Fixing a Viewer's BROKEN Gaming PC? - Fix or Flop S3:E4

this here is another viewer's broken gaming PC and let me tell you this has been through a lot we're talking motherboard swaps graphics card swaps yeah this has uh really been through the ringer and so far the system is still being very stubborn originally the owner told me that the system refused to post he was getting no error code of any kind he took it to a local repair shop they couldn't fix it so he just started part swapping on his own swapping the motherboard and the graphics card out seemed to fix the issue but he hadn't narrowed down what was causing that problem to begin with and now at this point the reason why it's here in this office is because his system is suddenly refusing to power on again or if it does power on it refuses to post and shows a CPU debug light what are the chances that swapping the graphics card and the motherboard only temporarily fixed the problem the real issue the entire time has been the CPU we've run into our fair share of um busted up ryzen CPUs especially third generation CPUs we're going to see if that is in fact the issue here hopefully we can get this thing back up and running again very soon are you ready stay with me if you're in the market for a gaming PC packing one heck of a punch consider hp's Omen 45l lineup they support the latest and greatest from AMD and Intel including the ryzen 750 800x and up to core I9 12 900k along with graphics cards ranging from the RTX 3060 up to RTX 3090 you'll find 16 gigs of system memory plenty of storage and a unique patented Omen cryo chamber for optimal cooling coupled with a 240ml AIO liquid cooler baked in take advantage of nvidia's dlss for excellent frame rates and Detail in many modern titles customize a look and feel thanks to Native RGB functionality and settle for peace of mind with hp's warranty these are meant to be Plug and Play experiences with zero hassle learn more about HP Omen gaming desktops including how to save up to 10 with promo codes via the links in this video's description hey there and welcome to fix or flop in this playlist We Fix viewers broken PCS or at least attempt to for free this is why we call it fix or flop because sometimes we do flop and it seems just like some people just don't get that like oh you said you were gonna fix the PC what a letdown that's a waste of time why did you do them dirty like that well look we're upfront about it we don't charge anything for this zero dollars and zero cents no money exchanges hands all we ask that you do is drive out to meet us to drop the system off and pick it back up again that's it anyway that all aside again this video this person has totally swapped out so many things It ultimately didn't fix what I believe to be the underlying problem which is the CPU it sounds like it is because the debug LED for the CPU lights up when the system is powered on again no picture out that's what we need to replicate first we've got power connected and just going to push the button up front all right and right away CPU debug light is lit almost instantly I wonder how much time passed between the motherboard replacement supposedly and the CPU debug light from what it sounded like there was maybe a month or two month period when the system worked fine again but it's possible that swapping the motherboard out immediately tripped the CPU error because of a bios incompatibility that's a possibility um maybe the CPU wasn't installed correctly into the socket maybe a pin or two was maybe broke on the CPU when it was being reinstalled on the new motherboard who really knows the fact of the matter is I say all that to say you shouldn't trust the word of any owner when they bring anything to you in a professional setting it's not that you're trying to personally insult them right and nothing's personal at least it shouldn't be in this business you just you make a habit of needing to verify things yourself because sometimes what owners say or how they describe things just doesn't really compete with what we actually see physically in the office right so you have to cover all your bases what I think I'm gonna do first is double check wiring we'll double check Ram seating things that aren't necessarily related to the CPU debug light but they could very easily cause issues the CPU is one of the first things that gets checked in a post process and so if it detects an obvious issue right out of the gate that debug light could just be illuminated by default because it's the first thing to be checked we've seen that with other other things as well the GPU usually is the last thing to be checked and sometimes that stays lit even though there is no GPU issue so let's power back off and do some digging I noticed right away there's some issue with the way this motherboard's seated in the case because at the back here the flash bios button is clearly not aligned and I've pushed from the left side and I can't get this to sit properly so there might be something wedged between the board and the motherboard tray that could be causing a short we're going to take the right panel off just to be sure I didn't see anything fall through on the case side the motherboard looks to be just a tad bit bent you might not be able to see it on camera but just slightly bent up there at the top it's not super worrying or anything but I think that's why it wasn't aligning so uh hopefully not a fitment issue what we can do next is swap out the CPU or at least take a look at the CPU because well we're being