ROG Strix GA15DH Gaming Desktop PC GA15DH-EH562

[Cipherx]

Hello everyone,

I truly appreciate your help!

I have an ROG Strix GA15DH Gaming Desktop PC, which I primarily use for photo and video editing with the Adobe suite. Yesterday, I decided to reapply thermal paste to the CPU.
After doing so, I used compressed air to clean out some dust.
However, when I powered the system back on, everything seemed to work fine, except there was no video output, and there was no BIOS beep.

After hours of troubleshooting, here are my findings:

What works:

1. All fans, including the CPU fan, are operational.
2. RGB lighting is functioning.

What doesn't work:

1. No video output (neither from the dedicated GPU nor the GTX card).
2. None of the USB ports are working.
3. No motherboard error beep sound.

Troubleshooting steps: I tested the components in another working PC and the results were:

1. 32GB DDR4 RAM - Passed.
2. NVMe M.2 drive - Passed.
3. GTX Graphics card - Passed.
4. PSU - Passed (I've attached the results photo).

Additionally, I tried resetting the CMOS by removing the battery and also using the motherboard jumper that didn't help.

Processor	4.4 GHz ryzen_5_3600x
RAM	32 GB DDR4
Memory Speed	3200 MHz
Hard Drive	1TB SSD
Graphics Coprocessor	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650
Chipset Brand	AMD
Card Description	Dedicated
Graphics Card Ram Size	4 GB
Wireless Type	802.11ac
Number of USB 3.0 Ports	8
Brand	ASUS
Series	ROG Strix GA15DH
Item model number	GA15DH-EH562

[DeXXter]

It looks like a bios issue, have you tried to reprogram or read your bios ic?

[Cipherx]

It looks like a bios issue, have you tried to reprogram or read your bios ic?

Thank you for the replay,

Unfortunately I have no way to read or reprogram the bios. Also to be honest Ive never done it before. not sure if there is another way to do that.

[DeXXter]

Thank you for the replay,

Unfortunately I have no way to read or reprogram the bios. Also to be honest Ive never done it before. not sure if there is another way to do that.

I see, well the only thing you have left to do is to check around where you took a screw or disconnected something and try to check if there's a smd component missing, also you could try to turn your computer on while disconnecting fans for example, sometimes we bend stuff while plugging connectors... and try only one ram slot (this is not very likely but still).

[Cipherx]

I see, well the only thing you have left to do is to check around where you took a screw or disconnected something and try to check if there's a smd component missing, also you could try to turn your computer on while disconnecting fans for example, sometimes we bend stuff while plugging connectors... and try only one ram slot (this is not very likely but still).

I have checked for missing components. Everything looks good. I did try the one ram slot but that didn't help either.

I did order a bios ic programmer. hopefully I can manage to program the bios chip again. Its a Winbond 25Q128FWSQ.

Will report back. Thank you

[DeXXter]

Alright, try to check a video about programming one of those bios, the few times I've done that on asus desktop motherboard I had to use uefitool to extract the bios body (something like that) before flashing the ic.

[stj]

if it's a ryzen board, does it have diagnostic leds?

[Cipherx]

Alright, try to check a video about programming one of those bios, the few times I've done that on asus desktop motherboard I had to use uefitool to extract the bios body (something like that) before flashing the ic.

Thank you much appreciated, also I searched everywhere but cannot find the bios firmware to download. The chip is winbond 25Q128FWSQ.

[Cipherx]

if it's a ryzen board, does it have diagnostic leds?

Hi there, Its Asus GA15DH board m.2 SOCKET3 REV2.0. No sure if it does. but if it does there are no led lights on. Thank you

[dmill89]

Just because I haven't seen it mentioned yet. Have you tried re-seating (removing and reinstalling) the CPU? Pinned CPUs like AM4 can often be pulled loose from the socket when the CPU cooler is removed due the cooler being "stuck" to the CPU by the thermal paste (especially if the paste is old and dry) since there isn't much holding them into the socket (just the tension of the pins in the socket vs. LGA CPUs like intel from socket 775 on or AM5 which are held down by a clamp over the CPU). You may also want to verify none of the pins are bent, since if the CPU does get pulled loose and you don't notice it and then screw the cooler back down that can potentially bend the pins of the now misaligned CPU.

[DeXXter]

Thank you much appreciated, also I searched everywhere but cannot find the bios firmware to download. The chip is winbond 25Q128FWSQ.

I guess from asus site https://rog.asus.com/desktops/mid-to...helpdesk_bios/
Btw that uefitool thing that I said is for intel motherboards, I didn't see that yours is an amd, so my bad, I haven't programmed one of these, but I guess you can just download it and program it, in any case save a backup from the original, and do it twice, with different softwares, asprogrammer and neoprogrammer for example (I use these with the ch341).

[stj]

thats a 1.8v chip,
DO NOT try to use a ch341 on it
https://www.winbond.com/hq/product/c...rtNo=W25Q128FW

contact asus for a motherboard manual,
it may have a flash-recovery feature that will flash the bios from the usb port - a lot of ryzen stuff does.

[momaka]

It looks like a bios issue, have you tried to reprogram or read your bios ic?

If the PC worked fine before cleaning and not afterwards, then it is almost definitely NOT going to be a BIOS issue.

