Red boot LED on tomahawk b450

MadYaker

My pc won’t boot. A red led has appeared beside the boot light on my mobo. When I turn on my pc the gfx does nothing even though it’s plugged in, no lights or fans. I get no signal to the monitor from the card or my motherboard. Im pretty sure the problem is an ancient hard drive that the pc was booting from. Im trying to boot the pc from a usb drive with windows on it but I can’t access bios. When I look it up online it appears that holding down the delete key or pressing it should take me to the bios but that doesn’t do anything. Tried it with all the F keys none of them work.

Does anyone know how I can access bios to configure my pc to boot from the usb drive? I’ve spent the whole day trying to figure this out and I’m getting nowhere.

Spear

Sounds like it can't even initialise the BIOS contents. Try clearing the contents. It should be a matter of closing a jumper for a few seconds.

smuggler.ie

Try reset CMOS by button/jumper or battery, wont harm

What CPU ? Does it have build-in graphics?

Disconnect drive, you should get "no boot device" error, however, if no image on screen it wont help

F11 to enter Boot Menu, however, if no image on screen it wont help

wotzgoingon

Did anything happen since this started? Like did you get up today and just went to turn on PC this morning/afternoon and now it will not boot. Was it working yesterday/ last night.

As above short out the clear cmos jumper.

MadYaker

I’ve reset the CMOS twice already it doesn’t do anything. I’ve tried restarting the PC while holding each of the F keys, shift and delete. I’ve tried it with 3 different keyboards in 3 different usb slots. I’ve tried different hdmi cables in different slots on the monitor. The monitor gets no signal no matter what I do.

MadYaker

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120044379#Comment_120044379

I switched it on this morning and it was working as normal. Then out of nowhere just no signal and I look down at the pc and all the lights on the gfx card are gone off. The card is brand new so it’s not that. I should still be able to run the pc without card by connecting hdmi to the mobo but it won’t boot. CPU is a ryzen 5 and the card is a 5700xt

wotzgoingon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120044399#Comment_120044399

You mentioned a hard drive do you have any SSD's?

Best thing to do is strip down the PC and put it on a wooden table or cloth chair. And take out graphics card and just and no HD or SSD's and turn it on and if it loads up without the red light you are getting somewhere. If it still shows red LED then plug out RAM and try with one stick and see if the red LED goes out.

Spear

That board should have a flashback option, so I'd suggest trying that in case the BIOS contents are corrupted.

Otherwise, it's the lengthy process of disassembly and testing each part, as Wotzgoingon mentions above.

smuggler.ie

Does CPU fan even kick-in?

There are ryzen 5 with (e.g 5600G) or without(5600X) graphics - what is it?

smuggler.ie

If not mistaking, there is flash bios button for bios update(require USB), but not flashback

MadYaker

I still have the red led beside boot with no HDDs or SSDs or gfx card connected. If I remove the RAM the led appears beside RAM instead of boot.

Im not sure how to use the flashback option. I have There’s a button beside that usb drive on the back. I have the usb stick with windows on it in there. I pressed that, then after a minute or two a light flashed but when I switched on the pc it’s the same. Not booting, can’t access bios.

I don’t have another pc to test parts in.

wotzgoingon

What power supply do you have? Is it a decent brand and high wattage?

The Continental Op

I'd be trying another PSU.

MadYaker

700w psu so should be fine especially with no card connected. I suppose I could get another one tomorrow and see if that helps. It feels like the pc has already tried to boot before the input from the keyboard is read. The cpu fan spins up as normal along with all the case fans.

wotzgoingon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120044474#Comment_120044474

I'm only asking as is it a good brand PSU. As you can get some cheap junk from some places. I wouldn't go buying another PSU though if your one is good.

MadYaker

I’ve no idea what brand it is to be honest.

Edit: it’s some cheap Eastern European brand I’ve never heard of. Might see if I can replace with something better tomorrow. What are good brands? Superflower used to make good ones

MadYaker

Tried a bigger 750w psu and it’s exactly the same. I’m just going to give up now I think I’m not spending any more time or money on this.

MadYaker

I dismantled the gfx card and cleaned it, reapplied heat sink paste, checked all connections and then put it back together and now it works fine so it was the card. Not sure what the specific problem was though.

Spear

That's a weird one. Still better than the alternative of something being dead though.

smuggler.ie

conclusion:

Your CPU does not seam to have build-in graphics* - no point plugging cable into MB

"New" components can fail as well as any other. Don't disregard until you have 100% prove "it’s not that"

"boot" POST LED does not indicate the real fault, unless you just misread it, VGA is next to it

providing your card will continue to work, you are lucky. Happy ending for a 2022

kingtiger

was positive it was the PSU reading the thread over the last couple of days, never thought it would be heatsink mounting / paste problems on the GFX card

well done OP for sorting it yourself and letting us know

Spear

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120048499#Comment_120048499

That wouldn't have been the direct cause. Something about the GPU was blocking the BIOS from initialising components, and beginning POST, hence the boot LED. Maybe the GPU shifted slightly in the slot and wasn't making good contact, breaking the PCIe response. Given that the GPU was also not lighting up, it may not have been making contact with the power pins in particualr. Removing it to clean and repaste, led to it being reseated and working again.

kingtiger

indeed Spear you are right, isn't the Internet great used correctly

MadYaker

Pain in the arse. First time I’ve had to that with a card.

kingtiger

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120048625#Comment_120048625

its working ;) cant get a better outcome

smuggler.ie

I always thought LED's(or beeper) are the POST resulting output.

Providing the card was physically removed ( was it ?), not just power disconnected from it, VGA LED should come on , as it did for RAM

Speculating here, lets say it was indeed VGA LED...

Things would fall into right places: no card detected, no lights on it , no fans on it - potential PCIe connection issue.

For cleaning, card was definitely removed and re-seated thereafter and bingo - PCIe theory gain more weight. Whether it was cleaning that sort it or just re-seating - we wont know i guess

Providing all that above, windows could have had time to boot few times during troubleshooting and potentially would have ID41 registered in the logs, this part easy to check.

But yeah, as long its back working....

Varik

Same boards with CPU light only recently that I sorted for someone, it was the ram that was the issue but no error light there. RGB on the RAM and that was on. So at least for RAM RGB doesn't equal seated properly.

Just had to reseats it as it wasn't clicked in (assuming the person was being light handed as worried about force) and I put them in the right slots. Always assumed wrong slots just meant it wouldn't be dual channel but some quick googling says some boards deal with it differently. Either way no error on the RAM LED. Didn't have the forthough to try seating it in the wrong slots to see what happened on this board. It worked so moved on.

Taking out the ram fully did light up the RAM LED rather than the CPU.

Would assume for the first few tests the board is going off just a continuity test, so having some contact passess there. Then it's failing on later ones, in my case still early for CPU or later for boot for OP.

wotzgoingon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120058502#Comment_120058502

Thanks for stating the obvious. Where would we be without you.

(For those who think I'm being cheeky, I'm just pointing out to this fella who was also in the electrical section pointing out the obvious too)

Spear

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120060124#Comment_120060124

It's another of those foreign IT student accounts, spamming for course credit. I've already reported it to the admins.

MadYaker

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120048499#Comment_120048499

Sorry I should clarify that I bought this gfx card second hand "lightly used" but when I took it apart I could tell it was anything but. Id never seen that much dust and crap in a component before, I think it had been used for mining and was running 24/7.

Spear

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120065809#Comment_120065809

If that's the case, then the clean and repaste would be advisable anyway. The short interruption is better than potentially killing the card, so you're better off in the long term.