told that it's a CPU problem at least according to the motherboard this is a hold on a sec here we'll clean up the thermal paste it's a horizon 5 3600 I'm not really surprised if this is to blame we've run into several defective 3600s 3600 X's for whatever reason again can't pinpoint it just could be because these are such popular CPUs we see more of them die but uh yeah now we'll take it out and check the pins as well as a socket the pins look okay nothing too alarming here just a bit of thermal paste to clean up otherwise nothing missing nothing bent and the socket looks nice and fine as well there's plenty of tension here in this bracket I don't see any physical issues with the socket itself nothing clogged in any of the holes so I mean physical inspection checks out at this point I'm inclined to swap the CPU out only because we already have the platform fully removed from the case it'd be pretty easy to do that at this point and we also have those Clues the context clues pointing to the CPU not only the the word of the owner but also the the debug LED for the chip because I don't see any other physical problems with the motherboard we've reseeded Ram we've cleared the CMOS obvious things made sure that those work fine I I'm tempted to just swap CPUs I mean this is a this is a b450 Max Tomahawk board and this includes I think by default out of the box Zen 2 support So ryzen 3000 which this is a ryzen 5 3600 so these should work natively there shouldn't be a bios holding this back or keeping it from posting so let's see if swapping the CPU is all it takes I am waiting for a few chips to show up direct from AMD and in the meantime I can go ahead and swap in this 2600 if this ends up fixing the issue he can keep this I know it's a bit of a downgrade one generation back but at least his uh rig will be up and running again I'm not sure he's willing to spend at this point I don't know 100 120 for 3600 if he is then I'll take this back out and give him his rig and at least he'll know what to replace I've got the Bare Essentials wired up now 24 pin 8 Pin and supplemental pcie with his graphics card in here of course the swapped out CPU CPU debug light is now off we should be getting up post here soon might be training memory a few other things power cycling it's not abnormal VGA lights now illuminated and there we go was it really that simple wow having debug LEDs on motherboards should just be a standard always that would be nice doesn't cost much more to include a few LEDs right for troubleshooting purposes it just makes the process so much easier for us so at this point I'm inclined to run a few more tests on his 3600 the one thing we can definitely check for is a dead memory Channel and even if that ends up being the case I'll still Swap this out I'll let them know what the limitation will be and then I'll let them decide if he wants the 2600 or if he wants to keep his maybe swap it out return it I'm assuming it's an older chip because he hasn't replaced this as far as I'm aware but I want to put together a makeshift test rig and yeah see if there's anything else we can learn about this thing so here's what we've got going I've got an x570s auris master from gigabyte this has a doctor debug LED on it closer to the top here so we're going to use that to see what codes we have all right so we're going to push the power button and we'll see what happens okay looks good code 15. this is uh definitely not a CPU issue here this is a normal boot cycle whoa what okay uh weird that's a post which means his CPU actually isn't dead I think what I'm ish what I'm going to do now is go back to his system and I'm going to look at the BIOS because I noticed something I noticed something and it just it just it kind of peaked my interest because while the BIOS revision on his board currently is actually not listed on msi's website so you can see here his bios revision is 7c02v3 e0 well if we swing on over to their product page the BIOS listed here let's see we've got one that came out on the 2021 it's a version 3B okay it's not that one version 3C not that one we're getting warmer though version 3D still not that one and then all of a sudden we get this other one version three F2 but there's no version 3 e and uh yeah the dates actually line up as well because this one came out in 2022 April 20th and hours that was installed that came out around May 15th I believe and then we just have this one here which was what July 15th but where's the May revision it's it's literally missing and we are on the correct page for the for this uh for this board so I'm I'm curious I think that bios was probably broken and they just uh yeah retracted it maybe just told us to revert back to 3C or 3D and now they have a beta version so I think what I'm going to do is install version 3D so I'm actually going to revert back from the one he has currently on his board and see if this fixes our CPU compatibility issue back to his rig I've got the BIOS downloader that I want this is the non-beta latest release it is stable.3 d0 I'm going to click yes and let this ride out I hope that this fixes it if not I might just replace the motherboard instead of a CPU that way he can use a more modern chip and not have to deal with the downgrade of any sort and now it's time to throw in his original 3600 and then we've got the older bios in here I'm hoping that this works again it's worth a shot at this point I noticed that the uh that the E version was missing so maybe that's the reason this is for all the marbles here