New mobo won't boot

[PopeSixtusV]

Hi,

Just purchased an ASRock X680E PG Lightning, along with new CPU and RAM (details included below). After physical installation of everything into the case, gave it a quick test and it refuses to finish booting. It seems to POST ok. The 4 debug LEDs on the mobo cycle relatively quickly (which is to be expected, according to the manual) then all 4 go off (also expected, per the manual) and the monitor displays the ASRock logo, but it never actually boots or gives me the option to enter BIOS. I've tried pressing F2 and/or Del, but it just goes to a mostly blank page with a handful of characters in the top left. I've seen a few variations, but I think the last one was simply: ^[[[B 

 

I have tried downloading the latest BIOS from ASRock's website and using the flashback feature. Everything appeared to work as intended, the green light blinked for a few minutes and then went out entirely, which is expected behavior, according to their website. But no change in the boot process. 

 

I have also tried clearing CMOS, both with and without the battery installed. Still no change. 

 

I've also tried booting with only one stick of RAM, still no change. And last, but not least, I've tried booting without my GPU, using only the onboard graphics. You guessed it, still no change.

 

I've reached out to ASRock tech support. No reply, although it hasn't been very long yet. Just thought I'd see if anyone here has any insight while I'm waiting. Thanks, folks!

 

Full system specs:

CPU: R7 7800X3D

GPU: RX 7900XTX

RAM: GSkill Flare X5 DDR5-6000 2x16

Mobo: ASRock X670E PG Lightning

Boot drive: Inland 1TB PCie Gen4 NVME M.2

PSU: NZXT 1000W

Cooler: NZXT Kraken X53

Case: Hyte Y60

 

[PopeSixtusV]

UPDATE:

 

The problem is inexplicably fixed? I thought perhaps there was an issue with OS, even though it wouldn't even dump me into BIOS, and I've been wanting to try out Pop!_OS anyway; so I created a bootable USB for it on my laptop. When I tried forcing it to open the boot menu WHILE there was media there, it actually worked. Instead of booting to Pop, I just hit "exit and return to Windows 10" simply to see if it would work. Lo and behold, it did. It has persisted across one restart so far. 

 

I have no idea why that worked. But here we are.