It lives!!! An odd tale about a new AM5 build from an old member.

[iranu]

Long time no see.

My old Asus Maximus Gene VI died so I thought I'd update to a new AM5 system:

Gigabyte B650M aorus elite ax.
AMD Ryzen 5 7600.
Crucial Pro 32GB DDR5.

Did all the usual homework to get to that point plus a 1TB M2 Crucial drive.

Used my Corsair 620W PSU and Radeon R9 390 to get underway: No dice. Nada. Nothing. No fans span up, couldn't power on. Back to basics: Did everything I know to get it going. And I mean everything. Even wrote to Gigabyte. Nothing worked.

Borrowed a known working PSU and got the same problem: Green lights, red lights, even a purple one would appear*, but the board would not power up even when 'shorting' the 'power on' pins. Tried flashing the BIOS using both PSUs - nothing.

*Lights appear to be this new RGB lighting fad and not anything to do with diagnostics. Memory training? WTF is that? I'm getting old.

Brother bought over a brand new 850W Thermaltake toughpower PSU to try, but he forgot the ATX and CPU connectors as he thought my PSU was fully modular. Showed him the problem.

He took the MB, CPU & RAM to try and diagnose the problem. Hmmm, CPU and PSU fans spin up, but no dice, not even able to flash. Even managed to get light show on the board that was not RGB related (but looked like one of the 4 diagnostic lights, CPU/RAM/BOOT/VGA). Turned out today, when he returned the kit, the numpty hadn't connected the 8 pin CPU connector when diagnosing - D'oh! But at least the fans spun. There was hope.

So I thought I'd try and flash the BIOS one last time. Q-Flash Plus can be done without CPU & RAM, but I'd already done that loads of times with no result. Today the PSU fan span which was more than I got last time, but I got a red CPU light each time no matter which BIOS I used on the memory stick and no flashing light to show the BIOS was being successfully flashed. What to do? RMA the MB? Get a new PSU and try again? Hmmm....

One. Last. Try: CPU and RAM in, onboard graphics connected to monitor, Corsair PSU on, case 'on switch' plugged in...

...IT LIVES!!! BIOS screen pops up. Huzzah! All showing nominal signs. Power off, do it again and voila; bios screen. Do the same with other PSU gives same result. /Scratches head.

Gremlins? Rip in the space-time continuum? Accidentally jumped into a parallel universe?

I haven't the faintest idea. Last BIOS I tried to flash to was the BIOS in the BIOS screen. Coincidence? A random fault in 2 PSUs?

I'm stumped. Do any of you familiar with more modern builds have any idea?

[kalniel]

Gigabyte BIOSes are mysterious beasts - I've got a 'dual bios' and it's never clear what set of conditions cause it to actually switch to the other BIOS - or how to update the second one. Sometimes you can update one, then it decides to (attempt to) boot off the other.

[Jonatron]

Start at the minimum to get it booting to BIOS. The minimum is motherboard outside case, with CPU installed, and a single stick of ram, monitor to onboard graphics, and a keyboard. Outside case because standoffs can be in wrong position.
The red CPU light would make me carefully look at the CPU / motherboard pins to see if any are bent.

[Jonatron]

Also, how old is the PSU? I don't think any PSU's have a warranty longer than 10 years, and I wouldn't use one after 7 years.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Also, how old is the PSU? I don't think any PSU's have a warranty longer than 10 years, and I wouldn't use one after 7 years.

The HX620W is from 2006.

The newer PSUs will support certain low power states old ones don't support.

[Output]

Unfortunately I have idea as to the answer in the OP, so my reply is just responding to the below quoted post.

Gigabyte BIOSes are mysterious beasts - I've got a 'dual bios' and it's never clear what set of conditions cause it to actually switch to the other BIOS - or how to update the second one. Sometimes you can update one, then it decides to (attempt to) boot off the other.

If you're doing so by going via the Q-Flash option from the BIOS screen, updating the second one (which it refers to as the Backup BIOS) is a tickbox that you can click on while it's in the process of flashing the current BIOS.

Or at least that's the way it is with my AORUS Master X570 (which is obviously AM4).

I also have no idea on the circumstances that might cause it to switch to the other though.

I don't know if you would have to make sure it's for a particular revision or whether all revisions would still get the exact same BIOS file, but while 1.1 and 1.2 revisions exist for mine and are both grouped together in a Gigabyte page (which I believe added a Thunderbolt header), my board is actually the 1.0 revision, and as such I go to the Support link from the 1.0 page to get to the applicable download files just to be on the safe side.

[DanceswithUnix]

Could it just be that you had not waited the insane amount of time it takes for a DDR5 board to calibrate its ram sticks?

