard saved all the connected parts so did a great job. Passive cooling a motherboard that overclocking is something people should consider especially if the pc going to be gaming for hours in a warm climate.
Just want to say thanks for what you do with this series. I recently repaired my PC myself, and I had the confidence to believe I could do it by watching how you troubleshoot different issues. Interestingly though, the tool I used to diagnose the cause of my repeated BSOD crashes was something I haven't seen since I've been watching this series. I was getting stop codes that were either from bad drivers or memory, but they still happened after using DDU to uninstall old drivers, and I ran the built in Memory Diagnostic Tool on Windows 10 which detected that there was a hardware issue with my RAM sticks. One new set of RAM later and I was up and running smoother than before. I know you likely would have just tested it by swapping to a known working RAM, but maybe in the future you mention that tool as something people could use if they don't have spare RAM lying around?
Hey Greg, turns out the issue holding up my friend's PC build was a dead motherboard. We had all the parts for a Ryzen 7000 setup (a 7600 with a B650 board), which should have worked right out of the box. Instead, we kept getting the CPU and DRAM debug lights, and there was no attempt to boot. It would go straight to those lights, just like in this video. After a full day of troubleshooting, and without any spare parts (my own system is Ryzen 5000, and the only other person with a Ryzen 7000 is away at university), we decided to buy a new board and return the old one. It worked perfectly on the first try with the new board.
Was going to say that it would be nice to see boards with dual bios so when one goes bad like it did for me, flip a switch, get back online and reviving a dead bios is SO much easier.
I'm at 0:42 and I'ma try to diagnose along with you... (Every time in the video something pops up that changes my hypothesis i will edit this comment with a time stamp) Before touching anything I'd give the PC a visual once over, first externally, by ensuring there are no buttons stuck in the "depressed" state, or anything metallic jammed into any ports like USBs or headphone jacks. Then internally by taking off the side panel and looking for anything out of the norm, like burning, damage, things not plugged in all the way, things plugged into the wrong place or the wrong plug forced into the wrong hole. (eg a PCIE 8 pin JAMMED into the CPU 8 pin) Last visual inspection I do is ensure the CMOS battery in there and the clear CMOS jumper is in the correct orientation. After visual inspection I'd power on to see the issue for my self. @0:42 - After hearing the issues my first guess... HDD/SSD failure. I'd unplug both power and data from all drives, from the MOBO and PSU end. (M.2s would be removed) Then power on to see what happens. EDIT @17:30 - Well My primary guess was never tested and we jumped to replacing the entire MOBO. Glad that hamfist worked... but did you ever try running his MOBO out of the case with nothing plugged into it like you did with the other board? His board may not be dead. Try putting a new CMOS battery in there. Test boot it out of case with nothing plugged into it other than the known working GPU and monitor. PS... I'm an old retired tech (cant do it anymore because my eyes went kaput when I was 28) I love this series and I will always watch it as long as you make it.
I love this series Greg The amount of people rigs you’ve fixed that was quite simple in the end your a legend My issue this week I’ve never seen this issue before luckily the car wasn’t dead Had a issue with gpu drivers Had a 2070 super die and blue screen with tdr gpu mem error In the end the system was down for 3 days Fix was safe mode and remove the gpu driver then use a newer one and all is good no more tdr failure Was first time I’ve come across this issue
Just want to say this is one of my favourite series, I'm really into pc building stuff lately and this series scratches that itch perfectly. I really want to do something like this myself one day and the series is an inspiration.
If the computer refuses to POST/BOOT after checking CPU, RAM, PSU, and GPU to be good, this could also be caused by a dead CMOS battery. So always try to check if HDD indicator light is on and blinking on the case and the keyboard and mouse lights up, if not, then it's possible the CMOS battery could be dead before ruling out that the mobo is dead. Worth a try to save some money before buying a new board if it's still actually good and just needs a battery replacement.
Really interesting one this time Greg - I've never seen the power delivery for the RAM die in the motherboard before, normally the CPU VRM gets way more stress and goes first. Great job diagnosing this 👍
Greg, I've been doing PC things longer than you but I enjoy absorbing new knowledge as a hedge against future issues. I can admit my one failure to fix was a dead peltier in my Ultra Chilltec cooler sounding an alarm that it was dead but I couldn't tell what was upset(too many concerts, zero ear protection). I still plan to revive it for nostalgia with a Peltier off of Amazon...(Assuming I find all of it in my storage unit).
