Question Build Advice - Gaming/flight sim/VR New Build ~$3000 for Tower, mostly complete, LOTS of questions - Updated 7/21

[athrowaway2242]

Well. I have connected everything. I attempted to boot. Not POSTing Getting a DRAM orange light on the motherboard

Currently trying to update the BIOS and see if that helps. I have already tried resetting CMOS and turning off all the RAM settings including EXPO. EDIT - bios is updated to most recent version. still does not POST

Not sure what else to try next as far as troubleshooting sequence. I was so careful connecting and everything and always did antistatic precautions etc. Any advice or tips are appreciated. or please let me know what info i should share to assist with troubleshooting

Some things that maybe could be relevant?
RAM is seated in A2/B2 slots


thank you

Parts

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D 4.2 GHz 8-Core Processor (Purchased For $387.61)
CPU Cooler: EK EK-Nucleus AIO CR360 Lux D-RGB 72 CFM Liquid CPU Cooler (Purchased For $174.85)
Motherboard: Gigabyte X670E AORUS PRO X ATX AM5 Motherboard (Purchased For $298.54)
Memory: G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo RGB 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) DDR5-6000 CL30 Memory ($212.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Samsung 990 Pro 4 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive ($319.99 @ Amazon)
Video Card: Gigabyte AORUS MASTER GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER 16 GB Video Card (Purchased For $1279.49)
Case: Lian Li O11D EVO RGB ATX Mid Tower Case (Purchased For $170.57)
Power Supply: Asus ROG Strix Aura Edition 1000 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply ($204.99 @ Amazon)
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro Retail - USB 64-bit (Purchased For $0.00)
Case Fan: Lian Li Uni Fan SL-Infinity 61.3 CFM 120 mm Fan ($26.99 @ Newegg Sellers)
Case Fan: Lian Li Uni Fan SL-Infinity 61.3 CFM 120 mm Fans 3-Pack (Purchased For $70.36)
Case Fan: Lian Li UNI FAN TL 120 Reverse Blade 83.4 CFM 120 mm Fans 3-Pack (Purchased For $0.00)
Case Fan: Lian Li UNI FAN TL LCD 120 Reverse Blade 83.4 CFM 120 mm Fans 3-Pack (Purchased For $255.88)
Monitor: Samsung Odyssey G9 G93SC 49.0" 5120 x 1440 240 Hz Curved Monitor (Purchased For $1172.86)
Keyboard: Razer Huntsman V3 Pro RGB Wired Gaming Keyboard (Purchased For $208.44)
Mouse: Razer Basilisk V3 Pro Wired/Bluetooth/Wireless Optical Mouse (Purchased For $145.00)
Speakers: Audioengine A2+W 60 W Speakers
Custom: Lian-Li Universal 4- Slots Vertical GPU kit (White, VG4-4-V2W) (Purchased For $81.90)
Total: $5010.46
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2024-08-23 02:24 EDT-0400

 

[igor_kavinski]

Plug everything in, turn it on and let it sit for a good 10 minutes. If it still doesn't POST, there's something amiss.

You need to wait a long time for first time memory training. Or you could try with one stick to reduce the training time and confirm that there is no other issue.

 

[athrowaway2242]

Plug everything in, turn it on and let it sit for a good 10 minutes. If it still doesn't POST, there's something amiss.

You need to wait a long time for first time memory training. Or you could try with one stick to reduce the training time and confirm that there is no other issue.

Thanks, I removed one RAM stick, and gave it time. Now it appears that its actually the BOOT light that is orange. it cycled through CPU DRAM and VGA fine. Trying to boot off a windows installer USB but the board isnt finding any boot devices

 

[Tech Junky]

long time

It doesn't take that long.

boot

Did you make the media using gpt? Disable CSM in the uefi and try again.

 

[athrowaway2242]

It doesn't take that long.


Did you make the media using gpt? Disable CSM in the uefi and try again.

I have a mac and i made the media using https://github.com/TechUnRestricted/windiskwriter/releases on a USB 3.1 drive formatted as EXFAT. i did not check the options for patch installer requirements or LEGACY BIOS boot sector within the app. i used a legit windows 11 ISO from microsoft website. CSM is disabled at the moment.

i replaced the second RAM stick and it gets to BOOT with a red light still. but DRAM/CPU/VGA all cycled off

Could this really be as simple as I have a bad boot media?

I tried enabling CSM and now all orange lights are off but it just says reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in slected boot device and press a key

 

[athrowaway2242]

I am trying remaking the boot media with legacy mode and FAT 32. IF that fails, theres an older method using terminal to create a bootable ISO that has worked for me in the past I will try. unfortunately i dont have a windows computer handy to create a bootable USB

i suppose its a relief though that its posting and doesnt seem to be hardware related at this point?

