MSI B450M Gaming Plus and 3500X

[sepheronx]

CC is holding the 2700X at $220 until Dec 28. That also happens to be the lowest price of the 2700 right now. Banger of a deal if I ever saw one. Still comes with BL3 or Outer Worlds, which I missed out on by just 2 weeks, being an early adopter.

CPU-Z database seems to hold the 3500X closer to the 2700X's single thread score than the 3700X's, which makes sense from the 3500X's max turbo freq.

Don't think CC has an Alberta store, but they have plenty of stock for online. Maybe you could get ME to price match, but I really dunno if they're willing to cut 50% of their price tag for that.

They have a policy of price match + 5% further discount if cheaper elsewhere. I could give that a try for sure.

 

[sepheronx]

Alright, so I had the machine for about a couple of months. Tested it thoroughly and worked no problem. I turned it off and left it off. Now, when it powered on it had a blue screen, rebooted and now it will not post to bios.

My only assumption is the RAM is no good. What you guys think?

Full system setup:
MSI B450 Gaming Plus Motherboard
AMD 3500X CPU
2x8GB GSKILL Flare DDR4 3200 RAM
WD Blue 550 NVME 500GB SSD
ASUS TUF GTX 1660 Super
Gigabyte 750W Gold PSU

I pulled the battery and left for the day and put it in and still no go. I am planning to pull it out of the case and just try it out of the case. But since I do not have any spare parts to test, I may have to take it into a shop that does have the parts to figure out which part is dead. But I am also planning to get RAM from a local shop (memoryexpress) and test to see if that is the problem and then return the good ram and send back the old ram for RMA. But I also feel that this is a scummy idea and I just dont feel right doing that.

 

[tabascosauz]

So you can't POST, eh? RAM is probably the easier thing to troubleshoot.

Have you tried using only one stick, trying every slot, and trying the other stick? Some kits that won't POST can do so on one stick.

I'm not sure how the Calgary and Edmonton locations are faring under COVID, but all the ME locations here are still open at least for pickup. ME is pretty good on the 14 day returns.

For no-POST, the only other thing I can think of is the GPU, which you could explore with either an APU or low end GPU, again making use of ME returns policy. But RAM first is a good way to go.

 

[sepheronx]

So you can't POST, eh? RAM is probably the easier thing to troubleshoot.

Have you tried using only one stick, trying every slot, and trying the other stick? Some kits that won't POST can do so on one stick.

I'm not sure how the Calgary and Edmonton locations are faring under COVID, but all the ME locations here are still open at least for pickup. ME is pretty good on the 14 day returns.

For no-POST, the only other thing I can think of is the GPU, which you could explore with either an APU or low end GPU, again making use of ME returns policy. But RAM first is a good way to go.

The ME's here are open but limited to 10 people in store.

I wish I had the parts to test but nope. And since the mobo only has 2 RAM slots I tried both slots with both sticks and nothing. The thing is it did work and then it blue screened, rebooted and wont post period. Fans are all running at full speed though.

 

[Caring1]

Pull the Nvme drive and then try.

 

[tabascosauz]

The ME's here are open but limited to 10 people in store.

I wish I had the parts to test but nope. And since the mobo only has 2 RAM slots I tried both slots with both sticks and nothing. The thing is it did work and then it blue screened, rebooted and wont post period. Fans are all running at full speed though.

Hah, sounds better than here. The limit is 3 people in the store, and some people evidently just want to buy up the entire store, from the time they spend in there.

A number of AM4 Gigabyte boards, mine included, seem to run the fans at full speed before POST. It might only occur on BIOS revisions supporting Ryzen 3000, because I know my board doesn't do it with initial firmware and a 2600. If it runs like that indefinitely, or keeps on bootlooping before it reaches the logo screen (where you'll find the shortcuts for BIOS, Q-flash, bootmenu, etc.), it's a pretty common symptom of bad RAM preventing the system from POSTing. It's the same deal with questionable RAM that may require a lot of time training (which is what usually takes place during the 100% fan period, and causes bootloops as well) for the system to find stable timings. I had a bad kit, with which the system would just do the 100% fan thing forever until shut off.

If the Windows installation is bad, that still takes place after POST. And if the drive is dead or unrecognisable, that should also be an issue that takes place after POST.

On the other hand, from what I know about Intel systems, a bad GPU won't necessarily prevent POST from taking place, but because most AM4 CPUs don't have iGPUs I don't know if that's still the case. But I'm very surprised that the system has been functioning just fine for months, up until now.

 

[sepheronx]

But the screen doesnt show anything. It is completely black so you cant see bios or anything. Keyboard doesnt light up either. So it wont even get to post.

So it went from - Getting into Windows then blue screened to now not even showing Bios period. Which leads me to believe RAM issue as I had this long ago with a old 775 system that did same thing showing dead RAM. Unless CPU is no good

 

[tabascosauz]

But the screen doesnt show anything. It is completely black so you cant see bios or anything. Keyboard doesnt light up either. So it wont even get to post.

So it went from - Getting into Windows then blue screened to now not even showing Bios period. Which leads me to believe RAM issue as I had this long ago with a old 775 system that did same thing showing dead RAM. Unless CPU is no good

You haven't messed with Vcore or PBO during your time with the 3500X, have you? I assume you've tried resetting the CMOS jumper before pulling the CMOS battery?

It's supposed to be like that. POST concludes when the logo screen comes on, then you can access the BIOS. There's not supposed to be any video during that time.

You don't have to feel "scummy" for getting new RAM for testing purposes. I returned my Vengeance LPX because it was straight up shit and I wasn't going to put up with only using half of it at JEDEC speeds and being unstable at that. And if my first Trident Z kit (now my backup kit) didn't do the trick, I was going to go back and forth and try different kits until I got one that worked. I let the guy at the counter know exactly what I was doing, what I needed. You're a decent guy, you know how to handle electronics, you'll return the product exactly as it came to you so that it's ready for the next guy - as long as you're not damaging the sticks, they really don't care.

'tis the Ryzen life, trying RAM until you find one that works. Our atonement for being spoiled by Intel for a decade

 

[sepheronx]

You haven't messed with Vcore or PBO during your time with the 3500X, have you? I assume you've tried resetting the CMOS jumper before pulling the CMOS battery?

It's supposed to be like that. POST concludes when the logo screen comes on, then you can access the BIOS. There's not supposed to be any video during that time.

You don't have to feel "scummy" for getting new RAM for testing purposes. I returned my Vengeance LPX because it was straight up shit and I wasn't going to put up with only using half of it at JEDEC speeds and being unstable at that. And if my first Trident Z kit (now my backup kit) didn't do the trick, I was going to go back and forth and try different kits until I got one that worked. I let the guy at the counter know exactly what I was doing, what I needed. You're a decent guy, you know how to handle electronics, you'll return the product exactly as it came to you so that it's ready for the next guy - as long as you're not damaging the sticks, they really don't care.

'tis the Ryzen life, trying RAM until you find one that works. Our atonement for being spoiled by Intel for a decade

Not the jumper, no. I will give it a shot with the RAM. Hopefully that is all the issue is. No, I haven't messed with any bios setting except enabling XMP. But the cmos battery being pulled should have reset it all to default.

 

[sepheronx]

So my initial concern was correct - I replaced the ram with GSKILL Ripjaw V 3200 2x8GB modules and it fired up no problem. So the GSkill Flare X are dead. Gotta RMA it now.