PC not posting & BIOS flash stuck

[at4nas]

Hello dear people,

I recently built my first PC and noticed that the EZ Debug LEDs light up for the CPU and DRAM. After some troubleshooting, I thought that a BIOS flash may help, but now it's stuck on flashing forever.

Here is what I did:

• - reseated all the parts, and tried each RAM stick by itself in each slot --> no change;
• - pressed the CMOS button, unplugged, and then held the power button until all the electricity got discharged --> worked on an open bench, which allowed me to use the PC, set it up and restart it several times throughout the process, but then when I assembled it and put it back in an upright position, the issue came back;
• - checked to see if there was pressure on any part that could buy any chance be causing this --> I didn't see anything that could be a cause for concern;
• - followed MSI's official instructions on how to prepare a USB drive to perform a BIOS flash --> it's been more than half an hour, and it is still flashing (blinking every second or so, with no changes to the speed of blinking or anything else)...

The PC parts are:
- Motherboard: MSI B650i Edge WiFi Gaming
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D
- GPU: AMD Radeon 9070 XT Mercury XFX OC
- RAM: Corsair Vengeance RGB 96GB (2X48GB) DDR5 PC5-44800C32 6400MHz (CMK96GX5M2B6400C32)

My main concern is that despite everything I've messed something up, and the motherboard may get bricked. My other concern is that the CPU and DRAM lights will continue to stay lit up whenever I try to boot the PC, preventing the PC from booting normally, and I have no idea what's causing it.

At this point, I would gladly take the PC to a technician and have them diagnose the issue and do whatever is necessary, but I can't, since the flashing is still ongoing, and reading from other forum posts, it may go on like that for who knows how long...

I read somewhere that if the BIOS flashing is taking that long, it may not even have started, and it's just stuck looping -- wonder whether there's any credibility to that statement.

Is there a way to interrupt the BIOS flash, stop it without bricking the motherboard? Should I wait it out? What should I do to prepare in the event that it happens and I have to RMA the motherboard to MSI? Any other suggestions on what I can try to find a solution to any of these?

Thank you so much for taking the time to read and for trying to help out, whoever you are.

 

[citay]

If you got the five minutes of flashing and then the reboot, yes, I'd say, flashing was successful. I'm not entirely sure what the other components are meant to do, as the only time I've used this method was with just the bare board and the PSU hooked up, nothing else connected.

In all likelihood, the BIOS was flashed properly, so it's something else. This was to be expected, but it was good to make (relatively) sure about the BIOS not being corrupt.

 

[at4nas]

Thank you for the confirmation, dvair and citay!

the only time I've used this method was with just the bare board and the PSU hooked up, nothing else connected

I think I'll learn from this, and do the same going forward.


Today, I left the PC with a technician. He called me after doing some tests, saying that it may be the RAM. Here's what he reported:

- tried booting with a single RAM stick, and the PC apparently booted (interestingly, it didn't happen when I tried it) + he confirmed the CMOS reset had worked and that the RAM had returned to 4800MHz --> I asked him if he'd tested both sticks individually on both slots, and he said he hadn't but that he will;
- tried with a different RAM kit of 2x32 GB, and the PC booted again --> he thinks it may be that these 96 GB are too much for this motherboard despite the model being in the official compatibility list.

It's a relief the BIOS is operational, and it'd be a pity if the RAM isn't. We agreed to wait 1-2 more days, as another PC will be arriving soon and he could use that for additional tests. Hopefully, then we'll know with certainty where the issue lies.

I remember hearing from somewhere about a customer who had reached out to their RAM's distributor after the rampocalypse had started, and had asked for a replacement kit due to a fault with their current one. He received no support from the respective company, and was only offered a new RAM kit at a lower price after sending his own to the company.

If it comes down to an RMA and Corsair refuses to provide proper assistance, I'll report here so that whoever reads this thread is aware. Now that I think about it, I may as well open a thread on the Corsair forums as well so I can share my experience with other component owners.

 

[citay]

That's a surprising development, especially since it once worked with both modules during the initial setup, and you also having tried the modules individually later, as you mentioned in the very first post.

My suspicion here is that it still has nothing to do with the RAM. Instead, I think that the transport to the technician may have exerted forces onto the assembly which put it into its original state again, where the contact is good enough to make it boot fine. So basically, the reverse of what happened to you initially. If that is the case, then the technician will find no problem. It will work with all your RAM, it will work with other RAM, it's as if nothing happened.