 

[athrowaway2242]

Well it seems it does not like exfat. FAT32 installer is running fine. whew!

 

[igor_kavinski]

Yeah, using a Mac was the problem

Normal bootable flash drive created using Rufus doesn't have this issue. And it only allows you to format the USB with FAT32 or NTFS.

 

[Tech Junky]

Rufus

I switched to Ventoy as you can drop ISO files into the folder instead of wasting 5-10m decompressing the image to the drive.

 

[igor_kavinski]

I switched to Ventoy as you can drop ISO files into the folder instead of wasting 5-10m decompressing the image to the drive.

I always keep meaning to dedicate a USB drive to such a purpose but then it gets filled up with movies.

Happens EVERY single time!

 

[athrowaway2242]

Well i have been up all night trying to make this work. depending on the method of generating a bootable USB drive one of two things happens

1- error saying missing media drivers

2- seems to work and gets hung somewhere in the copying install files range of 80-90% complete. what shit.

trying one more method manually splitting the installer wim file with a homebrew script in terminal and if this fails i give up for today

just to make sure i wasnt going crazy i did verify the sha256 of the installer iso against the microsoft one and i am not working with a corrupt iso.

 

[athrowaway2242]

Okay well now i have the orange BOOT light, but i dont see the bios or anything displayed on my screen anymore.

 

[igor_kavinski]

Install Windows on ARM 11 inside Parallels on your Mac and then run Rufus to format the USB <<< I know it seems like a real waste of time.

This could help: https://www.easeus.com/computer-instruction/create-windows10-bootable-usb-on-mac.html

 

[athrowaway2242]

my new problem is nothing displays on my screen at all now. i tried resetting CMOS. now i just have black screen and no display out at all. cant even get to the part of booting to try to install windows anymore. i havent done anything except reboot. i dont understand why all the sudden i lost screen and bios

 

[athrowaway2242]

All lights are on, all fans are spinning, the only orange light is the 'boot' light.

i tried reseating the graphics card. changed displayport ports. reset CMOS. I cannot get the BIOS even to display anymore.

 

[athrowaway2242]

if i do HDMI from the motherboard to the monitor directly i get display. the GPU doesnt seem to be displaying out...despite it being brand new and all the fans and LCD screen and lights seem to be working

 

[athrowaway2242]

no VGA light, or any other signals that something is amiss. Can a brand new card really just shit the bed like that and stop working? is theres something else to try to get the GPU to be displaying out again?

on the bright side my bootable windows installer works and i can install windows with HDMI from the motherboard. downside is windows 11 needs a network connection and i will need to manually install the drivers from the installer via USB to get a network connection working.

 

[athrowaway2242]

i reseated the riser cables, it worked briefly, then it didnt when i remounted it. then i tried plugging the card directly into the motherboard. it still posts. the card LCD screen shows stuff, the lights and fans are on, and the screen stays blank. displayport or HDMI neither work. no errors, the board POSTS and passes all the light checks.

 

[athrowaway2242]

i reseated the riser cables, it worked briefly, then it didnt when i remounted it. then i tried plugging the card directly into the motherboard. it still posts. the card LCD screen shows stuff, the lights and fans are on, and the screen stays blank. displayport or HDMI neither work. no errors, the board POSTS and passes all the light checks.

and now i reset CMOS again and it seems to be working...i cannot explain this


edit - nope after a reboot it no longer works. what the heck

after redoing CMOS it seems to work again.

resetting CMOS reliably fixes it temporarily. it seems to be upset with the EXPO profiles maybe?. they worked before i flashed the BIOS i think. so something is funky here. or maybe its because of a half installed windows? maybe i need to just power through the installation and get the drivers/firmwares updated etc?

 

[In2Photos]

Okay, first things first. Don't change any bios settings until after Windows is installed and the system is running and stable. Always run at default settings.

What may be happening is your motherboard is defaulting to the built-in GPU rather than the dedicated GPU.

 

[In2Photos]

Whenever I build a new system I always start with the basics and test everything outside of the case. So no riser cables no fans no extra USB devices. Just motherboard CPU RAM and GPU. I will even temporarily install a cheap CPU cooler just to get through basic testing.

 

[athrowaway2242]

gotcha, right now i have it mostly stripped open, gpu directly in motherboard, ona bios CMOS reset, and proceeding through a windows installation using the HDMI out from the motherboard

 

[athrowaway2242]

What may be happening is your motherboard is defaulting to the built-in GPU rather than the dedicated GPU.

is this a setting or something fixable in the BIOS or with drivers/firmware? i noticed this behavior got worse after attempting the windows installation

 

[athrowaway2242]

as an aside - windows is successfully installed and im proceeding with driver installations

 

[In2Photos]

Get Windows installed and then get the NVidia drivers installed and we'll go from there.