My Personal Rig already DIED! 

I am a car mechanic and that mechanic reference is painfully relatable. I have literally taken 30 minute test drives with the customer without them being able to recreate the fault, only for them to call me later telling me it happened again on their way home..

This video is precisely why JayTwoCents is my favorite tech person to watch. Troubleshooting, useful info, the weirdness of odd computer behavior, the successes, the failures, the humor, and we all get to go along for the ride.

This is what problem solving looks like when you have a passion! Its still annoying, but you learn something new and can apply the full force of your knowledge to fix it! Nothing more satisfying than working through something tedious and complicated and finally figuring out the problem

It's nice to know that all my past PC issues weren't because I had mediocre gear, it apparently happens with the best thing you can possibly get too.

Jay. This might sound weird but seeing your rig break and you making a video about it makes me feel better about myself. My rig died today and I found out it's because of bad RAM. Not because of "Schadenfreude" (finding joy in others mishaps) but because I see that it happened to someone who has far more experience than me. I guess it's about sharing grief and annoyance. It might not help my actual problem but on a psychological basis it motivates me and gives me reassurance. Thanks for posting this video!

I really feel like troubleshooting PCs needs to be a weekly video for you, Jay. You are very good at presenting problems, explaining your testing train of thought, and presenting solutions. I hope you keep doing this with viewers PCs.

Hey Jay , glad you sorted out considering its your personal rig , btw coming from a Semiconductor workplace I can assure you that motherboards will always go bad in terms of failure much more than a cpu can. We test processors and bin them several times , whilst motherboards with all their complexity and tons of minor components will go hay wire with the least culprits available. Peace out amigo just enjoy your build ;)

Great video. I like how we get to watch your thought process and troubleshooting steps. This is great for new builders who run into these types of odd problems!

Jay in previous video: "Nick bought me too much distilled water" Nick knew all along 😂

Half way through this video i just remembered how much work it is for him to take this rig apart.

It's so nice to see how he is making these videos with so much passion and interesting, he knows exactly how to entertain people, and you also can learn a lot from him

Rule of thumb is that if 'everything' seems to fail is usually the motherboard or the psu(causing the motherboard to go nuts). Its not always, but when the fail is on some other component the culprit is usually found right away as you swap a pair of them.

It's good to see that sometimes even the experts hit a wall when troubleshooting.

Man if I had professors in school like you to explain stuff like this, there could have been a high chance for me to actually do something with my life :D I'm sitting here taking notes and listening intently, so thank you for your videos and tutorials and everything else you share with us, which is for most people here for free ^_^ This is the right purpose of the internet!

Trying to troubleshoot a fully water cooled system for hardware faults is the stuff of nightmares, especially when you need your PC for work. I've just taken my GPU out of the loop and although it doesn't look as nice, I'm happy knowing how easy it is to swap it out whenever I want without draining my (hard line) loop first.

Learned a lot from this troubleshooting session. Glad you figured out the problematic motherboard.

It’s stuff like this happening that gives me some amount of apprehension to building up a high-end system with expensive parts. While it is great to see Jay troubleshoot, how many of us have a separate test bench to test swapping various combinations of RAM, CPU and motherboards. And the video a day or so ago that stumped Jay as to what’s wrong is another example of requiring debug skills that require an expensive inventory of spare parts. I’m glad to have videos like this to watch, especially when it looks like Jay figured out the problem. Hope to hear back that the long burn-in uncovered nothing new and that Jay has moved the system back home.

These videos are very cathartic. Beating my head against a wall trying to get systems to work recently, so nice seeing it really does happen to everyone.

Thank you for walking us through your process of fixing the issue. Have to ask you: Have you made a video of your personal rig? 🙂

This is a really good video. Unique failures are gold to people whove never seen them before.

