New PC build has powered down after a couple of days of operation and now isn't responding

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Sorry if I’m in the wrong spot.

New PC build ran for a couple of days, played some games, ran some benchmarks, but powered itself down today and won’t power back on.

I’ve tinkered a fair bit with previous PCs, but this is my first full build.

My components are:

B850 Aorus Elite Wifi 7

powercolor hellhound 9070xt

Ryzen 9800x3d

ARCTIC liquid freezer III pro 360 AIO cooler

G.Skill Flare Flare x5 DDR5 RAM - 2x16GB

Samsung 990 Pro SSD 2tb

Lian Li Lancool 216 case

Corsair Rm1000x power supply (1000w)

I had some difficulty getting the PC to Post initially. My first issue was I had my ram in the wrong slots. I corrected that, and afterwards still had no luck getting a POST. After some research, I decided I might have a short or a poor seat on a power cable. I fully disassembled and found one of my motherboard standoffs had come loose. I fixed that and reseated both ends of all of my cables during my reassembly.

I still found that I wasn’t getting power at first when I tried to power back on. I sat there for about 5 minutes trying gathering my thoughts on what to do next when the PC came on and POSTed. I found at that point that my GPU wasn’t fully seated so I powered back down, fully seated it, and powered back on without a problem. I installed my OS (bazzite) and went about getting the PC set up like normal.

I had one instance my first night of having the PC, seemingly spontaneously reboot, but haven’t had any issues to speak of since. I downloaded and tested a few games, ran a few benchmarks, and all seemed fine. I continued setup and downloading games last night, and it remained powered on throughout today as I had it set to download a few more games I wanted to test and benchmark.

Tonight I came back into my office after having dinner and found that my PC had shut down while I had it continuing downloads. The motherboard had one white light coming from beneath one of the shrouds that cover the m.2 drives. No diagnostic lights, fans, or signs of being powered on aside from the one light from beneath the shroud were on. When I pressed the power button, it didn’t respond at all. The single light remained lit.

I turned it off from the power supply, unplugged, and allowed it to discharge. I re-checked the power cable seatings I was able to access and took the radiator for my aio cooler off in order to re-seat my CPU power cable again. It hasn’t responded to anything. I’m not sure what to do, and I don’t want to commit to another complete disassembly and reassembly without some idea of what to look for and how to address it.

Does anyone have any thoughts?

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DDR5 can take a long time to POST, because of memory training. What speed memory are you running, and do you have EXPO enabled for it? Probably completely unrelated to the

Is this a status light or aesthetic?

This is the motherboard manual, for reference:

One thing I didn’t see you mention is the clear-cmos jumper. Right above your front panel header is a little 2-pin header, which should be labeled “CLR_CMOS”. To clear the CMOS, you need to unplug the PC from power (and any external device that has it’s own power supply), and bridge the pins with a metal screwdriver for 15-30 seconds.

I would try that before anything else, as your motherboard does have a CMOS battery.

Especially because you mentioned memory needing to be reseated, I would highly recommend clearing CMOS.

Beyond that, I would also recommend trying to boot the system with as few devices connected as possible, just try to get to the BIOS:

  • No GPU, completely remove it (plug your monitor into the onboard DisplayPort connector)
  • No SSDs at first.

Give it 5-10 minutes after you push the power button, see if anything happens. If you can get into the BIOS, you should start by adding back the SSD, then the GPU. If it doesn’t get to the BIOS, I would be contacting the vendor you got the motherboard from and get it RMA’d. You could also contact Gigabyte, but many shops will swap the board out and RMA it on their side, giving you a faster resolution.

I’ll admit that these are long shots, but it’s what I would do before contacting customer support.

Oh, also, welcome to the forum and you’re in the right spot :smiley:

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I believe the RAM is running at 5000MT/s. If I remember right, I did enable EXPO. I also have since wondered if I was just being impatient, but had assumed there would be some indication that I had power before a POST happened

I had also assumed it was an aesthetic light, but looking at the manual, the light is the one labeled AMD Chipset with a small thermometer. I looked into it just now, and apparently that’s an indication that the motherboard is receiving standby power.

I completely forgot to mention that as part of my reassembly after reseating my RAM that I did manually short the CMOS. Also, while waiting for a response, I actually removed the CMOS battery for several minutes, reinstalled, and tried booting again to the same results. I will try the manual short again before moving into removing parts to try and get into the BIOS.
Thanks for your insight and for the warm welcome!

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I would generally expect fans to spin or some sort of indicator light during DRAM training, but stranger things have happened.

Does the AIO pump turn on?

Ahh, then it’s not relevant to our diagnosis, except to indicate that the power supply isn’t completely broken.

Best of luck!

Happy to help, that’s what we’re here for!

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Yeah, regarding my first boot, I had literally nothing (AIO included) turn on as far as I could tell when I pressed the power button for at least a good five minutes. No fans, no lights, no pump, no diagnostic lights. Then it all spontaneously kicked on, and I was to the BIOS screen in short order. In the current state, the AIO pump/fans aren’t turning on. It’s similar to how it was pre-post where I had no indication of anything working, only it never kicks on.