I had a couple thoughts about the RAM. One being that maybe it just wasn't fully seated if they had tried pulling out and reseating it on their own and just forgot to mention they had tried that? So maybe it was seated fine when they had the issue. The second being that if it was the issue (and I'm no electrician, power stuff tends to go over my head) but if it *was* loose I could maybe see vibrations from the fans, or if it's on the desk where they put their hands/feet on it to rest, maybe some excitement jostled it knocking it looser? As for bricking the board, I've seen LTT do tests with removing RAM without long term damage, recently, but is it possible that something could short from a pin being not in the proper place and arcing to a pin and nuking the board? I'm guessing not, if the display stayed up and it didn't shut down to protect itself, but if it's the RAM that shorts... idk, maybe it messes with the protection features somehow? But they were the first things I thought of when watching.
I love this series so much because I wish I could do this myself for people...maybe one day. I recently just solved my own issue where both a GTX 1080 FE and an RTX 3060 12 GB kept having issues with my 1440p monitors no matter the cable used or settings applied / drivers used. It especially had issues with HDR. Upgraded to a 7800 XT. So. Much. Better. But I tried everything except the GPU first because money. The older GPUs I now have I am giving to friends who need them.
A BIOS harness to flash a good start-up. The RAM misalignment possibly sent power the wrong way and blew a capacitor, which will heat up enough to be picked up with an infrared camera. Or, use it as a parts board.
Before watching past 10 seconds im guessing bad dim, mobo, then cpu. I love watching these. i have been doing computer repairs like this since back in the 2000s when i put multiple broken together to make something i was allowed to use.
My 275R is the last item I bought from Fry's as they were going out of business. They told me to just go in the back area and grab one off a full pallet of them. Not the best airflow, but still a very clean case.
My Asrock B450 pro4 mobo died earlier this year always clean out and dusted every few months. I since went back to MSI. My original b350m MSI mobo I gifted to my mom. She has never dusted it out and its still going. I dropped it off at her house several years ago now. The Asrock B450 was my first mobo from asrock. I've never had a motherboard go dead so soon (other than DOA) that happens sometimes but not one the lasts several months then dies so soon. Im happy to report im back MSI! I ended up geting a msi b550pro vc-wifi and its been a tank! Greg I had an issue with the power button delayed before, it turned out it was dust on the back of a pcb board below the power button in the case I used some iso alcohol to clean the pcb board and has worked great ever since. Not all cases have a pcb board thats connected to the power button but mine did it was a raidmax case.
Love your content Greg. I think my next board will be a Gigabyte. I have had bad luck with MSI boards the last couple of builds, the worst being the B650 MS-7D75 Tomahawk. Although now it is somewhat stable, I've suffered from long post times, freezes, lock ups, and blue screens. I'm about fed up.
Hey Greg, great Video again! Like to see you FoF series. It´s scary how often the Mainboards are dead. Seems that they are the most fragile component in all of our rigs.
I love how this series evolved into "this shouldn't be an issue, but i've seen weirder things" which has exactly been my experience and why i like troubleshooting pcs. you never know what you're gonna find and every once in a while there's this one issue that has no feasible explanation
Ive had that error pop up before and it also froze my game I was playing. I think my systems about 4 years old now and luckily for me, mine still works....for now. I dont do anything wild with my system in terms of overclocking or anything so seeing how to diagnose something like this is useful information so thank you for the video!
In a situation where you can't access the bios the normal way and don't have a flashback button, actually having to connect a device physically to the chip is something most people can't do. It's possible it's corrupted, or there's a component that failed on the board. Possible to fix, but if it were me I'd return the board to the owner and say he could have it looked at if he really wants to reuse that board. Otherwise, it's working now at least which is more important.
I hope the manufacturers keep giving you free motherboards. It's a no lose proposition, if it's replacing another manufacturers board they look good because it fixes the computer. If it's their own brand, they still supplied a repair on their own product. Brilliant. Also basically free because they must have an allocation for warranty repairs, and they can just give that to him, he can do the work, while monetized, they still get free goodwill advertising. Love it, thanks for the vid btw! Enjoyable as always.
This is one of my biggest fears when it comes to building a new PC, or fixing one for someone else. Everything can be working fine one moment, and the next, a brand new part decides to give out, or the part beside the one you just fixed/replaced straight up dies.. Totally random, many times unforeseeable. But guess who's gonna get the blame?
Honestly, I don't know why anyone would complain that you did not check the bios. If the cpu works fine, and the PC had always worked prior to this error, then it has nothing to do with the bios. Literally the only way the bios would be an issue is if he had tried to do an update and either used the wrong bios or cut the update off midway.
