Black screen and no POST

Claire Furney

• 8 min read
Black screen and no POST
Photo by Derrick Brooks / Unsplash

Previous build

I last built a PC in 2011 and decided this year it was probably due an upgrade. that one had an Intel CPU with integrated graphics and an ASUS motherboard. This time round it seemed AMD had decent competively priced processors and, like Apple, I was keen to have a change.

Build 2021

I settled on an NZXT H510 case almost straight away (previous case was NZXT) and then initially chose an MSI B450 motherboard with a Ryzen 5 3600 processor (fairly randomly - I watched a youtube video with all the parts somebody else had taken time and care assembling and it seemed about the right price bracket). I was surprised how cheap motherboards were compared to the CPU and the graphics card and wondered if I shouldn't spend a bit more and get a B550 or X570.

Several iterations later I was up to an ASUS ROG STRIX B550-F Gaming Wifi this time with a Ryzen 5 5600X. My only niggling doubt was that the case had a front panel USB-C port, but this board didn't support this. I wasn't sure I was going to need this at all, but as someone said - its annoying having a port on the case which doesn't work, especially since on the front of the H510 there were literally only 3 ports. At some point I read an article by Jeff Atwood who posts about his PC builds from time to time, and he mused that the future was all small form factor. I had another look at the H210, the ITX version of the H510 and decided actually this was way more preferable. I then watched a youtube video of someone creating an awesome build from this case and I was sold.

The parts

I tried not to order anything from Amazon, but didn't do too well...

  • Storage: Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1 TB PCIe NVMe M.2 £108.94 (amazon.co.uk). This was hovering around the £125 mark and then shot up to £138 or so suddenly. Next morning it was down to £108 so I whipped it up quickly. Only PCIe Gen 3, but something I could easily upgrade in the future and still make use of.
  • Motherboard: ASUS ROG Strix B550-I Gaming £170ish (amazon.de). It seemed to work out 20 or so quid cheaper from Germany despite having to pay postage and both the UK and German sites included the dreaded "import duty deposit".
  • Memory: Kingston FURY Beast RGB 32GB (2x16GB) 3200MHz DDR4 CL16 £171.44 (amazon.co.uk). RGB version. I was careful to get a clock speed and latency supported by the motherboard, but otherwise I forgot to actually check if it was explicitly supported or not. As it turned out, it wasn't on the ASUS list, but the Kingston website had it listed as supporting the Strix B550-I motherboard.
  • PSU: Corsair RM 750x £ (guess). 2019 version which I read had better parts than the more recent versions.
  • Case: NZXT H210 £76.23 (and again). Kept coming down in price by a few quid and then going back up again. Grabbed it on the downward curve one day a long with the memory and power supply.
  • Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 5600G £240 minus £5 for delivery (even though I picked it up) minus 8% WOW points = £216.20 (currys). These had literally just hit the shelves. Performance was almost the same as the non APU version. The only read drawback was it was PCIe 3 rather than 4, but non of the APUs were PCIe 4 and not having to shell out for a graphics card I wasn't particularly going to make much use of as well as the current shortage / high prices seemed sensible.

Prep

Whilst awaiting the final delivery from Amazon, I read up on the BIOS flashback I was fairly certain I was going to have to do for the BIOS to be able to recognise the Ryzen 5000 series CPU. I had a mini panic attack after watching a couple of youtube videos, reading this reddit thread a looking at the ports on my motherboard which didn't have the "BIOS flashback" markings. Later realised they were on the IO panel. Nevertheless, the manual explicitly said the CPU had to be installed, and knowing I needed to upgrade the BIOS for it to use said CPU seemed counter intuitive.

Nothing to do, but prepare a USB stick and wait until the moment came. I initally prepared an old USB 3.0 stick, but the manual and various forums explicitly specified USB 2.0, so I prepared one of those too.

Also downloaded Windows 10 and prepped a bootable USB for that.

Saturday evening

Putting it all together (this bit is going to go wrong)

The last bits arrived on Saturday an hour or so after I'd cycled down to pick up the CPU. No time like the present.

  1. Install M.2 storage on the front motherboard slot
  2. Click the two RAM sticks into place
  3. Install CPU. It felt a little as though I was forcing the little lever when I was pushing it down though I definitely had the correct orientation and had it in the right place.
  4. Install stock CPU fan. I realised I needed to remove the two black supports screwed into the motherboard either side of the CPU for this particular fan, but puzzled rather on the "don't remove the back plate" part from the manual, until I turned the motherboard over and saw a big plate loose on the other side - aha! The cooler could only go on one way round because the RAM was in the way. Even so, when I screwed it into the back plate through the board, I screwed it on a little wonky at first and after straightening up it was still touching / pushing against the closest RAM stick. Plugged the lead into the CPU_FAN header.
  5. Install motherboard I/O shield into the case. Straightforward.
  6. Install motherboard into the case. I had to push the motherboard right up against the I/O shield but otherwise no issues.
  7. There were two case fans with their wires ready to plug in. I plugged one into the CHA_FAN header and eventually decided to plug the other one into the AIO_PUMP header (which apparently is ok, and can tweak in the BIOS if really want to).
  8. At this point I knew I needed to plug more stuff into the motherboard apart from the power, but couldn't seem to work out quite what. I kept looking at all the extra leads from both the motherboard and the case, but nothing really made a whole lot of sense. Suddenly remembered all the leads hanging in the case still not plugged into anything coming from the front IO panel. Fairly simple to plug those 4 into their respective slots: "front panel", USB, USB C and audio.
  9. Next for the power. I did this all the wrong way round. I screwed the PSU into the bottom of the case. Struggled to plug the leads into the PSU and then struggled even more to plug the other ends into the motherboard. I eventually had to remove the top case fan. For future reference:
* Remove both case fans from the case
* Attach powerleads to the motherboard
* Install motherboard in case
* Install PSU
* Thread powerleads through to PSU
* Attach other wires
* Reinstall fans and attach