The good thing is, we know that the BIOS is fine and has nothing to do with it. He will be able to confirm that your RAM is fine, it will probably pass memory testing in the other PC, as well as in yours. But if I'm not totally off the mark here, then there could still be a sudden CPU+DRAM LED problem appearing. And as per Murphy's Law, it will probably be after you take the PC back to your place...

But hey, let's wait what he finds out. Maybe he finds something wrong with the RAM. But my gut feeling tells me something else.

 

[Alyred]

As @citay mentioned earlier, the 9800x3d (particularly more recent ones) have significant issues training XMP memory after 6200 unless they've been gimped significantly (halving the clock, etc) and even moreso on dual-rank DIMMs, which anything 32/48GB are. You can sometimes manually tune them to tighter timings which is a whole additional hobby, but with the 9800x3d it's honestly best to stick with DDR5-6000 as the extra 3d memory on the CPU will reduce cache misses anyway. Other non-x3d processors can benefit a little from higher memory frequency.
That indeed is a fortune you are holding onto with RAM prices and availability being what they are right now. If you're gaming and doing basic office tasks, you really don't need any more than 32GB, 48GB on the top-end and much easier to train to higher frequencies, with 64GB being great if you're loading up huge data models or 4k movie editing work, or lots of VMs/containers that need to allocate a ton of memory for whatever reason.

Only other reason I can think of that your RAM didn't work when you were testing it was that the RAM wasn't quite seated correctly. I've had some boards that were VERY tight and required a lot of force to seat the RAM. As @citay mentioned, just moving the PC might have caused another short initially, or something to be nudged out when you took it to the technician.

 

[at4nas]

Hello again, good people.

Thank you, citay and Alyred, for sharing your thoughts on this!

You made some good points... and for now, technology says no to them.

Here is what the technician found out:

◯ PC turns on with one RAM stick in either slot;
△ PC turns on sometimes, taking 2-5-10 minutes, with the other stick;
× PC does not turn on when both RAM sticks are inserted.

I got the PC back, and it's running normally now. Couldn't really believe it, so I decided to enable the A-XMP profile. The single RAM stick is running without issues at 6400MHz. No stutters, no booting issues.

It's a relief now that I know which part is most likely the culprit. Today all's well, tomorrow it's not -- who knows.

Why the PC is working with a single stick now and not before... Perhaps I didn't give it enough time and tries during my own testing, and assumed it was no good. Perhaps physical forces affected something, as you suggested. Right now, it takes around a minute for the PC to boot after having been turned off fully, including from the outlet.

Next, I'll test and monitor parts performance while the PC is running, and await the RAM vendor's response to the RMA request I initiated a few hours ago. Hopefully, they provide me with a replacement kit. Of course, there's always a chance they will simply issue a refund and leave me in a position where I have no choice but to hunt for memory once more. We shall see.

I'll keep posting updates so that this case is documented until the end, and in the event that you are interested to find out anything new, should it come up.

 

[citay]

Thanks for keeping us informed. Yes, sometimes there are forces involved on a microscopic level that don't seem to make sense to us. Sometimes we may have overlooked something. But however it happened that it seems to work again now, I take it, it's a win. And you can only take it one day at a time. Everything can be solved eventually, even if we can't fully understand the cause, as long as we can narrow it down enough.

 

[at4nas]

Hello, everyone! It's been a while. I am here to report on the current state of things.

As you know, we found out that the PC had a faulty RAM stick, causing it to stay stuck on boot, as indicated by the EZ LEDs. After contacting Corsair, and sending them the MemTest results of the working stick, they provided me with an RMA. It took about a week to get to that point. We did not have to exchange more emails after that. I used the RMA, requested a courier, had them pick both RAM sticks up 1-2 days later, waited around 10 days until they were delivered to Corsair, waited another 3-4 days for them to verify their state and ship a new set of RAM sticks, and then waited another week or so for them to arrive.

All in all, it took about a month to get this sorted out, once we knew it was the RAM that was causing the booting issue. Thank you very much for responding as quickly and as professionally as you did -- especially you, citay. It felt really reassuring throughout, and I learned new things along the way!

Now, my next task is to finally move to Linux entirely, and before that, to find out what's causing micro-stutters every now and then, especially when running resource-heavy games. Not sure if I'll want to overclock any parts, as I would prefer a quieter setup, but we'll see. What an adventure PC building can be, huh? Arduous fun.