I am so selfishly happy you are experiencing the same problems I run into

My take on this is that it's one of the things my old man told me "Never be an early adopter" of new tech because it will have bugs and other issues that the manufacturer is still trying to get to grips with, and it will come back to bite you in the ass if you want the latest and greatest from the word go. So I usually wait 6 to 12 months to allow at least some of the issues that could crop up to be ironed out first. That said, what a bummer of a thing to happen, but it's the gamble either paying off or not working out. Glad it's on its way to being fixed, just looking at it Jay as a system it looks fantastic though! Well done with the troubleshooting.

The way you're telling the story on 18:49 reminded me of my friends when we're telling each other ghost stories... Gosh, the horror.

Had a similar issue with my 3 week old build. MSI mobo was faulty, but I went ahead and upgraded my ram and CPU along with it and returned the others. Irony is I found this video now. I feel a lot better about how I went about that, because our TS process was almost exactly the same AND I feel better about my big box air cooler. Sorry I had to. 🙏 Love your channel.

Jay please never stop with these kind of videos. Always a insta-click.

I love watching Jay, I get to escape my difficult life for a bit and laugh along and learn.

Thanks Jayson for this vid! I actually left a comment on the 12th gen review video you made around a year ago commenting on DDR5 issues. BIG TIP: DOUBLE CHECK YOUR MOBO'S COMPATIBLE RAM! There is some kind of list of ram compatibility validation (google it) but don't get random kits, ddr4 was ultra compatible where you really didnt need to do anything besides turn on xmp. DDR5 needs you to adjust your shizite or turn off xmp entirely. Currently running No XMP for several days to test compatibility, next i'll do xmp at stock and try loosening timings from 36 to 40 on the first 3 basic timings. To be honest, my DDR5 issues are really teaching me a lot about how memory interacts in the system and all the different settings, timings and voltages that go into it

15:30 I was wondering about the A2 slot test. I would have followed up by checking B1 and B2. I would expect B1 might work, but if A2 only is rejected by bios B2 would be as well.

Examine the DIMM slots on the motherboard closely for any damage. This will involve removing the motherboard, and may require examination under a microscope. Back in the Cretaceous, or rather the early 2000s, I was trying to fix a first gen PCI PowerMac that behaved and crashed in a vaguely similar manner to the computer in the video. It turned out the plastic part of a DIMM slot had broken in half down the length of the DIMM. With the DIMM installed the slot almost appeared normal at first glance. However, the slot was slightly wider than it should have been. After removing the DIMM, the plastic part of the DIMM slot was clearly broken down the middle and the green PCB underneath the slot was visible. The plastic of the slot separated down the middle and each side had slid apart. I think someone used far too much force when installing a DIMM and broke the slot. Replacing the motherboard solved the issue. DIMM slots prior to DDR5 use through hole contacts for the pins. However, both DDR5 memory and the early PowerMacs use surface mount contacts for the pins of their DIMM slots. DDR5 DIMM slots may be susceptible to a similar type of damage as found on that PowerMac.

The Ram change does look better. Thank for the troubleshoot video it is enjoyable and the fact that it can help someone out in the same situation is a plus.

Jay, thank you for your high quality, educational but also entertaining video ! Keep it up !

these videos are helpful. i've been chasing my tail with a system randomly hard freezing & I think I've got it solved (as I did the last five times until it froze again) and it's just interesting to see someone more knowledgeable have at it.

Best thing ever the reaction to the temps of the air tower non installed cpu cooler. Yes Jay you can make whatever makes you happy . you also show us that DIY is not always a bad thing . love the energy of those videos

Its well worth having another look at the motherboard cpu pins with a magnifying glass. Had a friends board which was doing the same thing and we both looked at the pins and could not see anything wrong. Checked it with a magnifying glass and there was one pin which was slightly out of line but to be honest thought it was ok. The difference between the pins was so small I thought it probably was not the fault. Realigned it and gave it another go. All working ok, no errors, tested for hours.

Awesome video! Thanks for showing us the whole process!!

I am having this exact same issue happen right now to my 3 year old system (Rog crosshair VIII hero wifi motherboard). I am about to go down the rabbit hole of trouble shooting this weekend...so I am glad i found your video. About to do exactly what you did (except buying the extra parts if I can avoid it!)