I suggest to O/P to double-check what he/she did.
As Dmill89 suggested, check if the CPU was possibly pulled out or partially puled out when changing the thermal compound. Better yet, re-seat it as suggested.

Also, what was the new thermal compound that was used? Anything conductive, like Arctic Silver 5 or anything from the category "liquid metal"?
On that note, even if non-conductive thermal compound was used, check to see if any of the old or new thermal paste got spilled/smudged anywhere else on the board, particularly on small SMD components (like resistors or caps) or under a BGA chip.

If all of the above checks out, see if there was some other "user error" made when re-assembling the system - i.e. did you remember to plug back in the 4-pin 12V CPU power connector?

Lastly, was the board even taken out of the case for the cleanup, or did you do it all while in the PC. If it's the former, how did you handle the board? It's generally not that easy to kill modern hardware with ESD as we were told back in the days... but still, some precaution should still be taken in regards about what surface the board is placed on and how it's handled. On that note, if you used compressed air to clean the fans, did you make sure to block the fans from spinning while cleaning them. I've seen a lot of people make this mistake and not block/stop the fans. In addition to possibly causing over-stress on the fan bearings (from the very high speed), the fan(s) can also genera back-EMF (potential/voltage) and send it back to whatever other components are connected to the fan connector. Thus, it's not impossible to kill fan controllers and monitoring ICs when doing this.

And one more thing...
Both the stock Intel push-pin cooler design and AMD's clamp design are quite terrible when it comes to preventing PCB stress/warping. If anything, these are notorious for doing exactly the opposite - depending on manufacturing tolerances, some of these will warp the motherboard like a nutshell right under the CPU socket. I've seen quite a few boards going bad as a result of this. And sometimes, the worst part is that the damage doesn't really show up until the CPU cooler is removed/refitted... eventually causing any cracked solder joints under the CPU socket to become trouble.
Now obviously this would be the worst case scenario for your board. But before assuming this is what happened here, do as stj suggested - check if the board has any diagnostic LEDs and see what they report if you try to power on the board with and without RAM... or see if the PC speaker (if the board has one connected) sounds off any alarms without RAM (it should). If you don't have diag. LEDs on your board, then you may have to resort to a POST card... and that's provided the board has a PCI slot for it. (On that note, are there any POST cards made for "modern" PCs that don't have a PCI bus?)

I think the above covers about everything.
Don't waste time trying to read/re-program the BIOS (not yet anyways), as that might introduce new problems on top of whatever issue you likely caused by cleaning/working on the computer already.

[Cipherx]

Just because I haven't seen it mentioned yet. Have you tried re-seating (removing and reinstalling) the CPU? Pinned CPUs like AM4 can often be pulled loose from the socket when the CPU cooler is removed due the cooler being "stuck" to the CPU by the thermal paste (especially if the paste is old and dry) since there isn't much holding them into the socket (just the tension of the pins in the socket vs. LGA CPUs like intel from socket 775 on or AM5 which are held down by a clamp over the CPU). You may also want to verify none of the pins are bent, since if the CPU does get pulled loose and you don't notice it and then screw the cooler back down that can potentially bend the pins of the now misaligned CPU.

stj

I checked the CPU and attached some pictures. All the CPU pins look fine.

As momaka mentioned, I also removed the RAM and powered the PC on — but the situation is still the same, with no BIOS error beeps. To make sure the CPU isn't dead, I removed the CPU fan and powered the system on. The CPU does heat up, so it seems to be functioning.

I'd also like to add that during the dust cleaning and CPU re-pasting, I didn't remove any other components from the PC. That said, I went back and rechecked all the connections, and everything appears to be properly in place.

I applied the correct amount of thermal paste to the CPU. There are no diagnostic LEDs lit that I can see. There is an orange light on the edges of the motherboard—after researching into it, I found out it's just the RGB lighting.

Thanks for the heads-up about the BIOS chip—it's 1.8V. I haven't used the programmer yet.

Honestly, I'm out of ideas at this point. It's driving me crazy, and I'm not sure what to try next.

I really appreciate your help.

[adamski1952]

Have you tried resetting the cmos? Sorry .I missed that one.It seems you have.

[Cipherx]

Have you tried resetting the cmos?

Yes, that was the first thing I did—removing the battery and/or using the CMOS jumpers.

[adamski1952]

Only other thing I can think of is to try a different power supply.The tester you used only shows voltage without load.There may still be a problem there.

[SMDFlea]

Yes, that was the first thing I did—removing the battery and/or using the CMOS jumpers.

Did you replace the thermal paste while the graphics card was in or out.

[Cipherx]

Did you replace the thermal paste while the graphics card was in or out.

It was in. I turned the power off completely (I completely turned off the power by unplugging the power cord and holding down the power button to discharge any remaining electricity.).

It was the AMD CPU that I applied the thermal paste to. I did not touch the graphic card.

[Cipherx]

Just a quick follow-up—

I wanted to thank everyone for their help.

After a lot of troubleshooting, I ended up replacing the motherboard. Once I did, everything went back to normal.

Out of curiosity, I took the old motherboard to a PC repair shop to see what had gone wrong. After a quick test, the technician told me that two electrolytic capacitors were bad—though he wasn't sure why. The repair would've been a bit costly, so I decided to just start fresh with a new board.

Either way, I'm back up and running now.

Thanks again, everyone—much appreciated!