>If the cpu works fine, and the PC had always worked prior to this error, then it has nothing to do with the bios Patently False. Flash chips that store the BIOS can randomly corrupt themselves. I've had it happen numerous times to my own boards, and I've had even more boards come across my bench that have had it happen. Boards with dual BIOS are even worse, because if the secondary BIOS becomes corrupt, it can cause all sorts of weird erratic behavior. Gigabyte boards are especially bad about this, because they have an internal check that runs on the backup BIOS at regular intervals while the system is running. If it fails, it can cause the computer to spontaneously reboot, lock up or crash. Then you have to add Microsoft and board vendor software into the mix. Microsoft started pushing out motherboard BIOS updates through Windows Update, which has been a disaster. AIB flashing utilities from within Windows are just as bad. So frequent is it a problem that I've had to buy multiple EEPROM programmers to flash all of the various types of BIOS chips out there. Modern boards usually use SPI flash memory, but older boards can use serial and parallel flash chips that require different programmers. That being said, I think the more likely problem that happened with this X570 board is that one of the CPU mosfets died and shorted out. It's probably fixable, but not without special tools.
Asrock is strange. Here you have x570 steel legend. Its more advanced board that my B550m Steel Legend, but my have very handy button on the backplate for Clear CMOS and this one don't have.
A lot of correct comments on here , a dead or shorted CR2032 can cause it not to POST. Also it's not hard to connect a piggyback a clipon programming cable on the bios chip , you don't need to unsolder these chips this can be done incircuit with a super cheap ch341a based programmer, it could be the upgraded CPU bricked the bios. A read on the rom dump and a comparison of the dump, against a good binary bios firmware. Or erase and flash the latest bios firmware over the old flash.
ID look into potentially trying to find an eeprom programmer to try flashing the bios manually. You are def smart enough to do it, and may be fun for you to learn how to do it and potentially save even more boards. Is it worth it in time? Probably not rn but may be neat as a thing to show people as an option
I actually have one on hand! Ordered it a few months ago. That said, there is a SHARP learning curve and I'm not confident enough in my ability to use it to show on video just yet.
@@GregSalazar I think it would be neat to record going through your process of learning. You go step by step with how you learn to use it etc and hopefully by the end you have figured it out and get it working. Comes with a lot of IFs and is not guaranteed to work so i can see why you may not want to allocate the time when others are more reasonable for the business side of things.
The VRMs on the AsRock took a shit. Luckily the CPU was still good - the 3000 series will commit hara kiri eventually. But at least the B550 has scalability - the owner can easily update to the latest BIOS and drop in a 5700x3d. He does have to be careful - Gigabyte developed a bad habit of not importing the Secure Boot variables in their BIOS updates this past August on all AM4 and AM5 boards. 😂 The September round of BIOS updates are fine though ...
I love watching Fix or flop series. Glad your OK Greg Salazar from the hurricane and tornado's. Where you close to it. hopefully you where far away from it.
B550 Launched almost one year after X570. There have been more than a few occasions where a B550 board has had a better feature set like flashback compared to an x570 counterpart. Bigger number not always better.
This might not matter, but at 8:06 you can see the cooler mounting that was used isn't the correct type, it almost looks like they dug into the mb when tightened down
I’m turning into Jay. That was funny. Love your videos. Keep doing what you’re doing. You’ve helped me many times in the past and will in the future. Thank you.
Thanx for the video. You're rapidly putting me off buying a gaming PC as my next one . I don't do gaming so most likely a business PC. I don't remember you doping any of these .
WE ARE BACK. One of the best PC series.
Yay finally
The best
Yes
Nice seeing you are OK after the storm. I Love this series
I appreciate the kind words!
@@GregSalazar Yeahh it's nice seeing you're ok after storm Greg always watching your channel on new uploads regularly, being from the UK may not be around for uploads when they drop but always tune in to watch every single one you post. :)
@GregSalazar how does one get in contact with you ?
Hi Greg, just a short note. I recently had the exact same problem, I decided to change the CMOS battery before throwing out the motherboard which fixed the problem. Battery was faulty, despite showing 3.1 V on the multimeter. It pays to always try a new battery.