Jay: "I always say if it ain't broke don't fix it" Also Jay: Makes changes to working system until it stops working.

Wow. I watched your previous video on the build the other day on the completion. You were up practically all night and early that morning, then very proud as you should be. What a clean machine! I'm finishing up a build now and I started having nightmares of what I'll do if I jack it up or, worse yet, have a component failure as you did. But you showed us how to work through it and troubleshoot the problem. Awesome tenacity and a very impressive recovery. You're a pure pro at it. That's why you rightly have so many fans. Thanks a bunch Jay! 👍👍

The custom waterloop looks so clean. Great troubleshooting video. ❤

I put soft tubing on my system with drain valves at every G 1/4 port. Yes, it’s a very expensive way to run a loop but you get the huge benefit of not having to drain your entire loop if you ever have a component failure! As long as you don’t mind the added cost and aesthetic the functionality gain is immense!

this is my worst PC nightmare finally getting the dream build spending days on it and then I have no idea what's wrong with it.. If this happened to me I'd probably cry lol

Nice diagnosing. The passion you have about getting the computer perfectly tuned and benchmarked cracks me up. I’m just happy everyday mine keeps turning back on lol.

I feel you my PC started having freezes and blue screens a few weeks ago. Ruled out everything but the motherboard and the CPU. I didn't have a spare CPU so gambled on it being the motherboard. Sent it in for Gigabyte to test three weeks ago. They claim no issue so now I have to send the CPU in because everything else is ruled out. The motherboard comes back tomorrow.

I had issues with my new system too, I got bluescreens after like 30 mins to an hour of use and it happened with both expo on and off and that weird blue and red screen that you experienced which I also thought was a GPU issue, but I hoped not. Then I did memtest and memory diagnostics, and both of them failed over and over again. I looked through the QVL list and the ram was not compatible with the motherboard and after swapping them out with a kit that was on the QVL it works without an issue and I feel so happy.

NGL, the symptoms you mentioned at the start of the video immediately made me think of a bad CPU mount. Especially if you think back to how weird Threadripper is about having proper tension to make good contact with the pins on the motherboard. Now that you have your system up and running again, I'm kinda curious if you could put the other board on a bench, and check the tension of the retention bracket, and see if maybe something was off spec, and not allowing the pins to make proper contact with your processor?

The hit marker when Jay bashed his knee was perfect lol.

These symptoms seem very similar to something from an old build of mine. Remember even handing it in to a "professionel" workshop, only for them to give up after convincing me to swap both CPU and RAM... Ended up getting it to work by increasing voltage on the memory controller.

I had a similar issue with my first PC made from old parts, one of the ram slots my X58 mb was faulty and the ram on that slot was wildly unstable, not the easiest problem to solve with your first PC but it was valuable information.

these videos are helpful just from a thought-process perspective. i'm about to rebuild with a bunch of used parts and i'm sure i'm running head first into a bunch of problems, but videos like this make me feel more confident in my abilities to think it through step by step.

Right off the bat, I thought it was the MB. Whenever you get a quirky MB, it's such a pain to troubleshoot. I'm glad you figured it out. Hopefully you have nothing but clear sailing from here onward...

Reminds me of the headaches from when I used to build computers. The relief when you figure out the point of failure.

Watercooling is also useful for relocating the heat to a different room, that's what I use it for.

I got Into the IT field and watching your videos has helped me leaps and bounds

Super video, very much appreciate the time to show us troubleshooting and diagnostics performed. Love the channel

Hey jay! I actually had the same issues as this video last night. I was in bios hell. Glad I already watched this and had a good Aussie friend help me! Ended up going to a micro center to replace my mobo and ram ended up working immediately.

I was getting random blue screens, for various errors at random times (but never at boot), over several months. After eliminating all the other possible causes I ran memtest86 and it reported a single bit in ONE of the many tests it runs. But the BSODs were fairly infrequent so I took my time in getting more memory sticks. Then I had to do a repair install of Win11 due to a servicing stack issue. Et voila! No more BSODs for the last 5 months. My fingers are crossed. So weird. Thanks for the video.

