Unintentionally disconnected the power and GPU from the motherboard while it was still on.
Unintentionally disconnected the power and GPU from the motherboard while it was still on.
It's possible everything is still functioning, but the lack of any power signal suggests something might be wrong. Since you didn't turn off the PSU before disconnecting components, there could be an issue with the board or connection. Just because it boots into OS doesn't guarantee all systems are healthy—check for other signs like fans, LEDs, or audio.
It seems there were no spinning fans at all? Maybe you just turned off the system completely, which isn’t an issue as long as the PC didn’t refresh the BIOS or Windows.
It wasn't that bad after all—it was still running but they turned the power back on to clear some cables. Then they left it off before taking out the PSU and GPU. I turned it back on because a spark and arcing happened when I unplugged a USB cable from an idle system. No sparks came out while removing the cables, but it was frustrating that the board didn’t show any status lights when powered up. Even a basic H97 board I own does this, and even a cheap Haswell board from Asrock has a light indicator when it’s on.
Haha, probably just a typical situation. It seems like this might be fairly common, and there could be safeguards in place. I haven’t experienced anything like this in more than ten years of building PCs, though. Still, my boards have always had those light indicators.
I think you're right. I kept recalling all the motherboard manuals I'd read, warning against this action because I saw the switch was on and it made me nervous. On the positive side, the CPU seems to be functioning properly. I purchased a used 3700X that had bent pins and many damaged ones. After spending hours trying to fix them, I tested it on a Prime Plus B450 board but got no output. It looks like that board didn't originally support the 3000 series as advertised. I posted a thread about it, which probably made my mistake even more disappointing since I'd just discovered the CPU was working. Thank you for your reassurance.
I've handled this several times before... sorry, nothing has been harmed yet.