Ryzen 7 mATX build, no display/POST

Thorfirhall · January 24, 2018

I've gone through the no POST thread, and am still having no display / BIOS on screen. All fans run, CPU LED is on. Current motherboard (MSI) has EZ Debug lights, and none light up after powering on (GPU, RAM, CPU, Boot lights all clear). RAM debug light only comes on when removing both RAM sticks.

First up, my components are:

(motherboard round 1): ASRock AB350M Pro4 AM4 (mATX)

(motherboard round 2): MSI B350M BAZOOKA AM4 (mATX)

CPU: Ryzen 7 1700

PSU: SeaSonic G Series SSR-550RM 550W 80 plus gold

RAM: CORSAIR Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3200

GPU: Radeon R7 370 (I know. GPU prices were high so wanted to wait for Volta)

Boot SSD: WD Black 256GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD

Case: Fractal Node 804

More background:

Initial build took place with the above system and the ASRock motherboard above this last July. System ran very well, great temps. Would rarely experience freezes during games, probably once a month (it wouldn't be during any particularly stressful gaming, though, it would crash on like Heroes of the Storm). One was especially bad during a day of Destiny 2, but reading a changelog, that was a known issue with Destiny 2 itself. Later that week (now 2 weeks ago), however, I plugged some headphones into my audio front panel, and immediately both my monitors cut display and reported no signal. All fans and LEDs continued to run. Thinking it was some weird power or signal quirk, I hard reset the system. No display. As I said, fans run, LEDs work, curiously, keyboard and mouse don't light up.

I re-seat a lot of components trying to troubleshoot, with no results. So I took it to the first repair shop. The guy was completely stumped. I warned him that Ryzen builds have no integrated graphics so he won't be able to test GPU failure unless he has a new one: he didn't believe me. Anyway, he was pretty sure the motherboard had somehow failed or shorted, but had a very hard time believing a front panel audio jack could cause that much voltage or destruction. I read a whole lot about similar-sounding problems with the same ASRock motherboard, so I convinced myself RMA would be risky and it would be better to just buy a more trusted motherboard.

So new MSI motherboard came this past Monday. I used all the same components except the new motherboard. Same situation, though. As noted above, no EZ DEbug lights come on unless I actually run without the components (take all RAM out, then RAM debug light stays on). I did more re-seating to no avail. Cleared CMOS and took battery out for 10 minutes, still nothing. I didn't breadboard it, though.

It is now at a second repair shop. The guy said he has a 1070 on hand he can use, but beyond that didn't seem to have many ideas beyond breadboarding it.

So what do y'all think? I have heard a lot of these motherboards were rushed into production, and that weirdly the old BIOS versions they had didn't support Ryzen and so wouldn't POST. But, that didn't seem to affect Ryzen 7, and in addition, my second board had a date of November, which I would imagine would be plenty new enough to support Ryzen 7.

Sorry for the super long story, but I have completely run out of ideas and would not like to just buy a whole new system. Thanks

Canada EH · January 24, 2018

uninstall all ram, use only one stick

try again

put stick in diff slot

try again

try diff stick in diff slot

uninstall gpu

try diff psu

check all connectors

Thorfirhall · January 24, 2018

Ah, I should have mentioned. On motherboard 2, I did all combinations of RAM sticks... recommended was slot 2 and 4. I did one stick in 2, then one stick in 1, then 3, then 4. No change, although RAM Debug went on when I put it in 1 (it recommends slot 2).

Uninstall gpu is not an option, as Ryzen doesn't support integrated graphics...

Before getting a new PSU, I'd like to know whether it's defective or not...