Hey Jay! I had very similar problem back in 2019 with a 2700x and asus rog x470 f gaming board. After a long testing I discovered that the A1 ram slot is faulty. Unfortunately I was lazy at the time to RMA so I stuck with only using B1 B2 ever since. Keep up the good content!

Those fury ram sticks are perfect match to the rest of build! Much much synergy vs the dominator squares. Lovely build hope it goes well 😁

The first time you said Memory Controller problem, the first hunch that came to my mind is the motherboard might be defective. Watching thru till the end, am glad that it proved my first hunch was right. From where I'm from, it is very expensive to be doing components swap with no return policy. Reason why we need to be very good at troubleshooting.

Spent a few days recently dealing with a similar issue. Diagnosing the motherboard took longer than replacing it, lol. Happens to the best of us!

I had nothing but headaches with my 7950x. Waited months for them to "sort it out". There is definitely something wrong with the 670 chipset. I finally ditched the platform and went with Intel 13 series instead.

I think Greg Salazar had a bunch of this type of issue in his "fix or flop" series. Everytime it was the cpu that would not work with 2 ram sticks.

Man this is so frustrating. As someone suggested in the last video, this almost makes me glad to be too poor to afford to play with the latest and greatest right at launch, lol. Hopefully we don't need a second diagnostic video! 🙏🙏

i had VERY similar issues..... after months of trial and error and windows re-installations, memory swaps and CMOS clearing... it turned out.... the SSD my OS was installed to was crapping out. replaced it with an M.2 2tb drive and .......FIXED IT. no more weird random bluescreens. artifacting crashes.

Jay, sometimes i get memory channel errors if i tighten down the cpu mounting bracket too much because even if you cant see it with the naked eye it can flex the motherboard slightly enough to throw off the memory slot contacts. try and loosen your cpu mounting bracket or waterblock mounting screws and see if that gets all your memory slots to work. Hope this helps.

I'm happy that Jay is happy with his water loop. I've done it a few times, but never again.

OMG...Jay. I have the same MB for my build. Thankfully, I get the warranty from Microcenter. I'm hoping to have all the parts from my build by next month. I was going with a Corsair 7000X case, but after getting screwed over by Amazon (selling me a case listed as NEW that had actually been returned twice and stripped for parts), I decided I'm going to get the Corsair 7000D case from Bestbuy since Microcenter doesn't carry it anymore. Anyway, keep these videos coming!

Why am I not suprised. Jay is so unlucky sometimes

I don't use any of these parts, except an AMD, memory and a motherboard, but I do like your recent troubleshooting vids. It's real life, its what everyone has to do. I like these types of vids, Keep having problems

My last ASUS mobo was the X99 Deluxe, I have been so happy with my MSI & then EVGA X570 DARK board (emoji trouble) I am glad you fixed it

Jay, I actually had this exact same issue over the weekend. Thought it was the board (X670 AsRock Lightning), so I exchanged it for an AsRock X670 Taichi. Almost the exact same issues you describe and I was only able to boot the system with 1 stick of RAM in my secondary slot. Currently I pulled the 7900x3D out of my system and put in a 7600x. It was then also having issues with the memory I had (corsair vengeance 6000 mhz expo). So I ended up switching in a spare kit of (corsair dominator 5600 xmp ddr5 I had sitting around). All 4 sticks work just fine, xmp profile works just fine, memory boot is just fine. Kind of wild how underprepared the mobo bios' are for this product at launch. Almost non-functioning.

Thanks Jay, learnt a valuable lesson. Don’t go bleeding edge!!! lol Seriously though, it’s issues like these that really puts off new pc gamers. So the more it’s talked about the better. Thanks for sharing 👍🏻

Have to say that your "BOX" cooler is absolutely perfect! I love it!

Great video! I had similar issues and found out that i had ever so slightly bent a few cpu pins and of course related to memory control.

