The graphics card gives a good light show and the built in fans on the bottom spin, so I don't think it's a power issue. And it is fully seated, there is a retention clip on the board and it used two of the slots on the back panel so I put two screws in it. I'll get some more detailed shots tonight though. Very possible I missed something.
It does appear that everything has power though, the case has lights, the graphics card has lights, and even the board has an illuminated "Gaming Plus" going on.
aircooled said:
barefootskater (Shaun) said:
...I haven't heard any beeping so I'm not sure why...
Others can probably provide more info on this, but some (most?) MB don't have a speaker on them (which is silly considering). With one of my computers, I had to find an old style speaker from an old motherboard to plug into one of those little jumper pin things. If you don't have an old speaker, I am not sure what your options. I am pretty sure there is no way the motherboard sound will come out of the normal sound ports (audio jack).
I'm guessing you're supposed to use the "EZ Debug LED" to figure it out.
Where'd you guys see the model of the mobo to look up the manual?
MSI B450 Gaming plus max mb
Amd 5 ryzen 3600x super cpu
Have you tried different ports (if it has them) on the video card? Can you try and swap the old video card in there.
I guess it's possible you got a bad video card?
It's a full on light show. Anyway, I installed the graphics card from her old machine and still nothing.
What I'm assuming is the diagnostic display has four LEDs. On initial startup the light labeled "cpu" flashes twice then the one labeled "vga" stays lit. Nothing in the manual. Which I just noticed is labeled "User guide" and is pretty useless. It has assembly instructions in four languages though.
Also just went through the boxes everything came in to see if I missed anything. Yup. A disc. This disk:
Seems important. This machine has no optic drive. Also scanned through the destructions for the graphics card. Specifically this passage:
As I suspected, it requires an os. As of this moment there is no os. And I'm not sure how to install the windows license she just bought without a monitor. And I can't plug in a monitor without a graphics card. Round and round we go.
Solutions? You folks are full of solutions.
Something!
I removed the little battery for 5 minutes and removed everything, and reinstalled all of it with the old graphics card and now it's working. But for some reason I don't have the lights in the case. Hmmm
I don't know what I did differently this time, but this little guy seems to have helped:
Cool.
The drivers on the CD should certainly be online. For the OS, you will need to put it on a USB drive then boot off that to install. A quick search shows me where you can download the Win 10 ISO that can be put on an USB drive (5 gig min):
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10ISO
How to put it on a USB drive:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/install-windows-from-a-usb-flash-drive
BTW - the OS is going to be installed on the hard drive. The key you have will be used to activate the OS you download above as part of the installation process. The only thing on the motherboard that runs when the computer starts is the BIOS which is in the pic above.
What you did was to clear the CMOS, a small bit of memory that contains all of the motherboard's settings and instructions for bootup. This is a common troubleshooting move that I think we didn't mention up-thread, so good find!
You won't need the graphics card driver CD, likely at all. Windows has built-in drivers that will drive the display fine until you get updated drivers off the internet. This is what I would do next:
- Now that you've verified that everything else works since it boots to BIOS, put the new graphics card back in and see if you get to the same place.
- If you do, proceed with aircooled's instructions to install Windows. If not, your culprit is the new graphics card, warranty it for a new one
- Once windows is installed, get it on the Internet and download GeForce Experience from nVidia, this will update your graphics card drivers and keep them up to date on an ongoing basis for you.
- Go to MSI's website and make sure you're up to date on all of the BIOS, etc. for the motherboard. Likely there's software there as well that will allow you to control the lights on your motherboard.
- There's a setting in your BIOS called DOCP - turn it on. You'll find this setting in the memory menu. This is what you'll need to do in order for the memory to run at its full advertised speed.
In reply to szeis4cookie (Forum Supporter) :
The instructions for the graphics card say it requires windows. The plan was to install windows and download the drivers before installing the bigger better faster louder card. Is that not the way to go?
Also she just learned that the machine doesn't have built in WiFi. So, is some sort of internal chip/board/hardware preferred over one of the usb WiFi dongles? The computer will live one floor above the router.
barefootskater (Shaun) said:
In reply to szeis4cookie (Forum Supporter) :
The instructions for the graphics card say it requires windows. The plan was to install windows and download the drivers before installing the bigger better faster louder card. Is that not the way to go?
