Hey all,
TL;DR – PC wont boot when cold. Flicks between CPU and DRAM error on motherboard. Unless I put a heater fan on it then the PC will load fine…
Should I just remove all parts and start again?
So I am trying to help my brother in law out who is too busy to fix his PC right now as he has Uni studies.
The issue is the MB flicks between cpu and dram red lights when trying to boot. (Throughout its year long life it has always taken 5 mins roughly to boot so I wonder if it has been an issue in the background since day 1? Idk)
Yesterday, after removing and checking all the ram slots, gpu, most plugs and various others things like loosening the cpu cooler bolts (suggestion from someone else with this kind of issue) I had this PC running and ran benchmarks etc and all the scores were where they should be. (3dMark on Steam).
This morning it goes back to the error or flicking between the cpu and dram… So I thought of it possibly being the temp that could be causing something not to be touching or is touching when cold. Idk, I just thought it was worth a shot. So I put my fan heater on the open case for 30 mins and it boots up and is running fine now…
I would love to hear people who have thoughts on what could be causing this? Ill try it again next time it does this until I figure out the issue.
Thank you for reading.
15 Comments
Before this week, I had never seen a dry-joint problem posted to Reddit, and now this is the 3rd one this week. I wonder if it’s the cooler autumn air.
The bad news is you’ll have to replace your motherboard. Maybe it was a manufacturing defect, maybe you were too rough with it. It doesn’t matter. But a solder joint is failing and is likely to become worse over time until it dies entirely. If you’ve only had it a year, you’ll only be halfway through your EU mandated 2-year warranty period, so go claim it and have the thing replaced.
CPU might not be seated correctly and thermal expansion fixes it?
Has anyone ever successfully tried the oven trick on a motherboard?
Is that a tempered glass on case on tile floor and no broken glass?
Your PC is secretly a car 🚗
Probably just need to do an oil change.
Oh boy, tempered glass on tile. I know how this story ends.
you could try baking your motherboard. like they use to bake GPUs back in the day
that sounds a lot like ryzen memory training issues.
Maybe try downclocking the memory or checking if it has a crazy high speed/low timing setup that makes it unable to boot correctly.
Could be that heating it up changes what the voltage regulators are letting though? Maybe it’s letting it stabilize the memory as strange as that sounds.
you could also try hitting the voltage regs on the MB and any oscillators you see with a bit of air from a smd rework unit or a heat gun with a small nozzle. Might help you narrow down the possible issue.
im just wondering how you came to find the fix of applying heat
Going against the grain?
Loosen the bolts on the Radiator from the case to ease up on the tension from the pipes leading to the PCU and cooler. It looks like those pipes are putting quite a bit of tension on the motherboard/cpu when cold, but heating them up relaxes them so the pressure isn’t there anymore.
Might be exerting just enough pressure so that the motherboard bends and contacts for the RAM or CPU don’t quite touch correctly.
This is almost certainly a dry joint. That is a superfine crack in a solder joint that fails to make contact cold, but warm everything up and a tiny amount of thermal expansion closes the gap.
If you can, return the motherboard for replacement.
Try reseating everything
Have you tried re-seating the CPU? It might not be in correct and thus not making contact with all the pins.
Check if any condensator is swollen on the motherboard, you need to heat them up when they are almost dead. Used to turn my old TV with a hair dryer
Edit: capacitor, condensator is in my native language, but it is a cheap fix, throwing mobo because of one is like throwing a car for flat tyre