Fixing a Viewer's BROKEN Gaming PC? - Fix or Flop S2:E16

this here is another viewer's broken gaming pc and uh apparently this one used to turn on function properly it was a gaming pc used for a good while uh and then all of a sudden it would stop sending a picture and so uh basically it wouldn't post right you'd turn it on the fans would spin things would light up but you just get no signal to the monitor and up until like a day ago according to the owner the system now just outright refuses to power on it all so potentially a worsening issue and i've got a few ideas what it could be but who knows if i've learned anything from this playlist it's uh not to expect the most reasonable cause we could be talking about a power supply issue could be a motherboard could be the cpu we've seen it all here uh could be as simple as a cable sliding its way slowly but surely out of a connector i would not be surprised at this point uh but hopefully at the end of this one we can have the system up and running again for this viewer are you ready stay with me to get rid of that annoying windows activation watermark head on over to vip scd key and purchase a windows 10 pro oem key for a fraction of the price of retail just use the secure payment method like paypal enter your product key into your pc settings window and say bye to the watermark and be sure to use our offer code skgs for a sweet discount hey there my name is greg and this is the fix or flop playlist here we attempt to diagnose and fix viewers pcs in and around orlando florida for free we charge nothing at all if you took this to repair shop they might charge you for labor they'll certainly charge you for part replacements but we charge nothing here we have relationships with the manufacturers uh that you know allow us to build systems like these i'm very grateful for those uh and uh your viewership just your your sheer viewership alone allows us to continue doing what we're doing here i make money by making videos like these not only are they typically informative for folks who might be in you know dire straits who need to troubleshoot their systems but they can offer a certain entertainment value as well i understand that and uh just seeing me make a fool of myself maybe completely missing the obvious cause for why a system might not post or turn on at all i mean that's entertaining right this pc has a ryzen platform inside we've got a nice cooler master cooler here looks like an nzxt what h five tennis um graphics card is well it's it's quite small looks like an hp so probably bought second hand uh but maybe like 1660 1650 something in that ballpark and the power supply evga can't tell the wattage but we'll figure it out when we get in here i imagine this will be one of the first things we test just because of the symptoms uh that have been described to us that said the first thing we need to do in this troubleshooting process and it's important that you do this as well if you're trying to diagnose a system whether it be your own or a friend's is power the system on and attempt to replicate the issue described by the owner in this case it is either a no post situation or straight up no power on situation i told the owner that i would let him know uh which it was just so that we were on the same page because very recently apparently the system just doesn't turn on at all so uh we're gonna give it our best shot and hopefully hopefully we can fix it so let's see where we are to start we'll turn the switch on at the rear and wow that is a doorknob um i did notice some flickering let's see if we can replicate that yeah so we'll light the back of the motherboard there might be a lighter two showing up there as well when we first flip it on but it quickly disappears right at the bottom there as well so uh let's see maybe we can jump the board manually the two power pins are up top here and as i suspect it's still nothing so uh this has presumably nothing to do with the front panel oh boy let's test the power supply for those wondering what we use for this is the passmark inline psu tester it's at a very simple interface on the front it'll read everything from ripple to just sheer voltages uh it'll make sure that the connections are sound and that you're actually getting power fed to the device and you connect everything here at the rear very straightforward your typical 24 pin cpu8 pin pcie six pin the reason why this is a six pin and not eight pin is because the extra two pins are just ground so when you're reading voltages yeah you only need that sata out as well if you wanted to bypass or essentially put this in line with the remainder of the unit you can run this while you're stressing a system and you could read peak voltages that way as well so pretty cool this tool i don't know if it's available for sale anywhere but i will have it linked if i can find it in the video description now with the power supply back on all we need to do is hold this power button down here and it should you know what i should probably reconnect the power cable that was that was silly of me okay now let's try it so we'll hold this down and you can see power on so the unit is on so it's a bit like jumping uh the 24 pin and let's see here we can cycle through i know that it's totally blown out on screen here let me drop the iso there we go so 12 volt 5 volt 12 volt 2 looks good slew rate timings ripples so power supply is fine that is not the issue here should also clear the cmos while we're here it doesn't take too long but 10 to 20 seconds we're going to jump