Question: Display or beep remains silent after maintenance; unsure of next steps?
Question: Display or beep remains silent after maintenance; unsure of next steps?
In 2017 I set up an i7-7700K on an ASRock Z270 Extreme 4 motherboard with CM (Cooler Master) Hyper 212 Evo HSF, CM G750M power supply, two 16GB DDR4 RAM modules, an EVGA GTX 1070, a 512GB Intel NVMe SSD in an M.2 slot, a 2TB HDD, and an optical drive. I also added an 802.11ac WiFi/BT card in the correct M.2 slot, though I didn’t fully secure the pigtail connectors and gave up quickly to focus on installing Windows 10 and using my new system.
It has served me well for six years, but required maintenance. I:
- Replaced the thermal paste on the HSF and GPU.
- Tried connecting the WiFi cables again and finally got it working. (Having WiFi on my PC is now more important as I might switch to 5G soon and need a router nearby.)
- The optical drive tray wouldn’t release, so I serviced the drive belt.
- After completing these tasks, I tried to boot up the system and inspect everything before reinstalling components, but it still wouldn’t start. The fans would briefly activate, then stop. This cycle repeated until I powered off the PSU. I spent the rest of the day removing parts one by one and testing again. At some point I connected a speaker, but it didn’t help much—it might have made a faint beep when the fans turned on.
- The next morning I reset the CMOS, and the issues changed. It appears to run but shows nothing; the fans start and stop intermittently, except for the GPU (which starts but then shuts down), likely because it’s in standby. I’ve connected to two different devices via the motherboard’s VGA and HDMI ports, tested the GPU’s HDMI, tried BIOS on all three slots, but nothing appears. Both monitors and cables seem fine; I even connected my old laptop to verify. Despite the CMOS battery reading 3.12V, I replaced it and swapped parts around.
- According to the manual, this board has two BIOS chips labeled P1.20 with LEDs next to them. When power is applied, the primary chip’s LED lights up and stays on until the power supply is turned off.
- In any case, there’s no display or beeps unless something critical is removed, like RAM. I’m unsure what to do now except start taking parts out of the case and experimenting with a breadboard setup. Maybe using a multimeter on the PSU would help too.
If anyone has suggestions, I’d appreciate it. This situation has been really frustrating.
Hello! Please verify all connections and reinsert components, consider breadboarding outside the case with key parts (CPU, 1 RAM stick, GPU), try using a different power supply if feasible, test the GPU on another system or utilize built-in graphics, confirm secure display cable links, experiment with various GPU output options (HDMI, DVI, DisplayPort). Refer to the motherboard manual for BIOS recovery steps, test with known functional RAM if available, and reset BIOS settings to their default state.
Hope this resolves your concern.
Thank-you.
I've managed to pinpoint the issue—it's quite serious. Two of the DIMM slots on the motherboard are completely broken. I found this by testing each slot individually with a single stick, which triggered a display problem. After replacing the (boot) SSD, Windows is now loading properly. I plan to gradually reinstall components. Most of it should still work, even if not in the same configuration. In the meantime, I'll keep using another system while searching for a new motherboard and a compatible CPU for Windows 11. Thanks for your helpful advice, Jason-Julius. Your support means a lot.
Re-examine CPU socket for bends or broken pins that prevent proper contact, as these issues can lead to RAM slot problems.