AM4 Pinout, Audio devices and thermalpaste

[St.Petrus]

Hi all,
Today I created an account
I'm Robert 27 year old from the Netherlands.
Nice to meet you guys.

But I'm here because I need some help,
I put together a new pc today:

AMD Ryzen 5 3600
MSI B450 Gaming Pro Carbon AC (the friend i build it for requested onboard wifi)
MSI GeForce 1660 Super Ventus
Curcial Ballistix DDR4 2x8GB 3600
Crucial P1 500 GB M.2

But after a couple of startups i noticed that the boots weren't really stable, sometimes i barely got it too boot, so i dialed back the frequency of the ram since the mobo didnt support 3600Mhz but 3466Mhz. (a mistake in picking the mobo). After this I was able to effortlesly install windows 10 and the drivers. After the mandatory reboot I noticed that it didn't boot at all.
assuming my luck i went and reseated the GPU, Ram and then the CPU,

then i got in some trouble:
When I removed the CPU-Heatsink the CPU came out of the socket with it.(does that happen more often ? i'm pretty sure i locked it in place the proper way) luckily I was careful enough not to send it flying but it did get some thermal paste on a couple of the connecting pins.
I carefully cleaned it off with a toothpick placed it back in the socket cleaned the heatsink(which had an grey layer of oxidation anyone encountered this before ?) and the cpu heatspreader.
The system was put back together with some Arctic-MX4 and I hoped for the best.

The system booted again and i was quickly working on installing the nesse.... PLONG New audio device found. The thing is that was not possible there was no audiojack plugged in any of the connectors only a IBM Model M in the PS2 connector and a Logitech G700S in an USB. and the windows sounds keeps on playing unplugged, plugged, unplugged, plugged.

So thinking the pins i hit with the thermal paste had something to do with the sound i got the CPU out of the socket again (this time not attached to the heatsink) and tried to clean of more but there almost nothing to remove anymore. popped it back in boot the pc and PLONG. Windows is driving me crazy again with the annoying sounds.

Does anyone have any clue whats going on?
I would love to hear it if you have any advice.
Hope I didn't break any forum rules


 

[Haro]

Before that 

Did you try installing the latest bios ? And audio drivers ?

[wall03]

Welcome to the forum!

 

 

First, you did not break forum rules but next time put this in troubleshooting!

 

You kinda made me uncomfortable with the thermal paste on the CPU.

 

Yea did you update BIOS and audio drivers?

[St.Petrus]

The bios i havent touched, The audio drivers are indeed the latest form the manufacturers website

[Haro]

1 minute ago, St.Petrus said:

The bios i havent touched, The audio drivers are indeed the latest form the manufacturers website

Well normally you would update the bios when you first build a PC lol

That could eliminate some of the problems

[mariushm]

No, getting some paste on the pins of the cpu shouldn't cause any issues.

Thermal paste is not conductive so worst case scenario the pin just won't make good contact with the cpu socket.

 

PGA sockets work by exerting some sideways pressure/friction on the pins to keep the cpu locked into the socket. The thermal paste between the heatsink and the CPU can be sticky enough that acts like glue so if you pull up, the force you use to pull up may defeat the friction between the socket and the pins of the cpu.

In theory, nothing bad will happen, but if you continue to do that, eventually the socket may go bad (not enough friction to keep the cpu pins pressed on the metal contacts of the cpu socket)

Learn to remove the cpu cooler while it's still warm ... run some benchmark or some game for a few minutes before you shut down the pc, and then simply try to wiggle (gently twist left and right the cpu cooler to loosen the cooler)

 

Use a solvent to clean the thermal paste ... isopropyl alcohol, sanitary alcohol , good quality vodka even .... other solvents that work are acetone, or lighter fluid or gasoline (but after using such solvents, use some water or alcohol to clean the gasoline/lighter fluid from the pins/surface and dry the pins or metal surface)

 

Visually inspect the analogue outputs of the sound card, just in case there's something shorted inside. Plug something in and out the jacks. You can also disable that auto detection feature... there's some option in the application that comes with Windows or the sound card drivers.

