This here is another viewer's small but broken gaming pc and we're gonna try in this video to
fix it now i'm gonna read the email i got from the owner regarding the issues this
system is exhibiting he says hey greg i came into my office and saw that there was a black
screen i thought maybe it had just gone to sleep but it wouldn't wake and when i tried to turn it
off using the front panel connector it didn't work and the light stayed on this is my first build
so i did everything i could to diagnose the issue but no luck he actually took it to geek squad and
geek squad apparently just they told him it was a motherboard and they told him he should RMA it so
he did that but still the same issue persists so maybe this system was misdiagnosed by geek squad
or maybe the RMA request he sent and whatever was sent back to him was still defective so who
really knows he says it won't boot won't post or anything so this sounds like the perfect candidate
for the fixer flop playlist and that's why it's here hopefully we can fix it for him stay with me
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our new offer code skgs for a sweet discount now for those who are new to the fixer fault
playlist the premise here is simple we reach out to folks in and around the Orlando Florida
area and ask them if they have broken systems in need of a proper fixing the caveats are we don't
charge them anything so long as they're okay with this taking on their system for a few days and as
long as they're okay with us filming the process i can monetize these videos this is where i make
my money and i don't offload any of that to the viewers who are already gracious enough to loan us
their systems for a few days so let's kick things off with system specifications he's got an NZXT h1
obviously i'll check to see if he's got the nylon screw replacements for the riser cable he's got
a b450i Aorus pro motherboard a Ryzen 5 3600 x uh radon 8 gig what is this a 5 yeah 570 armor 8 gig
graphics card uh corsair vengeance lpx he's got two 16 gig DIMMs he's got a Samsung 970 EVO uh ssd
half a terabyte and he's got a one terabyte wd blue ssd and a two terabyte WD blue ssd for work
and games thing so essentially this here is his work from home system and that's why he's been so
desperate to get this up and running because this is how he makes a living so that's why i'm going
to do everything i can to get this working form that and he already took the time to drive out to
meet me so we'll see if we can hook them up now the first thing we do at the beginning of every
troubleshooting process is attempt to power the system on we need to replicate the issue described
by the owner in order to make sure that what we're seeing lines up with what he or she was seeing if
not then it's possible something else might have been damaged in transport and that's an entirely
new can of worms that you might not want to deal with as a business owner in my case usually i can
replace things either way so it's not really too big a deal but nonetheless we're going to power it
on and see if it actually powers on apparently it doesn't so with everything hooked up i've got HDMI
connected to our portable monitor here i think we are ready to power on let's try the power button
that didn't do anything
uh let me see our power supply is even on ah this should uh yeah it should be
on there we go so let's try this again with the power supply actually switched on
okay system is on fan spinning i can feel fluid in the i o
churning so the pump is okay but i'm not getting a picture out i wonder if part of the problem he
was having was the fact that the power supply wasn't even turned on it doesn't sound like
it sounds like it was working at some point maybe when he had it serviced he just kept it off but uh
yeah i mean we're not getting a picture out i really hope it's not as graphics card i mean
relatively speaking RX 570s and 470s are fairly cheap but still in today's market
you're going to be overpaying with respect to what you would have paid a couple years ago
to replace this card even secondhand on on Ebay or elsewhere so it's not ideal but i've got a feeling
that's what i don't know why but i just have a feeling that it's going to be his graphics card i
kind of want to tackle that first let's get these side panels off kind of a kind of a task in the h1
because you're going to take the front back panels off first before you can slide two side panels off
but there we go i'm just gonna check connections while i'm here obviously we're gonna have to run
through this stuff anyway if this ends up not being a graphics card problem he does have his
card powered with supplemental PCIE power and the riser cable looks to be intact um yeah he doesn't
have nylon screws installed i don't know if this is the new riser cable or not i don't recall what
it looks like if it looked any different but i'll be sure to ask him about this and if he hasn't
already updated it he should so we're gonna disconnect his card and replace it on moment
with my trusty GT710 wow this looks so cringed in this oh my gosh like this whole area here is
dedicated to a discreet card and we've got just a super small compact GT-710 this poor thing it's
a trooper even though it's really not all that powerful really at all so now we can try again