Exactly
Just because battery shows a voltage doesn’t mean it’s holding enough charge to power the bios
My computer would not power up and I thought it was because of the coolant leak, however I didn’t see any on the motherboard. I changed power supply thinking the leak which got on and killed it, but got same result. I thought my computer was dead, but after some research a suggestion is to change the 3.1v battery. Note that I haven’t used my computer for a few years as I stop gaming and do most of my online things on an iPad. As it turned out, replacing the 3.1v battery solved the power up problem.
To add to the funky cmos battery anecdotes.. I bought a barebones Alienware Aurora R9 from marketplace during the Ronapocalypse for cheap(dude just wanted the CPU, GPU and SSD), and after I got replacement parts and started it up, it would throw a different blink code every time I powered it on. No rhyme or reason to the codes whatsoever. Did some reading online and apparently it was not an uncommon issue with R9s. Computer was less than 2 years old at the time. Just crap batteries.
I'm with the others this is sounds like the CMOS battery going bad and the memory settings is probably tied to clock resetting in the BIOS. Had that happen to me back in 92. If any of you kids remember 486x CPUs
Never skip a fix or flop video, easily my most favorite series to watch 💯
I appreciate that!
This series has helped me trouble shoot pc issues I've had and a friend's pc with a boot cycle issue. It's a never ending learning process
I do love fix or flop but the micro center series where he upgrades rigs is my favorite. This one is my second.
Although I've had problems with some Gigabyte hardware over the years, I do give kudos to them for sending you hardware to help with your Fix or Flop series.
While we're being anecdotal, I'll just throw out that my last couple mobos and GPUs have been Gigabyte and I haven't had any issues lol.
I had issues once with a new one but this was forever ago(moving off of Slot A to Socket A) which after i got more skills did end up working in a lower end build for a friend, I've also had a 990FX-Gaming with an FX-8350 with zero issues, and currently have an Aorus X570 Master, also without any issues.
@@Sadler2010 Hello fellow 2010
@@Galiant2010 As far as motherboards go, Gigabyte has been good to me, had 3-4 of theirs so far, My one Asus board came in DOA. I have a x570 aorus master in my pc and a aorus ultra in the family pc i built.
Gigabyte Aorus x570s Elite user and I now recommend them every build I do for friends!
My two favorite types of your videos are: 1 - The Microcenter build videos. 2 - These Fix or Flop videos. Please don't ever stop making them.
Dear Greg, I am from Bangladesh, and I have been watching your videos for a long time. You helped me identify my PC problem all by myself, saving me quite some money and giving me enough knowledge to fix my PC myself. I wish you all the best in the world and keep up the good work for the greater good of the PC enthusiasts out there.
Hi Greg, erasing the BIOS chip and programming it again, it's totally worth it. I brought back what used to be my primary gaming PC as a secondary rig with an MSI X570 Gaming Edge WiFi + 2 x 16Gb Oloy RAM @ 3600Mhz and a Ryzen 9 3900X (Which I dropped). Basically, every day, it was less stable until it stopped booting, at one point I thought it was because I dropped the CPU while troubleshooting the instability, it was so bad that the power button with the CPU installed, was unresponsive.
Later on, I remembered that my cousin yeeted a R7 2700X from his bedroom (3rd floor), and I went after it. After fixing some bent pins, it worked perfectly. That made me realise that it was impossible that my CPU was dead because I dropped from an altitude of around 3-4ft.
I erased the BIOS chip and flashed again with the programmer, and it's fully working, no instability issue anymore, no booting issues or black screens.
It’s amazing how many people in the comments are trying to give advice but they are just complaining instead. It’s sad to say half your fan base is just bots.
This is the best PC series on YT by far! Glad you are safe from the storm Greg.
I'm sorry you had to deal with people complaining you gave the owner a downgrade. Those people are the same people who would think you owed them the moment you offered something for free. Keep on trucking Greg. This is my favorite series from your channel yet. Hoping for a new season soon.
I don't know how going from "not working" to "working" is a downgrade in any situation. The at issue parts is identified, if the owner wants to replace like for like, they can, now that the problem have been identified?
They could even sell the motherboard Greg gave to them for free and upgrade, saving some money as well. People who are complaining reminds me of anecdote where a guy finds a wallet, opens it and complains there is only 100 dollars in it.
I can't really laugh about you running the board, minus the RAM cuz I didn't even notice either.😂😂
I immediately noticed but second guessed myself. Figured I was wrong and you can somehow boot into BIOS without RAM LOL
Fix or Flop is one of the most important and informative PC builder content series on RUclips. That and the electonics engineer fixing content like northwestrepairs. More important than the endless graphs and benchmark obssessed reviewers at the top of the youtube hill
@GregSalazar 14:41 the scenario you experienced was explained by the user at 0:32 under the bracket where he mentiones 'Different power supply'. This wasn't important at all but i felt like to tell just becasue owner did experience the same thing and maybe the case has some faulty buttons.
