PC begins intermittently. Power switch activates the system roughly once every 15 attempts.
PC begins intermittently. Power switch activates the system roughly once every 15 attempts.
Hey everyone, I just upgraded my PC recently. I swapped out the CPU, motherboard, RAM, SSD, GPU, and HDD. Everything else stayed the same, including the case, power supply, and fans. The problem is that even though the PSU is working—keyboard and lights work, phone charging is fine—the computer only powers on sporadically. Most times the power button stays off. I initially thought it was a bad power button or a loose connector. I removed the PWR cable and tried connecting the pins directly. The same issue happened. After realizing the clock time often got wrong, I decided to replace the CMOS battery. That didn’t help much. I reset the BIOS to defaults, but with the stock settings the CPU still runs poorly. When it’s running, it works okay. Since I usually play games for long periods, I suspect the PSU is fine. Here’s what I have: Ryzen 5600X, stock cooler from Gigabyte B550m, Corsair Vengeance 3200MHz RAM, RTX 3060 with HX1200 GPU, MX500 SSD, 256GB HGST drive, plus extra storage drives.
I experienced some inconsistencies with the motherboard standoffs not being uniform in height. I kept them as they came with the case. The motherboard was correctly positioned, but I observed that one side would sit flat against the standoffs while the other bent the board noticeably if I tried to secure it. I experimented with different standoffs—some higher ones like the post-style until everything balanced out.
Consider giving it another try by reseating the CPU; it was purchased used.
Do you own a multimeter? Could the motherboard's pins show signs of weak soldering?
Board seems to be the main concern here. It might just be a BIOS or software problem, as bad CPUs are rare and usually don’t fail suddenly. I own an E5645 that stopped working after months of being unused, which could be due to an SMD that was removed. Maybe dropping it helped because my setup has many CPUs, but I have around 20-30 in total.
I thought it too. Reached out to the webshop right away. The CPU looks good—actually seems to function reasonably well in the silicon selection (-26 on the curve optimizer is oddly acceptable, though it doesn’t rise much higher).