these two cmos pins here on the board i don't have a dedicated one on the back i believe and once we remove this the bios should be totally clear if there was any setting in here preventing the system from posting this would get rid of that i'm also going to swap out this single stick of ddr4 just to be on the safe side if this isn't inserted properly it could totally explain why we're getting this weird kind of power on power off scenario i don't know why the cpu fan cable is unplugged we'll connect that again and i'll get a stick of my uh my own ddr4 that i know works all right round two let's see yeah still nothing we're getting that odd flickering again in the motherboard you can see a lighter two just for a split second show up and then uh everything cuts right back off again okay let's try this we're going to remove everything except for the motherboard cpu and memory that's all we're going to leave in and that will help us narrow down whether this is a platform issue or something else random let's slide this out now this is going to be our only source for video i'm assuming the ryzen cpu in here doesn't have an integrated graphics processor uh but we're not really concerned about a post at this point we just need the thing to power on and now that we're stripped let's see it did the same thing that it always does so yeah not expecting this to work wow so we're looking at either a motherboard issue or a cpu issue just keeps flickering on and off that's all we get i forgot to unplug this extra fan cable but i doubt that's causing problem camp again thing just doesn't want to power on i noticed some of these screws are either loose or missing it's possible this board was swapped out or maybe just uh tinkered with prior to me receiving it i don't know just uh yeah even this one is loose something something's fishy here so let's take the platform out getting snagged on a few things there we go go ahead and remove the cpu cooler one more screw on this side we'll check the uh the chip itself oh yeah just come straight up uh we'll check the pins on the chip we'll check the socket itself make sure things are cleaned up and we don't have any missing pins i did notice right away a bit of debris here at the top of the socket and while i doubt well as i say that's what i say i doubt this caused the no post no power issue but uh this is some thick stuff here what is it's like a it's like a thermal paste let me see if i can get that up with alcohol easy does it and we're gonna try not to fill those slot holes or those little uh pinholes with debris it's kind of difficult to do that when i can't grab it with my little pliers this is kinda this is some gross stuff here some chalky thermal paste oh and once you look at that i didn't notice this before but something is wrong with the socket itself this part of the housing for the retention clip is completely pulled up and that might be affecting the contact the cpu was making with the pads in the socket itself so i'm going to see if i can fix this it looks like it should just clip back down but it's definitely not in in the proper state right now let's see how it's bulging a bit here toward the bottom and there are clips that hold the top of the socket in place but you can see i can pull this retention arm all the way back that's not how this is supposed to work and yeah you can see how it bulges there so this might just be um just a piece of plastic we need to replace we can just swap boards out and i can handle this off site later but yeah it shouldn't be doing this i can kind of temporarily fix it just by pushing everything back into place but it it's it's it's definitely not ready to go as is well i mean we can try it we'll see by the way the sleepy side of things this is a ryzen five fifty five hundred you don't see too many of across in the shop uh this is six course twelve threads and it uses a zen three architect architecture of course but all you know all around physically looks pretty darn good i don't see any noticeably bent or missing pins so unless there's something internally wrong with the chip i think we're good to go here i'm going to try reassembling things outside just as a makeshift test bench to uh double check on the state of the socket we'll try powering things back on if we get the same symptom as before i'm going to assume that it's the socket itself that's just not locking the cpu in place i expect that we're not making proper contact with some of the pads below and as such it just doesn't register that a chip is even in the socket you can't power the system on without a cpu so let's give it a shot and here we are several minutes later i've got the platform it's kind of janky i know it's still connected to the original power supply it's just the platform itself is out of the case okay anyway let's power the system on or attempt to so power at the rear we'll need to jump it's working did we just fix it now we've got the monitor connected so if we get a picture we should see it if it posts we should see it so let's see come on we stuck them we've got a debug led over here dram oh you have a problem with dram come on we're so close i mean at least it's on now right it's not cutting off after half a second i switched back to his original stick of ddr4 he only had one in here and uh it's still the same problem we get straight to the dram led light uh the debug stuff down below and then it'll very quickly flash to the cpu and back to dram again i will say though i'm glad at least the system is powering on again so we've made a pretty