I saw few times those CR2032 batteries showing 3v but they were too low on amperage, and a fresh one will be 3.3V most of the time
maybe the vrm of the memory is shorted meaning the ram don't power on
because of your videos i was able to trouble shoot my own hardware and not have to swap any parts, fixed my no post! love fix or flop!
this is one of the best playlist man. i have learned so much from you. thanks for teaching me as you say thanks for learning with me.
I really appreciate that! I'm glad you're enjoying the series!
Any plans for season 6? Love this series so much!🔥🔥
I have watched every episode of Fix or Flop and is actually almost the only thing I watch from your channel Greg, So hope to see another 5 seasons to come
Same. It's the puzzle-solving aspect, I think, or at least it is, for me.
I digress. I'm turning into Jay! Jay's hilarious. He's moved into a nice new shop and is setting up his own lab. It seems like everyone's getting labs nowadays, but hey, if you feel like you need it, growing is good!
Already hyped for next season! Glad to see y'all okay after the storm. I've learned so much with these videos.
eating lunch and watching a new fix a flop vid, cant get better than this lol. thanks for helping the people and teaching us while you do it, you're really the best Greg.
i thought it wasnt possible to be informative and entertaining both at the same time, but this series is gold. You nailed it with this series
i wonder if the unseated RAM may have fried the mobo, it may have been just making a connection for a while then eventually slipped out over time and caused a bit of a power spike or sent power to a diff pin that fried it.
one of my favorite series on youtube, and glad to see you and your family are safe
Gaming when the error happens indicates heat issue that eventually fried the motherboard. I wouldn’t be surprised if their some components on that old motherboard have slightly bloated capacitors. Ultimately the motherboard saved all the connected parts so did a great job. Passive cooling a motherboard that overclocking is something people should consider especially if the pc going to be gaming for hours in a warm climate.
Fix or flop is what keeps me watching your content and following your channel :)
Just want to say thanks for what you do with this series. I recently repaired my PC myself, and I had the confidence to believe I could do it by watching how you troubleshoot different issues. Interestingly though, the tool I used to diagnose the cause of my repeated BSOD crashes was something I haven't seen since I've been watching this series. I was getting stop codes that were either from bad drivers or memory, but they still happened after using DDU to uninstall old drivers, and I ran the built in Memory Diagnostic Tool on Windows 10 which detected that there was a hardware issue with my RAM sticks. One new set of RAM later and I was up and running smoother than before. I know you likely would have just tested it by swapping to a known working RAM, but maybe in the future you mention that tool as something people could use if they don't have spare RAM lying around?
Great to see you back and OK after the hurricane. Love this series.
Hey Greg, turns out the issue holding up my friend's PC build was a dead motherboard. We had all the parts for a Ryzen 7000 setup (a 7600 with a B650 board), which should have worked right out of the box. Instead, we kept getting the CPU and DRAM debug lights, and there was no attempt to boot. It would go straight to those lights, just like in this video. After a full day of troubleshooting, and without any spare parts (my own system is Ryzen 5000, and the only other person with a Ryzen 7000 is away at university), we decided to buy a new board and return the old one. It worked perfectly on the first try with the new board.
Was going to say that it would be nice to see boards with dual bios so when one goes bad like it did for me, flip a switch, get back online and reviving a dead bios is SO much easier.
please don't stop with this series, it is very fun, anxiety inducing, then the relief at the end... I know by experience while breaking some PC's :))
I'm at 0:42 and I'ma try to diagnose along with you...
(Every time in the video something pops up that changes my hypothesis i will edit this comment with a time stamp)
Before touching anything I'd give the PC a visual once over, first externally, by ensuring there are no buttons stuck in the "depressed" state, or anything metallic jammed into any ports like USBs or headphone jacks. Then internally by taking off the side panel and looking for anything out of the norm, like burning, damage, things not plugged in all the way, things plugged into the wrong place or the wrong plug forced into the wrong hole. (eg a PCIE 8 pin JAMMED into the CPU 8 pin) Last visual inspection I do is ensure the CMOS battery in there and the clear CMOS jumper is in the correct orientation.
After visual inspection I'd power on to see the issue for my self.