we go I'm uh I'm just gonna power it on I think it's working because the CPU debug light went off right away oh exciting any second now there it is there it is what on Earth was that what I think happened is he swapped the motherboard for this one here and this motherboard shipped from the factory at a certain point in time maybe around May because that's when this bios was released with that version dot three e0 now I don't find any information online about that bios even existing I'm not sure how long it was in production but I do know that it's no longer on their site and I think this is why so reverting literally one bios revision backwards was all it took to get this 3600 up and running again it's likely that version completely removed Zen 2 support for whatever reason they always have constraints of size constraints for CPU compatibilities in these bios they're just not very large chips but it wouldn't make sense for them to remove Zen 2 support when Zen plus CPUs work just fine on that bios oh check it out you actually can still buy these b450 boards brand new from Amazon shipped and sold from their warehouses so these are still are they still in production that is pretty nuts that would explain why this would have shipped with that bios out of the box um and and you could have been screwed from the from the start so yeah this is this is weird I'm gonna try reaching out to MSI and seeing if they have any other info on that particular bios revision I expect that's why it doesn't exist any longer on their site last thing to do then now that all of his original peripherals all cables are reconnected is double check that this boots back into Windows because again it was working at one point it should be a bootable volume on one of these drives they're both SATA drives so we get our post that's good and that's a good sign looks like it's loading into windows just a few more seconds here I think he's got an SSD in here so it should load pretty quick and there we are that's it that's uh that's all it took uh wonky bios that is no longer listed it might have been a beta bios now that I'm thinking about it it might have been something that was being tested this is why I don't usually recommend that you upgrade to a beta revision just in case there is something in there that completely nukes support for whatever CPU generation you're running that very well could have been the case here it didn't say that it was a beta bios in the in the in this bios in the UEFI um I might have said it somewhere else I didn't notice but uh yeah I it's it's pretty evident at this point that that bios was keeping the system from working for whatever reason it just decided just randomly to stop and like you could have been led to believe it was the motherboard's fault because swapping the board out would have fixed it right total different bios different manufacturer great the motherboard's dead right but it clearly wasn't I could have swapped out the CPU as well uh probably not from Zen 2 to Zen 2 would have made sense to swap at 3600 with a 3600 and called it a day because it probably still wouldn't have worked which would have also LED you to believe it was the motherboard but if you would swap between Generations so we went down to a 2600 or even if we had upgraded to a 5600 I imagine it still would have worked uh just swapping those two out so you might have been led to believe that the CPU was to blame I thought it was at first and it turns out that the BIOS was the culprit all along I'm really happy about this one because it means we don't have to swap any hardware out it just took a bit of software finesse to get this thing back up and running and uh whoops I forgot to reconnect this is a rear exhaust fan there we go with that thank you so much for watching this far into this one I definitely learned a thing or two hopefully you did as well uh I got really lucky I think just uh noticing the BIOS revision there I figured I might as well just check to see how you know how recent that bios is maybe just updating would fix some stability issues now come to find out that version of the BIOS doesn't even exist on this night anymore for uh for that particular product and that I I kind of thought it was weird and I figured it was worth at least looking into and I'm glad I did because at the end of the day it saved us from replacing Hardware we didn't really need to nothing inherently was wrong with the rig just had a bit of a biosa discrepancy so what do you know another day another odd but satisfying ending to a fix or Flop video if you or someone you know again lives in or around Atlanta Florida and have a broken system something that maybe doesn't power on at all or doesn't send a signal to a monitor I would have a chance to have a look at it potentially even fix it for free you can submit your system via the link in this video's description let me know what you thought about this one give it a thumbs up if you thought it was interesting consider subscribing if you have not already and stay tuned for what we have coming next here on the channel my name is Greg thanks for learning with me

Channel: Greg Salazar

Views: 228,096

Keywords: broken pc, how to fix a broken computer, fix or flop, fix or flop season 3, fix or flop s3e4, greg salazar pc cleaning, greg salazar fix or flop, Greg salazar, how to troubleshoot, troubleshooting computer problems and solutions, how to fix a pc

Id: yhBmqvYlLQI

Length: 16min 59sec (1019 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 14 2022