X399 / 1950x Boot issues
I picked up a cheap ‘faulty’ workstation on FB Marketplace with ‘no boot’ issues.
It’s an ASRock X399 Taichi with an AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X and 4x8GB 2400MHz Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4.
I’ve been tinkering with it with mixed results.
On the first boot after buying, the debug code kept reverting back to 00 and power cycling. I swapped around the RAM, PSU, and reset the CMOS, which changed the behavior slightly, it still looped on 00, but no longer shut down between cycles.
I then flashed the BIOS, checked the error codes with no RAM installed, and inspected the socket for bent pins. With no RAM installed, it produced a different code, so that seemed somewhat promising.
After some more tinkering, including physically holding down an air cooler onto the CPU, I finally managed to get into the BIOS. Everything looked normal there, and I was even able to restart successfully with all four DIMMs installed.
I then fitted a spare AIO and managed to get it back into the same BIOS-booting state by manually tweaking the Torx screws.
The next issue appeared when trying to boot Windows. I tested both a Windows installer USB and an SSD with Windows already installed. Both devices were recognised, but as soon as the Windows splash screen appeared, the system instantly reset and the boot loop returned. After each reset, it would eventually come back to the BIOS.
At that point, I figured it must be a mounting pressure issue and that I needed the correct torque setting. I got my torque wrench, set it to 1.4Nm, tightened everything properly… and now I’m back where I started: stuck in a constant 00 boot loop and unable to even reach the BIOS again.
I’ve repeated all of the above since then, but no luck.
Sorry for the essay, but does anyone have any ideas? I’ve been building PCs for about 20 years and have built 60–70 gaming PCs, workstations, and GPU render farms but this is my first time dealing with Threadripper and I’m running out of ideas without a spare board / cpu.