@0:42 - After hearing the issues my first guess... HDD/SSD failure. I'd unplug both power and data from all drives, from the MOBO and PSU end. (M.2s would be removed) Then power on to see what happens.
EDIT @17:30 - Well My primary guess was never tested and we jumped to replacing the entire MOBO. Glad that hamfist worked... but did you ever try running his MOBO out of the case with nothing plugged into it like you did with the other board?
His board may not be dead. Try putting a new CMOS battery in there. Test boot it out of case with nothing plugged into it other than the known working GPU and monitor.
PS... I'm an old retired tech (cant do it anymore because my eyes went kaput when I was 28) I love this series and I will always watch it as long as you make it.
By far my favorite series that you do. Please continue fix or flop. So helpful and enjoyable!
I love this series Greg
The amount of people rigs you’ve fixed that was quite simple in the end your a legend
My issue this week
I’ve never seen this issue before luckily the car wasn’t dead
Had a issue with gpu drivers
Had a 2070 super die and blue screen with tdr gpu mem error
In the end the system was down for 3 days
Fix was safe mode and remove the gpu driver then use a newer one and all is good no more tdr failure
Was first time I’ve come across this issue
fix or flop is my favorite series on youtube. Thanks for another great season
Great video. Thanks for doing this series and helping those that you can. Peace - Take Care and Blessings.
Just want to say this is one of my favourite series, I'm really into pc building stuff lately and this series scratches that itch perfectly. I really want to do something like this myself one day and the series is an inspiration.
If the computer refuses to POST/BOOT after checking CPU, RAM, PSU, and GPU to be good, this could also be caused by a dead CMOS battery. So always try to check if HDD indicator light is on and blinking on the case and the keyboard and mouse lights up, if not, then it's possible the CMOS battery could be dead before ruling out that the mobo is dead. Worth a try to save some money before buying a new board if it's still actually good and just needs a battery replacement.
Hi Greg I am from South Africa glad to see you safe after the floods. Great series as always been watching since the beginning. Keep it up
Really interesting one this time Greg - I've never seen the power delivery for the RAM die in the motherboard before, normally the CPU VRM gets way more stress and goes first. Great job diagnosing this 👍
Greg, I've been doing PC things longer than you but I enjoy absorbing new knowledge as a hedge against future issues. I can admit my one failure to fix was a dead peltier in my Ultra Chilltec cooler sounding an alarm that it was dead but I couldn't tell what was upset(too many concerts, zero ear protection). I still plan to revive it for nostalgia with a Peltier off of Amazon...(Assuming I find all of it in my storage unit).
Fix or flop is the only reason reason i even sub here. love these, can careless for the reviews.
I had a couple thoughts about the RAM. One being that maybe it just wasn't fully seated if they had tried pulling out and reseating it on their own and just forgot to mention they had tried that? So maybe it was seated fine when they had the issue. The second being that if it was the issue (and I'm no electrician, power stuff tends to go over my head) but if it *was* loose I could maybe see vibrations from the fans, or if it's on the desk where they put their hands/feet on it to rest, maybe some excitement jostled it knocking it looser? As for bricking the board, I've seen LTT do tests with removing RAM without long term damage, recently, but is it possible that something could short from a pin being not in the proper place and arcing to a pin and nuking the board? I'm guessing not, if the display stayed up and it didn't shut down to protect itself, but if it's the RAM that shorts... idk, maybe it messes with the protection features somehow? But they were the first things I thought of when watching.
I love this series so much because I wish I could do this myself for people...maybe one day.
I recently just solved my own issue where both a GTX 1080 FE and an RTX 3060 12 GB kept having issues with my 1440p monitors no matter the cable used or settings applied / drivers used. It especially had issues with HDR.
Upgraded to a 7800 XT. So. Much. Better. But I tried everything except the GPU first because money. The older GPUs I now have I am giving to friends who need them.
A BIOS harness to flash a good start-up. The RAM misalignment possibly sent power the wrong way and blew a capacitor, which will heat up enough to be picked up with an infrared camera. Or, use it as a parts board.
love this playlist! hopefully you can keep it going for another 5 seasons
Hurricanes done tore us up this year. Good to see you and your family are all right. Keep up the solid work!
this series is therapy. hope we get more in the future ❤
Before watching past 10 seconds im guessing bad dim, mobo, then cpu. I love watching these. i have been doing computer repairs like this since back in the 2000s when i put multiple broken together to make something i was allowed to use.
Love these series keep up the good work!
Also thanks for the Win key 😄
Great vid! Just noticed that the viewer's PC case is a rebranded Corsair Carbide 275R which is the case that I'm still using today!