for a picture got the power supply switched on and everything is connected all right here we go
now i've said this before in this playlist but i'm kind of hoping that it's not his graphics
card it's a bit easier for me to replace other components the graphics card is the
one thing that even i struggle to get a hold of any kind of card for that matter it's just uh i'd
probably end up having to buy a replacement card myself just to get a hold of something
because um it's difficult to get anyone to send anything i'm not seeing a picture out though
which means it's probably not his graphics card which means this is going to involve much more
deconstruction than i was originally anticipating let's get into the heart of this thing i think
we're gonna be spending the bulk of our time with this motherboard since this is the thing that geek
squad suspected was to blame for the no post issue the no picture out but uh what i want to do next
is verify the integrity of connections we can actually do that real quick here so 24 pin
front panel 8 pin aps fan connections those all look good hd audio SATA so i don't see user error
being a possibility here connections on the power supply side this is modular those all look fine
and again the pump is working so it's not like the cpu is instantly overheating or anything like that
this is again a Ryzen 5 cpu b450i motherboard now so what i'm going to do now is strip this down to
just motherboard cpu cooler ram and power supply no other connections just a rule out
that um something was mis-wired that i'm not seeing here also going to swap and reseat ram
here just to roll out another variable during this process there we go are we going to get anything
that is the question with everything disconnected i have to jump these pins manually
should probably connect something that way i can tell that it's on
okay so the system is on
whoa
had to be ram that's what i'm thinking it has to be ram
because
i mean all we did was unplug everything else but i didn't really expect that to do anything because
everything was connected the way that it should have been wow there's a system this system works
fine this fan is getting hot it's because the pump is not connected all right we're turning it
back off so we're going to retrace our steps now to narrow down what exactly it was i am going to
reconnect his two memory modules first and attempt to power the system on if it works then what i'll
do is start connecting components one by one so we'll connect his ssds we'll connect the hd audio
i don't expect again that any of this is really to blame for the system not posting it seems
a bit odd i think it came down to memory it's likely that one of those was not seated properly
when i removed them they felt fine they felt like they were in there where they should have been
but you really you just never know so let's go backwards so we'll reconnect his modules here
and there we are so we're still getting a post interesting so this might have been some sort of
wiring issue i suspected it might have been maybe a dead memory channel like we had in the previous
episode of the of this playlist but not the case both memory sticks work just fine a few moments
later huh everything works fine i reconnected everything we're still getting a post it's in
the recovery window because i've had to reset this thing so many times but it's all working i don't
it must have just been an improperly seated memory module that's all i can think of it
wasn't the front panel connector because that's a unified connector in this nzxt case
so it just plugs in one way it's keyed same with the hd audio connector and then as two
stated data cables that was it when we we had already tried plugging in the fan and the pump
that didn't affect anything so i don't know this one this one's a bit strange i think it was just
memory i mean if if you've been building systems for a while you probably know that memory can be
a bit stubborn at times if only a couple of pins are not making contact with the module
in the slot then uh yeah you could end up with something like this here
where you got a black screen but with the system technically on and fans technically spinning if i
recall correctly these leds under the motherboard weren't even on before we weren't getting a post
but now you can see i didn't know this board had these but they are lit up now so what i'm going
to try to do and i don't recommend you do this but i'm going to do it because i can replace
things if something happens to break i'm going to intentionally improperly seat one of these modules
just to see if we can replicate the no post issue i don't know if you can tell but i've got this
front module the one closer to the socket raised slightly higher than the one further away from it
both locking mechanisms are up technically this one's not all the way up you can see it's slightly
pulled back but to the untrained eye this would look properly seated right so now let's try to
power the system on and would you look at that powered on the fan spins and we don't have a
post and we also don't have the leds lit up under the motherboard so i'm i'm very very confident now
that it was just an improperly seated memory module which you'd think you know come on that
seems like an obvious issue like anybody would notice that but again i just showed you it looks