significant leap forward but we're probably back to square one though with what the owner was initially describing about how he wasn't getting a signal to his monitor uh it's possible many when he was like moving his platform around maybe he removed a cpu cooler and reinstalled it damaged the socket there maybe it was already damaged and things just came loose so the cpu wasn't making proper contact with the pads in the socket who really knows uh but see yeah we still need to figure out what's wrong here maybe we'll try a different dram slot this time around could this be a case of a dead memory channel so usually it'll be a channel b these inner tumor slots or channel a either way and the outer two most slots will be the opposite channel uh if we move this dim to say the outermost slot will the system post so that's the outermost slot now and the answer to the question is no still nothing wow my camera hates focusing on a black screen so here's what we're going to do then i'm going to swap this cpu out for one that i have in my arsenal that i know works say a ryzen 5 2600 and i'm doing this strategically because the board we're using here and the viewer system is a b450 variant so that chipset natively supported zen plus which uh this ski falls under and if we need to we'll update the bios because that might be one of the reasons why we're not getting a post and i can update the vios with this chip because i expect this should post natively this doesn't work almost certainly need to replace the motherboard we pretty much narrowed it down to either the cpu or the board here we go then what will it be power's on debug led jumps straight to dram again it's still flickering between cpu and dram so if i can't update this board's bios there's no bios flashback function here this is just too old for it it's not uh it's not the highest end or sport either i mean because i don't have flashback and a natively supported zenplus cpu won't allow the platform to post i really have no other way of updating the bios here i think a motherboard swap is going to be the easiest quickest solution for them so we can get the system back up and running again i really have no choice exact same symptoms much older supported cpu still nothing try both sticks of ram his and mine multiple slots nothing so all right well i guess the motherboard replacement is uh it's not that big a deal now that we've already stripped everything down anyway this here is a tough gaming b450 motherboard and this is actually one of the only ones i have left i've been replacing so many motherboards it seems lately i need to refresh my stock this is the same chipset that he has with his current board but i know this one works and i'm pretty sure it has a recent bias update as well i'll check that form and update it if i need to uh but we're gonna go ahead and swap this one in and see if his 5500 posts also don't want to forget this m.2 here this was hiding under this lower heat sink as a rule of thumb generally what you want to do is connect your m.2 to the highest m.2 slot on your motherboard typically that'll let you access the cp lanes versus pch it shouldn't make too big a difference but sometimes you might be you know connecting a sata m.2 or vice versa to the wrong drive or to the wrong port and that could cause issues because some of these are only compatible with one or the other depending on your bios setting so we're going to install this in the new board in the top m.2 slot that'll be this one right here also refreshing to be using a socket that is not like half broken so uh yeah that's uh that's cool oh and there's actual tension in this clip that that's so nice so let's try our luck again just gonna do the same thing as last time the original power supply gonna jump the power pins right there do we have a doctor debug led on here no we don't have any debug leds on this board but i think i think we'll be okay if not i need to update the bios that'd be my first assumption that's a signal are we gonna get a post hey there it is so let's make sure uh give me a second let me get my keyboard oh you know what never mind uh forgot i put my ryzen 5 2600 in here we can take this moment though to update this motherboard to the most recent bios which should obviously support the 5500 and probably the most stable as well if the latest against update so i've just saved the most recent stable bios for this motherboard onto this thumb drive we'll connect it right here then in the advanced mode we'll swing on over to tool usually it's here yep easy flash three utility and we'll want to do it via storage devices so this uh let's see which one i think it's this one here no it is not that one it's the bottom one then yes that's more like it this dot cap file is the one we want so we'll select that then is it is this a this is a i just found a bug on my desk uh we'll click yes so to read the file and ensure that it's the correct one for this board and then we'll click yes now while this is happening do not power off your system you could break your motherboard that would give you some headaches all right and a few minutes later if you restart later you can see we're up to date on the bios so let's swap this 5500 back in here and i'm just gonna go ham i'm gonna go ahead and install everything back into the case and just assume that a cpu is fine this could bite me in the butt but just in an effort to save time let's go for it this makes no sense also gonna give this viewer a few extra screws because like i said earlier he was uh he was missing