 

As for ram , I think the sticks require 1.35v to work at 3600 ... maybe you didn't increase the voltage and you're trying to get the high frequencies with 1.2v ?   Try 1.36v..1.38v otherwise, the sticks will handle such tiny increase in voltage above 1.35v .... alternatively use more conservative timings ... if they're 16-16-something , go with 18 or 19 - something

 

If the sound card keeps giving you problems, and you don't want to return the motherboard, you could go in bios and disable the onboard audio and just buy a separate audio card. you have pci-e x1 slots available, and there's also usb sound cards available.

 

No, i don't think the audio issues are caused by cpu, as the sound card should be connected to chipset.

[St.Petrus]

Yeah i was afraid the thermal paste might have electrically insulated the pins however but the squeezing motion of the lock should indeed counter that as you say.

I used a good solvent to clean the CPU don't worry

i forgot to mention this but i tried to plug my headphones into the audio jack the one which was acting up, i was also not able to get any sound out of this connector.

For the ram i used the XMP profile would that automatically also adjust the voltage ?

If with soundcard you mean the onboard soundchip I agree yeah.

Let me quickly check the bios and update it if needed
and ill also try to reinstall the sounddrivers for good measure.


 

[Haro]

Just now, St.Petrus said:

For the ram i used the XMP profile would that automatically also adjust the voltage ?

If you have voltage on Auto ( which it should be ) then yes

[mariushm]

7 minutes ago, St.Petrus said:

i forgot to mention this but i tried to plug my headphones into the audio jack the one which was acting up, i was also not able to get any sound out of this connector.

 

One more thing. well a couple more.

Make sure you inserted the front panel audio connector in the header properly, and you didn't miss some pins. If inserted the wrong way it may cause those issues.

 

Also what connector is your headphone using? Do you have microphone on the headphones ... if so, is the connector with separate headphones and microphone jacks or is that using the 4 pin audio connector (mixed stereo headphones + mic)

The mix stereo+mic can cause auto detection issues.

Also you should be able to disable auto detection and manually configure the role of each audio jack.

 

Also ... you may not hear anything in the audio jacks because Windows may have defaulted to using the integrated audio from the video card. Video cards have an audio chip on them to enable sending sound through HDMI to a monitor or TV, so Windows may have defaulted to output sound through hdmi/video card to the monitor and your monitor probably has no speakers.

 

Right click on the speaker icon and select playback devices (at least that's how it's in Windows 7 I'm still using) and then choose your integrated audio (and analogue if you also have digital outputs enabled)

 

You may need to restart the application (or browser tab, if you check sound with youtube movies or something like that) so that the application will re-detect the default audio output and send sound to the new chosen sound card.

[St.Petrus]

11 minutes ago, mariushm said:

One more thing. well a couple more.

Make sure you inserted the front panel audio connector in the header properly, and you didn't miss some pins. If inserted the wrong way it may cause those issues.

Im not using the headers at all im currently using the motherboard box as a test bench.
 

11 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Also what connector is your headphone using? Do you have microphone on the headphones ... if so, is the connector with separate headphones and microphone jacks or is that using the 4 pin audio connector (mixed stereo headphones + mic)

Yeah 4 pin but this also works in my own setup but i guess thats not something i should assume always works.


 

11 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Also ... you may not hear anything in the audio jacks because Windows may have defaulted to using the integrated audio from the video card. Video cards have an audio chip on them to enable sending sound through HDMI to a monitor or TV, so Windows may have defaulted to output sound through hdmi/video card to the monitor and your monitor probably has no speakers.

 

Right click on the speaker icon and select playback devices (at least that's how it's in Windows 7 I'm still using) and then choose your integrated audio (and analogue if you also have digital outputs enabled)

I know all this, I did all this, I appreciate your help but please assume i have some braincells

 

Edited May 30, 2020 by St.Petrus
forgot an "not"

[St.Petrus]

Ok i updated the Bios and reinstalled the Audio driver (although the bios flash seemed to have done it) and the problem seems to have disappeared.
The headphones now also work
Ill test it out a bit longer to check.

Thanks for the help boys,
i hate it when the solution is so simple >.>