My 275R is the last item I bought from Fry's as they were going out of business. They told me to just go in the back area and grab one off a full pallet of them. Not the best airflow, but still a very clean case.
Ahh, the big ol fix or flop series, the best of the best
Way to close out the season with another successful FOF video. Looking forward to the next one, Greg!
I really appreciate that! Thanks for watching!
Would be nice going over boards like this and trying to fix them (flashing the bios chip directly in this case)
My Asrock B450 pro4 mobo died earlier this year always clean out and dusted every few months. I since went back to MSI. My original b350m MSI mobo I gifted to my mom. She has never dusted it out and its still going. I dropped it off at her house several years ago now. The Asrock B450 was my first mobo from asrock. I've never had a motherboard go dead so soon (other than DOA) that happens sometimes but not one the lasts several months then dies so soon. Im happy to report im back MSI! I ended up geting a msi b550pro vc-wifi and its been a tank! Greg I had an issue with the power button delayed before, it turned out it was dust on the back of a pcb board below the power button in the case I used some iso alcohol to clean the pcb board and has worked great ever since. Not all cases have a pcb board thats connected to the power button but mine did it was a raidmax case.
Love your content Greg. I think my next board will be a Gigabyte. I have had bad luck with MSI boards the last couple of builds, the worst being the B650 MS-7D75 Tomahawk. Although now it is somewhat stable, I've suffered from long post times, freezes, lock ups, and blue screens. I'm about fed up.
Hey Greg, great Video again! Like to see you FoF series. It´s scary how often the Mainboards are dead. Seems that they are the most fragile component in all of our rigs.
I love how this series evolved into "this shouldn't be an issue, but i've seen weirder things" which has exactly been my experience and why i like troubleshooting pcs. you never know what you're gonna find and every once in a while there's this one issue that has no feasible explanation
Ive had that error pop up before and it also froze my game I was playing. I think my systems about 4 years old now and luckily for me, mine still works....for now. I dont do anything wild with my system in terms of overclocking or anything so seeing how to diagnose something like this is useful information so thank you for the video!
In a situation where you can't access the bios the normal way and don't have a flashback button, actually having to connect a device physically to the chip is something most people can't do. It's possible it's corrupted, or there's a component that failed on the board. Possible to fix, but if it were me I'd return the board to the owner and say he could have it looked at if he really wants to reuse that board. Otherwise, it's working now at least which is more important.
love the content as always cant wait 4 the next season great work as always Greg
great series greg, waiting for the next season please donot stop this series it want be boring ever i learned a lot from this
Perfect, new FoF episode to watch while enjoying breakfast.
Can't wait for season 6!
1:50... loved the quote! Turning into a younger version of Jay would not necessarily be a bad thing. But, your wife may not agree.
Hope you and the family are well Greg! love the content as usual
I hope the manufacturers keep giving you free motherboards. It's a no lose proposition, if it's replacing another manufacturers board they look good because it fixes the computer. If it's their own brand, they still supplied a repair on their own product. Brilliant. Also basically free because they must have an allocation for warranty repairs, and they can just give that to him, he can do the work, while monetized, they still get free goodwill advertising.
Love it, thanks for the vid btw! Enjoyable as always.
Best series. Keep it going!
Thank you so much for these videos. I'm a huge fan and watch every single one .
Love this channel and your videos. Also love that you choose to explain all your choices to the keyboard warriors too. 🤣
Finally, the content I subscribed for.
This is one of my biggest fears when it comes to building a new PC, or fixing one for someone else. Everything can be working fine one moment, and the next, a brand new part decides to give out, or the part beside the one you just fixed/replaced straight up dies.. Totally random, many times unforeseeable. But guess who's gonna get the blame?
I just watch your flip or flop. Love watching it. Wish you put up more videos.
Happy to see you are okay after the storm.
But i see FoF, i click and upvote.
Looking forward to more videos :D
Honestly, I don't know why anyone would complain that you did not check the bios. If the cpu works fine, and the PC had always worked prior to this error, then it has nothing to do with the bios. Literally the only way the bios would be an issue is if he had tried to do an update and either used the wrong bios or cut the update off midway.
>If the cpu works fine, and the PC had always worked prior to this error, then it has nothing to do with the bios
Patently False.