Oh man, this reminds me of having to troubleshoot dma and irq settings with pc cards last century with cards that were barely meeting standards ( but relative got them cheap). Oh mannn. Good to see you got there in the end.

The swap for Fury was a perfect decision. Thanks again, Jay! Great video!

I got a 7900x3D and ended up returning it for a 13900K instead. I was getting annoyed by the memory training taking so long during a restart as well as having stuttering issues in VR. While the stuttering may have been fixable, but I didn't want to miss my return window at Microcenter so just decided to go with Intel instead. No stuttering issues and it doesn't take anywhere near as long to post.

9:45 - Jay smashing knee into table - Ifixit won't fix that!

Thanks for showing your frustration. We usually get the nice edited everything works perfect videos. I think I'll just stick with my old reliable DDR4 for another year.

In my years of experience building and running PC's, more often than not, an issue preventing booting usually ends up being the motherboard. This is because the motherboard is the most time consuming part to replace and the most difficult one to isolate as the root cause. The motherboard is also far more complex than a memory stick and more susceptible to damage than a CPU. It can also be hard to demonstrate that the board has failed when returning it for a replacement, so take lots of photos to show the people at the store.

being that I am a brand new builder, I'm glad that I did not have issues like this. The only thing I did wrong was mount my CPU cooler fans backwards on first start up. My system is currently running flawlessly. Its crazy that just watching RU-vid and doing a little research that I could build a PC in 3 hours and have it work great!

When I first started the video I guessed it was either a memory or motherboard issue. Memory-related issues actually happen relatively frequently. In fact, when I set up my first PC in middle school, a similar issue happens to me. After assembling the brand new computer, it won't boot and after a lot of trial and error, I noticed it works when I install memory only on one of the channels. So I just installed memory sticks on one channel and never bother with it. A couple of years later, I decided to upgrade the CPU cooler to a larger one and I have to install the memory on the other channel. Since I've gained more experience over the years, I quickly decide it's a motherboard failure and luckily, the board is still within the warranty period. I have the board shipped back and they got that fixed for free.

I had the exact same issue with memory blue screens and artifacts. Turned out ONE of my sticks was seated just well enough to register, but JUST put of place enough to cause occasional crashes while gaming.

I really take for granted that everything will work once I flip the switch after a new build. If something like this happened to me, I'd be screwed!

I'd never have a watercooling rig because of how much a pain in the ass maintenance looks like it can be, but my god. That is one sexy ass computer. Thanks for the content as always!

I remember having similar with my friend pc. Only one channel was working (regardless of was it A or B) but not both. System booted, but showed only half of the memory. The problem was in a small piece of paper (less then a millimetre) which sticked to one of the connectors on the cpu, preventing proper link

I had somewhat similar booting issues a few years ago, where it occasionally wouldn't boot at all, then when I removed 1 ram stick it would boot, but if I moved that stick to another slot it wouldn't, it would also occasionally(and seemingly randomly) blue screen or freeze up, it kept giving different error codes and so on. That issue had to do with memory compatibility, because even after a lot of testing I didn't find any singular issues, but after several bios updates all problems simply went away. PC has been been perfectly stable ever since with exactly the same hardware. Your issues seem to be a bit worse though. So good luck with that :P.

Hey pc building is sweet but definitely a struggle sometimes. But once you get through it, it's all the sweeter when you finally get it all to work

