I just bought a PC that I was told doesn’t work
I am able to get the PC to boot in to BIOS no problem with the 3700x(Zen 2), but the second I attempt to boot on to a thumb drive it doesn’t work.
I can boot ventoy to the area where I can select an OS and select an OS, then it restarts. Windows 10 boot drive would just cause the same error as ventoy, but without me getting to select anything.
I put in a spare 3200GE(Zen +, not Zen 2) that I have, and the PC booted just fine, no problems. I now have windows installed.
But with that being said, is there any way I could fix my 3700x that I have and get it working again? Even if it might be sketchy, or throw it in a toaster at 200 degrees for a few hours and hope for the best?
As of right now, the CPU is dead in my eyes, even if it does boot to UEFI. I need to be able to launch an OS to use it properly. Maybe I’m missing something? Just thought I’d ask you guys here at L1 to see if anyone has any good ideas for me to try out before it joins my bin of CPU’s.
Just a quick edit for anyone that finds this in the future and might need an answer.
Change any CPU or memory related settings. Change CPU voltage, it seems as though many AM4 motherboards put CPU voltage needlessly high.
I turned off some cores and that is what fixed it for me. But I saw others where changing voltage helped, limiting wattage, etc. Find what works best for you, run a stress test, and hope for the best. Hopefully your almost a paperweight can be used for a little bit more than just that.
Can you please describe the symptoms of “it doesn’t work”? What steps, if any, do you need to perform for it to boot again?
Could it be as simple as a dead bios battery (i.e. any BIOS settings stored at first boot don’t get saved)?
A replacement CPU working as expected makes the 3700x appear suspect. Assuming the CPU is dead, what motherboard is in the computer. Maybe an upgrade to a Zen 3 CPU makes sense?
The memory controller seems to be a huge issue with older Ryzen processors. my 2400G got to the point I couldn’t get past POST and I ended up replacing it with a 5600G. My 1700X started exhibiting the same problem and I dropped the RAM speed to 2933 from 3200 and that stopped my problems.
I ended up giving it to a friend who is going to upgrade the system soon, and I guess something happened that the BIOS defaulted to whatever was saved last. Well that was 3200. When I got my hands on it I pulled the battery, shorting it out for ~10 seconds, and it didn’t appear to reset it to defaults for whatever reason. I fussed around with it until I finally got it to boot up and saw the RAM at 3200. I could also hear high pitched noises coming from the processor.
I dropped the speed to 2866 or whatever was lower than last time, and remembered to save the configuration this time around. It has been working fine all week since that happened. He is going to look in to getting a 5x00X3D processor to replace the worn out 1700X. I know the single core performance isn’t great, but it would otherwise be a decent processor for a lot of things if it wasn’t for the borked memory controller. If you can get it to POST, try significantly dropping the memory speed and see if that stabilizes things.
The solder reflow thing only works for soldered on chips. It isn’t going to help the CPU if the memory controller inside is going bad.
Pins all look fine, zero issues there. I rubbed it down with isopropyl alcohol just to make sure there was no debris or finger grease that I couldn’t see that some how would cause any issues
BIOS battery is fine
When I say it doesn’t work, the whole PC just powers down and then boots back up. I’m able to get in to BIOS/UEFI just fine with the 3700x, just not past that.
It’s a MSI b450m pro vdh max. Supports 5xxx ryzen, so I might just upgrade it to a 5700x.
I want to see if it is possible to save the 3700x if possible though, even if it doesn’t go in to that PC. I like to save things when possible.
I’ll have to try to see if dropping the RAM speed will help.
Hopefully AMD has fixed the memory controller issue that plagued their zen 1, 1+, and 2 CPU’s. My 5700x on my main rig is second hand so I’ll have to not have any warranty for that if it decides to fail anytime soon. Thank you, and the others, for the input though, I appreciate it.
You and me both. I’m entirely too poor to just be replacing things. I did buy my 5600G new, but it would still suck to have to fight with that. The other two I bought used and ran for a couple years before the problems started creeping up. Random lockups or reboots only under minimal/no load. I could game on the 2400G for several hours, and if I shut the game down and went to the bathroom or to grab a drink, it would lock up. I saw the same thing start to happen with the 1700X and realized it wasn’t long for this world either. Perhaps I could drop the speed all the way down and bottleneck the bandwidth horribly, but I’ve never had such an issue with processors before.
There are also UEFI/BIOS updates that can supposedly help, but dropping the speed should tell you if you are on the right track or not.
I already have updated the BIOS.
But I seemed to have found something that solved the issue for me.
I went through changing voltage settings, dropping speed, turned off SMT, and turned off some cores.
Found out that as long as I make t he CPU go from being an 8 core, to being a 6 core. It works so far, running some stress tests right now and it’s holding up well.
So I at least will be able to breathe new life in to that CPU thankfully
For anyone that finds this thread in the future.
I highly recommend just messing with CPU and memory settings to see what ends up working for you. Might be memory clock speeds, memory voltage, CPU voltage, or for me. A core that went bad. Hopefully you can find something that works for you.
I dug up a video I remembered seeing with possible problems and solutions for 3000 series Ryzen processors. Hopefully this will be useful if anyone else comes across it in the future.