Why is this markdown card appearing in black?! ^

The build is finished and so am I for the evening, but not before noticing the motherboard box has an extra sticker on it "AMD 5000 series ready" - maybe it'll boot up without any BIOS updates after all.

Sunday evening

Flashing the BIOS

Can't remember now if I turned everything on without joy OR decided to flash the BIOS anyway, I think the latter. I duly inserted the USB 2.0 stick into the BIOS flashback USB slot, switched on the PSU, pressed the BIOS flashback button for a couple of seconds - slow flashing green - released the button. Unfortunately, it turned quickly to steady green - the motherboard couldn't find any files on the USB. Ejected and gave the USB 3.0 stick a go without much hope, but bingo - slow flashing green followed by faster flashing green. Watched it for 30 secs or so, then found something else to do for a while. When I came back, all lights out. Looked successful.

Turning it all on

Geared up for the big switch on, the fans span but otherwise nothing. No video, no colours from the RGB on theRAM (not sure if I was expecting that or not). After trying various different variations on HDMI / monitors wihout success, I removed the RAM and tried again. My theory was that without the RAM it should at least beep during POST. Still nothing. This time I plugged a pair of headphones into the back audio port, but nada.

Back to square one

I was fairly flumuxed as to what could be the problem, but I'd struggled to get the power leads onto the mother board, particularly the CPU one, and I wasn't quite sure if the CPU was doing anything at all, so I started unplugging things and removed the motherboard from the case. With the motherboard outside the case and the front header still connected so I could use the power switch on the case to turn it on, I tried again, but still nothing. Removed the RAM, removed the cooler from the CPU, literally nothing attached now but the motherboard, PSU and CPU. Still nothing.

Open heart

I pulled out the PSU from my old windows box and attached that to the new motherboard instead. No difference. Only info I could glean from online was that if the motherboard was not even trying to POST then it was pretty much a goner. The fact that it had successfully flashed the BIOS, it was completely brand new AND was a half decent board made me doubt really that that was the problem. But I was all out of ideas.

Speaker header

More googling later, and the reason for the lack of beeps became clear. No motherboard speaker. I was done for the night, but got onto Amazon and ordered one for a fiver.

Monday

RAM

More googling and I started to become convinced that the RAM maybe the culprit especially since it hadn't lit up at all. I consulted the list on the ASUS support site and this particular RAM wasn't listed. That sensitive? But everyone said so. I then started looking on the Kingston site, but they had this RAM has being supported for my motherboard, so that didn't seem right.

Q-LEDs

I walked to the park, not really being able to think much more than which of the £200 or so parts was the culprit - motherboard, CPU or RAM. If I didn't know, then how can I know which one to send back. And if I sent them all back and got new ones, would the whole thing just happen again? Everything was pointing to the new CPU not being compatible with the BIOS because I knew that was going to be an issue. But that was the only thing which had gone right.

THEN I read about Q-LEDs. Absolutely NO MENTION of these LEDs on the page of the manual which talked about all the POST beeps. I also read a forum post from someone who had the same problem and said they had tried each stick of RAM in turn and found with only one in the PC booted into the BIOS ok, and eventually found that reseating the CPU sorted out the issue.

Q-LEDs on the ASUS ROG Strix B500-I

I cleared a space in the kitchen, actually some better light in here and wiped the CPU super carefully with rubbing alcohol to remove all traces of the original thermal paste. I'd read that turning on the motherboard without any CPU cooler was also not the best idea, but that for 5 secs it was probably ok. With CPU only, the DRAM light lit up - cool - there was no RAM, this was correct. I reinstalled the cooler as well as one stick of RAM, the furthest from the CPU so there was no issue with anything pushing on each other. SUDDENLY, the RAM stick lit up! And the lights started cycling round orange DRAM, red CPU, white VGA, cycled a few times and then the white VGA and green BOOT just stayed on. Did that mean it was happy? I plugged in the HDMI to a screen and lo and behold - I saw a message about it finishing up the BIOS flashback - had completely forgotten I should expect a final step for that, and then it booted finally into the BIOS. Put the other RAM stick back and STILL ok. Phew.

I reassembled everything back into the case, testing at EVERY stage that nothing had stopped working, but all good now.