The only AM5 build I have done was on an Asus board, and a few diagnosis LEDs on the board flickered to show me there was some sort of early boot life, but honestly even after reading about how long initial boot takes I was still looking for smoke as it all seemed to be dead. Then it finally beeped into life after a few minutes.

Once the ram interface is trained, it remembers the result so subsequent boots are nice and quick.

[Iota]

*Lights appear to be this new RGB lighting fad and not anything to do with diagnostics.

The red CPU light

and a few diagnosis LEDs on the board

I wouldn't touch any motherboard without a Q-Code display, because at least it's obvious which direction to look at if you have a fault (or if none at all). Is it me, or are motherboard manufacturers just being really cheap by not including this in a lot of boards? Especially considering the cost of the boards in the first place....

[AGTDenton]

I have had this before with an ASUS. Practically if not exactly 20 years ago.
Likewise did everything I could think of, swapped PSUs, 1 stick of RAM all the usual tricks to get it going but it just wouldn't. Unplugged, took it down to my dad for a second opinion and as I pressed the power button to show him what happens, or didn't happen, it fired up perfectly. Took it back upstairs and it continued working with no issues up until I sold it a couple of years later.

[DanceswithUnix]

Is it me, or are motherboard manufacturers just being really cheap by not including this in a lot of boards?

The board I used has a "Q-LED" display. It's buried quite deep in the marketing, so guess it's not a big selling point. Could clearly see it was in the "ram" phase of booting, which is handy when it sticks there for what feels like forever. But I guess most people buy pre-built, and don't care.

[UseItNow]

What case are you using and also, just remind me, being lazy, sorry but what PCIe revision does that GPU support?

Just wondering if its the GPU/Motherboard not playing ball with each other given age of the GPU/PCIe revision? Only ponder it given the problems people have had with risers and newer GEN GPUs...

[Iota]

The board I used has a "Q-LED" display. It's buried quite deep in the marketing, so guess it's not a big selling point. Could clearly see it was in the "ram" phase of booting, which is handy when it sticks there for what feels like forever. But I guess most people buy pre-built, and don't care.

Guess I'm just old fashioned

[iranu]

Hi all, thanks for the great response.

I always start off a new build outside the case - easier to do and troubleshoot and you don't have to worry about stand-offs, shorts, horrible sausage fingers, etc. No GPU is connected atm - using onboard output.

I bought a new RM750x Corsair PSU as I think the older PSUs were the problem even though they worked with older systems.

I think there's a lesson there - which is to replace your PSU after 10 years! PSUs do wear out over time even if you buy something which is a bit of over kill at the time, which I've always done.

When I boot now it goes into the bios every time which is a big indication that the CPU, RAM and MB are working properly as all the proper indications show what you'd expect in the BIOS screen.

The problem now is getting the wee beastie to start installing Windows 10. I swore blind no one would ever prise Windows 7 64 bit from my cold dead hands, but times move on.

Everything I plug in gets recognized in the BIOS. It recognizes the M2 1TB Crucial drive, 2 SSDs (Crucial and Samsung even though they are old), my ancient DVD re-writer!, the Kingston USB stick I have Win 10 on etc.

So I think the setup is good to go, but for the life of me, no matter what I try I can't get the damn thing to recognize anything that has Windows 10 ISO on it or whatnot to boot for an install.

I don't have a Win 10 disk, but I think that may be a last resort because. I can't get the USB stick, which is correctly configured to get the damn thing to start the process.

I've now removed all the hard drives and am now in the process of enabling CSM in the BIOS because it looks like secure boot has an issue with regard to being turned off if a hard drive is present. If I enable CSM with hard drives attached I get a black/black screen on reboot.

How hard can things be? I've never had such a problem when doing what should be simple.

Thanks all.

[Jonatron]

How did you make the windows USB stick? Sometimes older / smaller USB sticks can be more compatible. It looks like there's a few different USB ports on the motherboard, try all of them.
CSM and Secure boot stuff is too newfangled for me, maybe someone else can help with that.

[[GSV]Trig]

Just out of interest, why Windows 10 over 11?
Both have a 'media creation tool' you can run from another machine and create an installer for you.
If you get desperate I see you have an optical drive which you could use...

Might just find its something to do with 'legacy mode' or whatever its called on your BIOS meaning it doesn't like your stick or isn't UEFI and wont boot from it for some daft reason.

[iranu]

Finally figured it out. In the end I formatted the USB stick to NTFS using Paragon NTFS for Mac (free to trial for 10 days). I downloaded the Windows 11 ISO file then using WinZip extracted all the files to the USB stick.

I plugged the USB into one of the slower USB ports on the new MB, pressed the power on and after a short boot screen time the Windows setup process started.

For some reason the install doesn't have network drivers so no internet so just troubleshooting that now.