PC stops outputting suddenly, clearing CMOS makes it work again.

Frodeb · January 5, 2023

So my girlfriend has a PC that has had extended problems this week.

Started by turning on, but not outputting, and if you turned it off and back on (maybe a few times) it would suddenly work, and everything would work perfectly normally. Then it started not turning on at all. She changed the PSU and the first time she turned it on it started normally, after turning it off, putting the panels on and putting things back in place it started not outputting again, and the RGB on the keyboard and mouse would not light up.

Taking out the CMOS battery, waiting for a few minutes and putting it back in seemed to do the trick, it booted, outputted and everything seemed fine. Until about an hour later when it suddenly stopped outputting, and the RGB on the mouse and the keyboard shut off again. But once again taking out the CMOS battery and waiting seemed to fix it.

Does anyone have any idea what could be the cause of this?

The specs that I know are:

Ryzen 3 3600 (so no integrated graphics)

GTX 1660 Super

16GB RAM

and not 100% on this but I think it's a MSI B450 Tomahawk Max (definitely an MSI board at least)

Update: After being off for the night it now won't post again. PC turns on and case fans, fan on the CPU cooler, and GPU fans are all spinning, keyboard and mouse lighting turns on, but no output.

Edited January 6, 2023 by Frodeb

BeastyB314 · January 5, 2023

A bit of a stretch, but check if there is anything shorting your board. Maybe a loose screw or bare wire touching the board.

The motherboard screw holes also might also be stripped, causing shorts.

Just a thought

Frodeb · January 6, 2023

19 hours ago, BeastyB314 said:

A bit of a stretch, but check if there is anything shorting your board. Maybe a loose screw or bare wire touching the board.

The motherboard screw holes also might also be stripped, causing shorts.

Just a thought

Had that thought, but I'm not there to check thoroughly. Going to have her take out a cheap SSD I added last time I was there in November. Long shot but it's the last thing that was changed about it before the issues started.