I believe my motherboard is malfunctioning.
I believe my motherboard is malfunctioning.
Over the last year my Kolink KL700 kept stressing my PC. I experienced lag during games, so I swapped my RTX2070 for a GTX960 which improved performance by about 150 FPS. That change was short-lived—I replaced it a couple of months ago. Afterward, my system stopped booting and the GPU fan ran extremely loudly. I had to restart once, after which the fan slowed down and eventually stopped making noise, allowing the PC to power on normally.
To try to fix things, I bought a new PSU in the hope it would stabilize performance, stop the boot issue, and protect other parts. But the problem persisted, requiring multiple reboots—sometimes up to three times. Now the performance is quite poor. I decided to investigate further and swapped out my RAMs, suspecting a motherboard fault.
Upon inspection, I noticed the RAM sticks were being pushed sideways by the CPU cooler’s pump. This likely caused the issue. I adjusted the AIO tube placement, removed the old thermal paste, and installed a fresh one. After cleaning the space and reinserting the RAM, I restarted the PC. When it powered on, I checked the case and saw several lights: an orange one for the motherboard, a red one turning white, and a yellow/green light focused on the AIO tubes.
This happened after I booted the PC over 10 times, trying each RAM one at a time and swapping them after the third or fourth attempt. I’m convinced the motherboard is severely damaged. I think this is the right place to get a clear diagnosis and guidance. Hopefully, someone reads my full post. Thanks for your help!
I updated the details to match the topic. PSU: Bitfenix Whisper 650W GPU: Nvidia GTX 960 (previous GPU that replaced RTX 2070) CPU: Ryzen 5 3600 RAM: TridentZ G.skill CL16 8gb x 2 SSD: Samsung 1TB 860 evo Motherboard: Asus Rog Swift B450-I Watercooler: Features a lion logo, name unknown Case: NZXT 200 (used build) Monitor: Rog Swift 360hz (uncertain if important but okay)