Diagnose unexpected restart cycles on a PC.
Diagnose unexpected restart cycles on a PC.
System began looping overnight, worried about damaging my dog; now it won’t power up. Hardware specs: 3060 Ti, i5 9600K, 32 GB RAM, budget motherboard. The machine will power itself on by default, but it immediately restarts before any display output appears. No unusual behavior the previous night—just a standard shutdown with Discord, Word, Chrome open. On the attached photo, the boot sequence appears as follows: CPU → DRAM, then quick switch back → CPU and fast to → DRAM, flashes DRAM, then VGA, then CPU shuts down. The GPU light briefly lights up and turns off before the cycle repeats. All motherboard lights are active.
The video shows the lights toggling between CPU and DRAM twice during the initial boot attempt, then once afterward. The file saved is IMG_8707.MOV.
Around 2017, the motherboard illumination activates during startup, along with the GPU indicator and the status debug lights on the motherboard.