That's generally the way to go. Pretty much all graphics cards can be used in a pretty basic (VGA) mode by Windows, so you may be looking at 800x600 resolution until the graphics card drivers are installed, but they should work. There are some specialist cards that are more should than work, but with a consumer level card you should get a picture.
Also, I strongly recommend you get the drivers directly from nVidia rather than whatever MSI gave you on the CD. For starters, the drivers on the CD are very likely to be outdated, plus they tend to come with a bunch of extras for "enthusasts" that you very likely won't need anyway.
barefootskater (Shaun) said:
Also she just learned that the machine doesn't have built in WiFi. So, is some sort of internal chip/board/hardware preferred over one of the usb WiFi dongles? The computer will live one floor above the router.
What you really want is a cable between the router and the computer 
. Failing that, yes, I would recommend a PCI-E WiFi card over a USB dongle. A USB-C dongle should be acceptably fast, but you're still adding another translation layer between the computer and the network card.
In reply to BoxheadTim (Forum Supporter) :
Cable would be better, but the router has to stay on the main floor (tv, Roku, laptops, most cell activity) SIL is in the basement and we're on the top level. Her computer really needs to live upstairs where the children can't get to it at will. #familythings
Honestly, my thinking was just to rule out an issue with your new graphics card with the least amount of time invested - installing Windows and the driver first is also a valid path.
A follow up. She was able to get the os installed and download the graphics driver. Everything is working as it should. She's already impressed by the speed of the thing. Maybe not surprising given she now has twice the RAM and the processor is 10% faster than her last video editing machine. I'd like to get a 2nd hard drive, solid state flavored, but the budget ran dry for now.
Thanks for all the input!
Glad to hear you got it all sorted out! Sounds to me like maybe the new graphics card wasn't seated properly? Either way, congrats on persevering through it!
In reply to WonkoTheSane (FS) :
I was fairly sure the card was seated correctly, but she made me double check anyway. The new card doesn't have a vga port so I couldn't test it that way. I used her old card to run the thing enough to get windows installed and the driver for the new card downloaded. The card instructions even said it needed windows or Linux to operate so I think it just needed the driver. Idk. Computer stuff is a bit foreign to me.
Yeah, there's a lot to know... But for all cards, it'll still boot, so what it means is that it needs an operating system to actually use its 3d capabilities.
I've come up with a parallel to explain my computer ...interest?...
I find the machines themselves fascinating, but I'm only marginally computer literate and I've purposely chosen a computer free career path. So it's like if I was building competitive cars. I mostly understand the hardware and what may be needed for it all to work together for a given field, but I have no desire to be in the competition seat. If that makes sense.
At least that's how I've been thinking about it.
The car analogy is interesting because computers, historically, are the opposite of cars. They used to be MUCH harder to build / setup. They are way easier now.
So, I guess you should be happy you waited.
Upgrades. Yesterday we installed a 500gb ssd and a wireless card. The wireless card is easy enough, driver downloaded and it's working well.
How do we transfer all her stuff (OS, applications) to the ssd for to experience those sweet speed improvements?
Chances are the SSD manufacturer provides a downloadable utility for cloning drives, I know Samsung and Western Digital do. I think they're hardware agnostic, so you can use them on any drive.
Otherwise Acronis is good.
Showing my age here, but I've still got Norton Ghost on a Hiren's BootCD kicking around somewhere. I've easily cloned more drives with Ghost than anything, but I've successfully used Samsung's Windows utility a few times too.
In reply to barefootskater (Shaun) :
*If* you have all of the installers I would recommend reinstalling the system. Most OSs tend to acumulated cruft over years of usage that you'd end up cleaning out when reinstalling.
If that's not an option, you might be able to use Windows 10's built in imaging tool (wimage) to restore a snapshot to the new disk. More info:
https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-create-a-system-image-in-windows-10/
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-update/how-to-restore-windows-10-system-image-to-a-new/e666416c-c4d5-43be-a91e-c66431fe1cd1
You'll need some sort of external drive or NAS to temporarily store the image.
