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[Rowanas]

And now we play the diagnostic game, in which we switch out every component, find them all non-faulty, swear at things and start chucking shit around the room like a monkey.

[nenjin]

Didn't say I like doing it, it is literally the last thing I'll try before RMA'ing pretty much everything. I've almost always resolved my problem before I have to take that step, because the sheer pain in the ass it creates is motivation enough to go over the build meticulously like I've never done one before. Which usually manifests as taking everything off the board and putting it back again.

[Cthulufaic]

The only problem with those plans is that I don't have another PC to swap parts in and out from, the only other PC I have is so old that none of the new parts are compatible with it.  That's why I'm building a new PC, but I guess I should've had the magic precognition to know that I'll need to buy spares in case the parts don't work.

[Il Palazzo]

Take it a local PC shop and have the components tested, then.

Have you checked if RAM is in the second slot?

[taat]

Pretty sure he has

I've tried multiple different slots for the stick of RAM(including the one that the manual says to use)

[Cthulufaic]

Take it a local PC shop and have the components tested, then.

Have you checked if RAM is in the second slot?

The RAM is in the second slot, yes.  Also I'd rather not have to haul the entire computer to a PC shop just for them to tell me "it doesn't work" and charge 50 bucks.

Didn't say I like doing it, it is literally the last thing I'll try before RMA'ing pretty much everything. I've almost always resolved my problem before I have to take that step, because the sheer pain in the ass it creates is motivation enough to go over the build meticulously like I've never done one before. Which usually manifests as taking everything off the board and putting it back again.

After looking up what RMA means, I'm gonna save it as a last resort since I'm desperate to get this thing fixed in time for MHW (and college I guess)

[nenjin]

I feel your pain. There is no worse question a PC builder has to ask themselves than "Is my brand new mobo/PSU/CPU/Memory/Card dead on arrival?"

FWIW though after building.....3? PCs in the last 6 years, I've never had to return a part because it was bad. It's much more likely that it's an incompatibility somewhere.

How did you assemble the parts for it? Did you use a website like Logical Increments as a reference or just wing it?

[Cthulufaic]

I feel your pain. There is no worse question a PC builder has to ask themselves than "Is my brand new mobo/PSU/CPU/Memory/Card dead on arrival?"

FWIW though after building.....3? PCs in the last 6 years, I've never had to return a part because it was bad. It's much more likely that it's an incompatibility somewhere.

How did you assemble the parts for it? Did you use a website like Logical Increments as a reference or just wing it?

The motherboard, cpu, and ram all came in a bundle so I assume they all work together and are compatible.  Since the CPU was AMD, I thought that it'd be best if I got an AMD graphics card as well.  I checked on the motherboard's website, https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/B350-TOMAHAWK#support-vga and after checking with prices on newegg and about benchmarks on a benchmarking website, I decided on the Radeon rx 550 since the website listed it as compatible.

[Maximum Spin]

FWIW though after building.....3? PCs in the last 6 years, I've never had to return a part because it was bad. It's much more likely that it's an incompatibility somewhere.

I have, once. It was a CPU that was cutting out seconds into boot, much like this.

[Cthulufaic]

FWIW though after building.....3? PCs in the last 6 years, I've never had to return a part because it was bad. It's much more likely that it's an incompatibility somewhere.

I have, once. It was a CPU that was cutting out seconds into boot, much like this.

If the CPU is cutting out wouldn't the debug LED go on, and wouldn't the PC speaker beep?

[Maximum Spin]

FWIW though after building.....3? PCs in the last 6 years, I've never had to return a part because it was bad. It's much more likely that it's an incompatibility somewhere.

I have, once. It was a CPU that was cutting out seconds into boot, much like this.

If the CPU is cutting out wouldn't the debug LED go on, and wouldn't the PC speaker beep?

Not in my case!

[nenjin]

Depends on the mobo manufacturer, tbh.

You could try giving the components to friends to test in their rigs, or, borrow different compatible components to test in your system. I did that when I suspected I had a bricked PSU.

Let me post the last thing I said in my 'my PC wont boot and I'm losing my goddamn marbles" thread:

http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=168615.msg7645739#msg7645739

Came back today, and within the first 5 minutes figured out what was wrong. Sometimes stepping away from a problem is the best thing for you.

Turns out when I removed my video card the last time, the 20-pin mobo combination connector for the speaker, power, reset and HDD LED had become disconnected from the board...

So I'd say the absolute final lesson in troubleshooting is.....take a deep breath, take your time, and check. Fucking. Everything. The problem is almost always something small, easy and dumb.

[Cthulufaic]

Depends on the mobo manufacturer, tbh.

You could try giving the components to friends to test in their rigs, or, borrow different compatible components to test in your system. I did that when I suspected I had a bricked PSU.

Yeah, I think I'll try that, even though all these parts are listed as compatible on the motherboard's website AND they're all brand new out of the box so there's no reason why they WOULDN'T work.

Came back today, and within the first 5 minutes figured out what was wrong. Sometimes stepping away from a problem is the best thing for you.

Turns out when I removed my video card the last time, the 20-pin mobo combination connector for the speaker, power, reset and HDD LED had become disconnected from the board...

So I'd say the absolute final lesson in troubleshooting is.....take a deep breath, take your time, and check. Fucking. Everything. The problem is almost always something small, easy and dumb.

This is more or less the 7th day I've struggled with this piece of shit computer so it's not like I haven't had several days to check all 4 relevant parts.
If building a PC is this much of a hassle then this is 100% the last PC I'm ever building.

[Khan Boyzitbig]

It is only this hard if you hit a problem, generally you don't hit such a tricky one if you hit one at all. I hit a problem with my desktop whereby the instructions for mounting the CPU heat sink were not very clear so the damn thing fell off and was leaning on my GPU, fortunately it was pretty obvious what had happened by the graphical glitches in the BIOS screen and the CPU temps rocketing up to 75c. A year later the heat sink's power cable managed to get too close to a fan blade, no idea how that happened, could still run the PC for light tasks safely because it hit about 50c and stayed there (till I fixed the cable).

Sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you don't. Building your own PC is usually cheaper in both long and short term but you do run the risk of finding one of the defective components in a production run that slipped under the radar but that is what warranties and return policies are for.

[nenjin]

This is more or less the 7th day I've struggled with this piece of shit computer so it's not like I haven't had several days to check all 4 relevant parts.
If building a PC is this much of a hassle then this is 100% the last PC I'm ever building.

FWIW, again, it took me three weeks to figure out my build. Not because the problem was that deep, but because the stress and worry and hassle was clouding my thinking.