this is my first post here and I'm sure it's not too unique.
I recently bought a PC from a friend that they knew to have some problems. When I got it, it did have some obvious slow down and crashing, which I was able to fix pretty easily by identifying with MemTest86 that one stick (of two sticks) of RAM was bad. I removed the bad stick and everything was going well.
However, not too long after that it started exhibiting some concerning behavior on start up. First, I would start it up and there would be a loud noise almost as if something were blocking a fan (which I checked and couldn't find), and it wouldn't post. In this instance all the lights (LED on the CPU fan and motherboard) and fans were on, but I wasn't getting anything on the monitor or any of the activity indicator lights on the case. I would power it down, and then on a second try it would boot up and everything would be fine—without me doing a thing.
Today it seems like something got worse. On the first boot I got the same loud noise and nothing, but then after trying to restart the computer wouldn't POST. I tried starting it up a few times and got a few different behaviors like the case indicator lights going, mouse LEDs lighting up, but nothing on the monitor, or just no indicator lights and no USB detection.
I tried resetting the CMOS with the jumper pins, but didn't get any noticeable change, and also did a brief check to see if any power connections were obviously loose. Still, no change in behavior, until after a few more tries, seemingly by luck the thing just booted up and is working flawlessly! Any ideas on what could be causing such weird behavior?
Here are the specs:
- Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-AX370-Gaming
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 1700X
- CPU Cooler: Enermax ETS-T40F-W
- RAM: 8GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4 2400mhz (single stick)
- Graphics Card: Radeon RX 580 4GB
- PSU: Evga 750 G2
- HDD: WD Blue 1TB
- OS: Windows 10
Thanks for your time!
PS: Another issue that I suppose could be related is I notice some coil whine-type sound coming from the graphics card while a DisplayPort cable is plugged into it, even with the power off.
41 Answer
I know that I made this post over a year ago, but I wanted to share what I found to be the problem. It turns out that the "coil whine-type" sound that I heard from the graphics card was the root of the issue. I had been using a DisplayPort cable which was not the most recent version. I had no idea that this could've been an issue, but some DisplayPort cables (older ones, I believe) have a pin on them that draws power. Not only is that pin unnecessary in my use case, but it was actively harming the computer by trying to draw power through the graphics card when the the machine was off. Something to be aware of!