Flash chips that store the BIOS can randomly corrupt themselves. I've had it happen numerous times to my own boards, and I've had even more boards come across my bench that have had it happen. Boards with dual BIOS are even worse, because if the secondary BIOS becomes corrupt, it can cause all sorts of weird erratic behavior. Gigabyte boards are especially bad about this, because they have an internal check that runs on the backup BIOS at regular intervals while the system is running. If it fails, it can cause the computer to spontaneously reboot, lock up or crash.
Then you have to add Microsoft and board vendor software into the mix. Microsoft started pushing out motherboard BIOS updates through Windows Update, which has been a disaster. AIB flashing utilities from within Windows are just as bad.
So frequent is it a problem that I've had to buy multiple EEPROM programmers to flash all of the various types of BIOS chips out there. Modern boards usually use SPI flash memory, but older boards can use serial and parallel flash chips that require different programmers.
That being said, I think the more likely problem that happened with this X570 board is that one of the CPU mosfets died and shorted out. It's probably fixable, but not without special tools.
Love the guitars! Keep on rockin' and fixin' \m/
Asrock is strange. Here you have x570 steel legend. Its more advanced board that my B550m Steel Legend, but my have very handy button on the backplate for Clear CMOS and this one don't have.
We love you greg! I'm glad to see you and your family are doing ok.
The best series ever! Love it
A lot of correct comments on here , a dead or shorted CR2032 can cause it not to POST. Also it's not hard to connect a piggyback a clipon programming cable on the bios chip , you don't need to unsolder these chips this can be done incircuit with a super cheap ch341a based programmer, it could be the upgraded CPU bricked the bios. A read on the rom dump and a comparison of the dump, against a good binary bios firmware. Or erase and flash the latest bios firmware over the old flash.
Glad to see everything is ok over there after the storms.
Great video, I always enjoy your work.
Frickin love this series man. GIVE ME MORE!😄
3700x and 5500 would both work on the same bios. I believe it to be the board also.
Greg, Dont listen to the haters!! You're doing a great job!!
Another great Fix or Flop. Thanks Greg!
I love this series. Also you saved me a ton of money with a Win11 key.
ID look into potentially trying to find an eeprom programmer to try flashing the bios manually. You are def smart enough to do it, and may be fun for you to learn how to do it and potentially save even more boards. Is it worth it in time? Probably not rn but may be neat as a thing to show people as an option
I actually have one on hand! Ordered it a few months ago. That said, there is a SHARP learning curve and I'm not confident enough in my ability to use it to show on video just yet.
@@GregSalazar All the more reason to start doing it. This is exactly what we want to see.
@@GregSalazar I think it would be neat to record going through your process of learning. You go step by step with how you learn to use it etc and hopefully by the end you have figured it out and get it working. Comes with a lot of IFs and is not guaranteed to work so i can see why you may not want to allocate the time when others are more reasonable for the business side of things.
The VRMs on the AsRock took a shit. Luckily the CPU was still good - the 3000 series will commit hara kiri eventually. But at least the B550 has scalability - the owner can easily update to the latest BIOS and drop in a 5700x3d. He does have to be careful - Gigabyte developed a bad habit of not importing the Secure Boot variables in their BIOS updates this past August on all AM4 and AM5 boards. 😂 The September round of BIOS updates are fine though ...
Man, I wish I had a Greg in my state. I am in need of some pc assistance like this. I love this series.
Nothing wrong with turning into Jay lol.
I love watching Fix or flop series. Glad your OK Greg Salazar from the hurricane and tornado's. Where you close to it. hopefully you where far away from it.
B550 Launched almost one year after X570. There have been more than a few occasions where a B550 board has had a better feature set like flashback compared to an x570 counterpart. Bigger number not always better.
This might not matter, but at 8:06 you can see the cooler mounting that was used isn't the correct type, it almost looks like they dug into the mb when tightened down
I’m turning into Jay. That was funny. Love your videos. Keep doing what you’re doing. You’ve helped me many times in the past and will in the future. Thank you.
Nice fix and thanks for helping that guy.
Thanx for the video. You're rapidly putting me off buying a gaming PC as my next one . I don't do gaming so most likely a business PC. I don't remember you doping any of these .
Finally, a new episode! Keep on keeping on, Greg!
Cool haircut Greg. APPROVED :D
A working motherboard instead of a brick is always a upgrade, even if it is replacing a X570 for a A520
exactly I am running A520 with rtx 3080 and ryzen 5600 and I dont care much about overclocking. Stability is king.
b550 not a520 lol but still nice
The chipset fan probably failed and the PCIe controller overheated, had a few ASROCKs in the shop because of that. Plus that case is trash thermally.