quite a few take care of some basic wiring here front panel is very nice to uh work with a unified connector here in the h510 can't forget the graphics card this here and the power cable where did that go that's more like it and i think uh we're done just take care of a few screws we can power the system on let's give it a go see where we are hdmi cable power at the rear power button up front i think this is gonna work unless the cpu is dead which i didn't actually verify let me verify it here come on give me something yep that's it that's signal and lisa's sitting in the chair watching me yeah there we go we detected a new processor that's totally normal so let's click f1 did let's click it i probably should connect my usb let's see press y to reset oh yeah okay so we want to press y there we go and it should throw us into the bios directly there we'll enable the ocp forum so this memory is up to speed and that should be it will make sure boot drive is detected i believe it uh it was in the bios originally and there we go so i'll make sure that it boots into windows off camera just very quickly we'll enable docp and the builds are ready to go in we cable manage form as well so it looks a lot cleaner now it was a bit um a bit of a you know contained disaster let's say before cables weren't routed in optimal places so we fixed it up for him and ultimately didn't have to replace anything else apart from the motherboard well what a doozy uh the motherboard strikes again it is the issue swapping it out was the quick fix but i think more specifically what's wrong with this one is um it's physical damage the socket itself is clearly damaged you should not be able to pull this lever all the way back like so and there's there's no resistance here at all it just it goes all the way back without any uh any pressure and you can see that i know you can't see from there but it's just the socket is is lifted up on the end and i don't think there's enough tension there it's not lining the chip up correctly uh so that the pins are making contact way the way they should it's just all around kind of a basket case and if it was something i thought i could fix sure i'd have at it i don't think i can make this any better than it is though i already tried kind of clamping things back into position and that always ends up just undoing itself once the cpu is inserted into the socket so what i'm probably going to do is send this to gigabyte and see if they can replace the socket itself they might not be able to but at this point i can't use the board until it's repaired and i just don't have the tools here to fix it so i'll let you know maybe in a pin comment or a follow-up video what happens with this board i think everything else is okay with it it just comes down to yeah actual physical socket damage how that happened who knows with that if you guys enjoyed watching this video give this one a thumbs up that would be greatly appreciated if you haven't subscribed yet get subscribed what the heck are you doing i will again give you some updates on this motherboard as uh as they roll in i'm expecting i'll reach out to gigabyte in the next few days as of time of filming so maybe by the time you watch this video when it's published i'll already have an answer for you if you think this is something you could fix maybe you could like heat and melt to the plastic and re-lock these pins and keep the socket tension up to you know standards i i don't know um it's it's it's kind of toast but i think everything else about the board is fine and that's what that's what bothers me the most here is the board seems okay otherwise it's it's just the socket that we need to address anyway i'll update you then uh subscribe like i already said those things check out our links down in the video description and i will catch you in the next one oh i almost forgot if you have a broken system and you have it around orlando florida i want to fix it for free okay or i want to try to anyway that's why we call it fix or flop sometimes we flop but most of the times we can fix these and i won't charge you a dime like i said i have great relationships with sponsors and just hardware vendors in general and it's thanks to your viewership that i'm able to continue doing this because well you know having manufactured products in these videos is is great publicity for the company right in question uh like for example be quiet they've sponsored cases in the past and and not even so much about the sponsored stuff as it is just being able to send hardware in general whether or not it's used or not um the fact is they're willing to send stuff to me because you guys watch these videos and and that's about as blunt as i can be about it um so your continued viewership is much appreciated and hopefully you continue at least being entertained by these fixer-flop videos maybe you also learn a thing or two as well i know i have i've learned so much since the first episode of season one again thanks so much for watching i will catch you the next one my name is greg thanks for learning with me

Channel: Greg Salazar

Views: 260,154

Keywords: fix or flop, broken pc, viewer's broken gaming pc, viewer pc, how to troubleshoot pc, how to fix a pc, how to build a pc, pc no post, how to, how to troubleshoot, greg salazar, pc gaming, computer cleaning, fix or flop season 2, broken computer, pc wont post, How to fix a pc that wont boot up, fix or flop s2 e16, fof S2:E16

Id: Hbr1DY-eZn0

Length: 22min 40sec (1360 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 29 2022