Re: the PSU, I’ve just attempted a paperclip test, but my results are somewhat ambiguous. Apparently, this particular model won’t power its fans on unless it’s under load. I did hear it click shortly after powering it on with the paperclip in place however. Supposedly that’s relays engaging.

Looking like returns might be on the table

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Condolences, friend.

I’d get on that return track ASAP.

As for the PSU, I wouldn’t worry too much about it; this behavior is more consistent with bad motherboard than anything else. Not to mention, the relays clicking is a good sign.

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Gotcha. Have a replacement mobo on the way now. If my problems persist with the replacement, I’ll get a new PSU on the way.

Thanks again for all the input!

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The oddball thing that comes to my mind is do you have the aio plugged into the correct header on the mobo (not all mobo have an aio / pump header) or it’s own psu connector?

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Did you plug in supplemental power for the CPU?

And… did you take the plastic off the AOI pump?…. also how many gallons of thermal paste did you apply? (kidding about the gallons)

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The AIO has an all-in-one connector that plugs into the CPU fan header on the motherboard that, as I understand, controls the pump and the radiator fans. I had it plugged in to that header.

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I tried booting both with only the main connector and with the additional 2x2 port powered, and didn’t see a difference in behavior.

Yeah, I was super paranoid about leaving any plastic so I got it lol.

Re thermal paste: I erred on the side of too much rather than too little, I think, but I didn’t make a mess or anything. When I did finally POST, my CPU temps were consistently in the 50C range under load so I felt like it should’ve been okay.

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Quick update. I got my replacement motherboard yesterday evening. I got it replaced this morning and managed to POST on it. There was another 5 to 10 minute wait for the system to respond, but it did come online and has been running smoothly as far as I can tell. Back to downloading and testing for a while today. Cautiously optimistic from here. If any new problems arise, I’ll update the thread. Thanks to everyone for the questions and recommendations. Great community

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Well, that didn’t take long. I was sitting at my desk a few minutes ago waiting on a download to finish up, and it powered down again. Same condition I found it in last time – the same light indicating backup power is still on, but all of my fans stopped and I no longer have a video signal. Aside from the light, I have no indication that my system is functional. Power button and reset button do not respond.

I turned off and the power supply, discharged the button and cord and cleared my CMOS again by shorting the pins. Hit the power and walked away to see if it wanted to take a minute like on a first POST, but no luck so far. I guess I can RMA my power supply, but at this point I’m feeling pretty defeated.

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Did it power back on?

Corsair Rm1000x power supply (1000w) really should be enough power, and generally is a reliable PSU. But I’d think you are having power issues.

Did you mount your MOBO on the case with the stand-offs?

Try using only one stick of RAM. If it dies on your try the other stick. Try A1 first I think…. but also try other slots. It will run in other slots just not as well.

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No, it never powered back on. I tried discharging, resetting the CMOS, and reseating cables, but nothing had any effect. I drove to the Bestbuy a few towns over and grabbed a Thermaltake Toughpower GF A3 1050w psu this evening. Will update on whether I manage to boot with it tomorrow. Will try a single stick when I get to that point.

Yeah, I used the standoffs the case came with and double checked there weren’t any extras that I could be shorting on. Didn’t see anything else behind the motherboard last time I dismounted it that seemed shortable either.

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Update: After replacing the PSU this morning, the system did boot up again about 20 minutes ago. The CMOS clear from yesterday after the brick had registered. I was mistaken in saying EXPO had been enabled; it was the x3d Turbo Mode. I left it disabled and booted into the system to resume testing my stability.

Does anyone have any input on whether I should update my BIOS if I don’t brick again?

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I’ve had mixed results when updating the BIOS on motherboards over the years. The times it has actually been a good decision, there’s usually been a common pattern: I was already experiencing issues with the board, and the BIOS update itself had been out for at least a year.

Because of that, I tend to avoid updating the BIOS unless I have a specific problem I’m trying to fix or a clear reason to do it.

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I feel like these days Bios updates are more a good practice then they used to be but I also have had plenty of people say to only update Bios is you have a reason to update Bios.

I just feel like with recent voltage issues… you might want the latest tweeks in bios updates to avoid issues ala intel Raptor Lake issues… but I am sure there is a little flying to close to the sun for our 9800x3d chips also.

But I think for you right now…. don’t add more changes into your diagnosing until you are stable on your shutdowns.

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Is there a cpu aio headder for your board. The pump may draw to much current to work off of a fan headder!

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I wondered about that, but when I looked into it I read that the AIO all-in-one power connector is supposed to work fine using the CPU fan header in the same way multiple fans can be powered using a splitter, they all just spin the same speed instead of there being independent control. So the AIO is probably less energy efficient using the connector, but it shouldn’t pull more than a single header provides