I had a similar issue Jay, but I believe it is the BIOS, not the motherboard in my case. I have a 7700X and ASUS B650E-F, when they released the latest BIOS to support X3D chips I updated as there is often other fixes/updates/etc that come with it, that leads to improvements regardless. Seeing as how AM5 is brand new bleeding edge, there is often improvements with each BIOS update and is good to update to them instead of the old adage of leaving it alone if nothing is broken. Previous BIOS everything fine working as intended. After new BIOS My RAM would randomly want to retrain or outright fail to post like you had. I had to clear CMOS but issues still happened. Then I thought maybe its some of the custom settings I like to use vs default auto. Of those I had these 3 changed as per Buildzoids recommendations: Power Down Enable [Disable] Memory Context Restore [Enabled] UCLK DIV1 MODE set to be 1:1 and not divide by 2. I set those back to Auto and also noticed that the SOC voltage was not being set where it used to, so I manually selected 1.25v as what it was before, and now everything is fine again no issue as previous BIOS. Makes me wonder if some of those settings have been affected by the latest BIOS and something isn't happy when using them. I also wanted to test ASUS's optimizations with RAM timings to see if there was anything different with this latest BIOS. Something to note is which EXPO profile you use. EXPO 1 is ASUS optimizations, EXPO 2 is just your kits specified timings then the rest auto. Both when I first setup the system, and now with the latest BIOS, using EXPO 1 has been nothing but trouble for me, crashes, failures to post. Windows issues or system errors regarding Ram. Wiping CMOS and always making sure to EXPO 2, no problems! Makes of wonder did your motherboard truly die on you or is it a BIOS problem that needs fixing from AMD and/or ASUS?

Exactly same happened with me just after when I updated my bios. I have ryzen 5 5600x with Msi b550 motherboard and 3600mhz ripjaws ram I just reinstalled older version of bios and it fixed it.

I got a similar error last year. At that time I was using MSI B570 tomahawk with 5900x. The setup had been running fine for 10 months. However starting from last June, I started to have blue screens at an increasing frequency. I happened to have 2 computers at home so I swapped parts between them. Eventually I found whenever a memory bar sat in the third slot, it wouldn't boot at all. So I returned the motherboard for a replacement. Because I was working from home using my computer, I wasn't able to wait for the replacement to come back, but purchased an Asus Strix-X570 immediately. It worked all fine with the new motherboard.

I actually had the exact same issue before. It was with a 3600X and a B450 Board. It worked completely fine with one stick of RAM and as soon as you add another Stick it would fail. In my case the Motherboard was defective. Worked completely fine with a new board (same model, RMA'd).

Told you to test the system with Memtest86+ before building it! I also had to learn the hard way around 2008. Built a few hundred systems since then and always let Memtest86+ do a few passes on a test bench. Seeing yours failed at Test #8 was very familiar ;) Was pretty clear it's the motherboard. I had like 1 bad CPU the last 30 years but dozens of bad boards...

I used to have the same C5 problem with a Threadripper 3960X on a Zenith II Extreme, can't boot and C5 or "memory test" error on the oled screen in the MB, in the end the problem was the "seating" of the CPU in the socket, not perfect, or maybe the fullcover waterblock was overtight. I solved that problem removing the waterblock and re-seating the CPU.

Alot of great trouble shooting in this video. I personally have always had issues with Asus motherboards and ram slots to the point i no longer use them, I have had so many issues with their boards that I probably would have swapped the board first thing and not even questioned cpu or ram. I only use Asrock boards and have had no failures yet.

Sounds like to me that the 2nd Ram Slot in Channel A is bad or something because you were able to reproduce the issue with ease. However I am glad that you got your Personal rig up and running again after that weirdness.

This was refreshing to see that I wasn’t the only one that runs into issues with a new build! Also, I really wish I would have watched his last video on this build before I attempted to finish mine, then it would have reminded me to leak test BEFORE I put the fluid in… and then maybe I would have noticed ahead of time that my GPU water block was missing an O ring (similar to what happened to him except with his pump) a little coolant leaking everywhere, but no worries eventually got it sealed and working!

I sent my tuf x670e back in for rma two days ago. Same issue with the addition of the mobo finally deciding to not power on at all.

Thank you for saving me from going nuts. I didn't know what to blame for all my BSOD's and errors that started appearing as soon as I turned on the EXPO (I have the EXPO RAM modules). I am returning the freshly purchased ASUS ROG Strix and switching to Gigabyte.

CPU Mounting pressure is the problem I bet. I would be interested to see if the "faulty" motherboard worked on the test bench.