like both are seated from this angle here it looks like the modules are where they should be there's
just a tiny little bit of raising on one side of one dim and that's all it takes to get this
symptom here where it seems like the system should be working and you'd think oh well that's got to
be the graphics card then which is what i thought at first i didn't think to check memory first i
cleared the CMOS i did that much earlier in the video i didn't mention it but i always check that
right away because that's a very quick fix and uh yes still nothing so that's what i think it was
improperly seated memory and again if you've been building pieces for a while you know how annoying
this one can be it is actually a very frequent issue that folks run into and in one continuous
shot here i'm going to power the system back off okay i'm going to drain power and all i'm gonna do
is push this module further into the slot okay once we do that that's all it takes
we can power the system back on and this time we should get a post
i'm gonna look pretty stupid if we don't okay there we go yeah so uh you get the orange lights
under the board now and uh should be getting a picture on screen there we go so that's all it
took and that's again why i think it was just a memory seating problem the last thing to do then
is reconnect his graphics card and if our uh if our expectations are correct here our assumptions
about this build then connecting this back shouldn't change anything about his system
since the card seemed fine let's reconnect PCI power and we'll screw this down in a second i
just want to make sure that it posts first so let's reconnect the HDMI cable and look at there
no problems at all his system is actually ready to go this ended faster than i thought it would
well this could have ended up being much worse than it was and it all came down to a
simple DDR4 seating issue at least that's what i suspect based on the test we replicated here
it could have been something much worse and i was prepared to take the entire motherboard out
and in a case like the nzxt h1 that can be a bit difficult a bit time consuming because you have an
aio in the way and it's just all kind of crammed in there i almost went that far but i checked
the connections and i checked ddr4 before doing that because i wanted to rule out those simpler
possibilities now you could argue well greg why'd you take the graphics card out that took a little
bit more time than just checking ddr4 yeah that's true i just went off of a hunch i wanted
to see if i could guess it right out of the gate correctly but no it was ddr4 that simple this is
why i recommend running through the simple checks up front even if you suspect that they are not
to blame clear the CMOS check connections check DDR4 ddr3 seating whatever is coming up next ddr5
check those things because they take seconds and it's good to have that peace of mind when
you start diving deeper into a broken rig really i'm sure the owner is going to be thrilled to hear
that his system is back to working order and that it really didn't require much of anything at all
we didn't have to replace any components all this data is still intact and again i just had to spend
a few seconds reseeding memory in fact if i was a boutique pc builder maybe ran a pc repair shop i
personally unless i couldn't justify it financially would be upfront and honest about
how short a time it took to troubleshoot and to fix the issue and i wouldn't charge him anything i
just say hey you know it didn't take very long and um you know i don't feel right charging anything
for it because it took minutes out of my day not hours and i'd be willing to bet that that
would pay off dividends in the long run because he'd probably go and tell his friends hey this
guy he could have charged me anything could have said it took him hours could have replaced things
but he was honest and he didn't charge me anything at all so if you have any issues with your systems
bring them to this guy right that's how you make a positive impact that's how you build a positive
reputation in this industry so if you're in that position maybe uh maybe consider doing
that but hey the system works and at the end of the day that's all i'm really concerned with i
know this was a shorter video a bit unorthodox for this playlist but that's a testament to the
the fact that this is random right i never know what's going to come in through the door i have
my suspicions as to what could be at fault but it's a box of chocolates it's all random and
these are all puzzles for me and i hope that you guys are having as much fun as i am
troubleshooting these it's a it's definitely interesting some of the issues that we've run into
so far and i appreciate your support your feedback has been just immense it has been awesome and
so motivating i hope to continue these kinds of videos in the future so if you live in the Orlando
Florida area and you have an issue with your system and it seems like it's a hardware issue
be sure to either email me or tweet me info is in the video description leave a comment
leave a like if you aren't subscribed i'll give you a few seconds to fix that
good cool I appreciate that and yeah stay tuned for the next one my name is Greg,
thanks for learning with me!