Attempted CPU upgrades gone wrong

[FenixC]

I recently built a rig out of spare parts meant for my brother, which originally contained a ryzen 5 1600 AF, an asrock b450m hdv r4.0 mobo, and an rtx 3050, with 16 gigs of ddr4 3200 ram. This worked with a couple of noticeable flaws: while both BIOS and Windows detected 16 gigs of ram, it said that 8.1 gigs were hardware reserved, leaving only 7.9 usable. Secondly, I couldn’t get the ram to run at anything above 2133 MHz. Eventually, I took out one stick and got it working at 2800 MHz, still not full speed but better. However, this was unstable and over the course of a week the PC deteriorated into not being able to even post no matter what I did, the best I could get was my keyboard lighting up. I thought this was surely an issue with an aging IMC in an old ryzen chip, so I decided that I was going to donate my ryzen 5 3600 from my build (ryzen 5 3600, rtx 3080, aorus b550m pro-p, 16 gigs ddr4) and upgrade my cpu to a ryzen 5 5600. I confirmed also that the bios on my brother’s build works with the 3600. Today I received my 5600 brand new and so I installed the 3600 in my brother’s pc and the same thing happened, all I got was some fan action spinning up and down and keyboard lights. I cleared CMOs, tried only one stick of ram, and nothing changed. So then I wondered if it was a motherboard problem this whole time, and so I installed the 1600 AF into my rig and it didn’t post either. What’s worse is that I reinstalled the 3600 back into my rig and now it won’t post with that. I’m clearing CMOs every time I make changes. The thing that truly made my heart drop is this - I just installed the brand new 5600, but I’m still not having any luck with my rig. I’ve messed with trying to boot with ram sticks configured in both dual channel and just one stick, clearing CMOs, and confirming that I’m doing the cpu installs right (I am). I’m running out of options and I don’t know what to do next. Please help!

[OddOod]

One thing to remember here: Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. These situations cause stress and stress causes you to speed up and make mistakes. Slow down, double check everything. It's VERY likely that your rig isn't broken, just that there's a loose cable or a RAM stick that's been bumped or the GPU slipping slightly out of place or a drive has been jostled or, and this is hilariously common in my own rig building experience: forgetting the CPU power. 
Best thing to do right now is gut the towers, build them on boxes. Make sure you have a single fully functional system. Then you can start working on figuring out what parts actually work. 

My guess is that Brother's mobo is toast. But that's a shot in the dark. I see you're clearing CMOS between builds, are you sure you're waiting for memory training to finish? DDR4 is usually fast on memory training, but it can still take minutes. 
Also, what make and model (and approximate age) are the PSUs?

[FenixC]

6 minutes ago, OddOod said:

One thing to remember here: Slow is smooth, smooth is fast. These situations cause stress and stress causes you to speed up and make mistakes. Slow down, double check everything. It's VERY likely that your rig isn't broken, just that there's a loose cable or a RAM stick that's been bumped or the GPU slipping slightly out of place or a drive has been jostled or, and this is hilariously common in my own rig building experience: forgetting the CPU power. 
Best thing to do right now is gut the towers, build them on boxes. Make sure you have a single fully functional system. Then you can start working on figuring out what parts actually work. 

My guess is that Brother's mobo is toast. But that's a shot in the dark. I see you're clearing CMOS between builds, are you sure you're waiting for memory training to finish? DDR4 is usually fast on memory training, but it can still take minutes. 
Also, what make and model (and approximate age) are the PSUs?

I do believe I am giving enough time to allow for memory training, in my testing of my brother’s PC I had to clear cmos many times and when it was posting it was posting quickly still. As for my rig I haven’t messed with it since I built it so I don’t know how long it should take but I’ve given it some time each boot. The psu in my rig is a 750 watt 80+ gold evga unit that is a couple years old and my brothers is a 500 watt 80+ bronze aresgame psu that is at least 5 years old. My PC worked perfectly fine up until I messed with it and my brother’s pc hasn’t seemed to be suffering from any psu related issues, but certainly that could be a piece as well. Thank you for your reply!

[OddOod]

14 minutes ago, FenixC said:

aresgame psu

Oh lordy, that ENTIRE brand is F Tier, do not use. Could EASILY be the problem. Funky power crops up in weird ways and it can actually fry components. 

 

[FenixC]

28 minutes ago, OddOod said:

Oh lordy, that ENTIRE brand is F Tier, do not use. Could EASILY be the problem. Funky power crops up in weird ways and it can actually fry components. 

 

Good to know, thanks for letting me know. I hope it hasn’t fried any of my brothers parts but then again it hasn’t touched any of the parts in my rig and my rig isn’t working either now… I’m very confused lol

[OddOod]

On 6/20/2025 at 9:49 PM, FenixC said:

my rig isn’t working either now

What are the symptoms? Also specs?
And have you tried building on a box?