Gather round children, and let me tell you the story of some fucking bullshit with regards to my new PC build in 3 acts.
Act 1
Our story begins last week. I had planned to do a computer upgrade on Sunday. It was going to be simple, just update my bios, slot in a new CPU (5700x3rd upgrading from a 3600x), and a new GPU (7800xt upgrading from a 5700xt). On Saturday before I've had a chance to touch any components my PC dies while just watching youtube. Blue screens and tells me that there's a hardware issue. I try rebooting a couple of times and continue getting the bluescreen error. I think it's the SSD, but I hope that it's the RAM. I leave for the day as I had previous plans, and decide to troubleshoot on Sunday.
On Sunday I start trouble shooting. First thing I do is try booting the computer, it still blue screens with the error message telling me it's a hardware issue. I have an extra kit of ram, so I decide to swap out the ram. The computer boots to blue screen again. I restart the computer, it doesn't boot, won't even go to bios.
I check the debug lights on the motherboard, it's telling me it's a CPU error. I try swapping the ram back to the original kit, it's still telling me there's a CPU error.
I decide that there's 3 things that could potentially be wrong. Either the CPU is dying, the CPU socket on the motherboard isn't providing power to the CPU correctly, or the PSU isn't supplying power to the motherboard correctly. I don't have another CPU to test with on hand, but I do have an extra power supply at my parent's house, so I go and grab it (they only live 25 minutes away). I come back with the power supply and try to run the CPU with its own power supply dedicated to it, still nothing.
At this point I can't tell if the issue is the CPU or the mobo, and in order to get the 5700x3D like I'd planned I need a working 3000 series CPU to update the bios on my mobo, which I don't have. I decide to take the easy way out and throw money at the problem, and just buy a new mobo, cpu, and ram.
I go to microcenter and pick up the parts. I consider also buying a new CPU cooler, but they don't have the one I want in stock, so I decide to chance that maybe the cooler I have will be AM5 compatible. I bring home the parts and start building. My cooler is not AM5 compatible, I order a new cooler from Amazon and have to wait until Friday because of the Holidays.
End Act 1.
Intermission.
Begin Act 2.
It's Friday, the CPU cooler arrives, and I put together the system. I try to get it to post. It manages to go to BIOS, but boot message tells me that there's something wrong with the SSD.
I start doing research about the error message and find out that Crucial SSDs (which I have) have a problem with ASUS motherboards (which I also have). Apparently there's some faulty firmware with the SSDs that prevents the mobo from being able to read the temperature of the SSD, and shuts it down to prevent overheating. This can be solved with a firmware update. The problem is that I only have one SSD, my boot SSD, and I can't boot into windows to be able to download the firmware.
I reach out to a friend of mine, and ask him to make me a windows boot drive, and he also lets me borrow an external SSD.
I pick up these items, and I give him a 16 gig kit of DDR4 ram, which I no longer need as I've switched to DDR5. This kit of ram is the exact same speed and manufacturer as the ram that he uses in his computer already, and will give him 32 gigs total.
I return home and try to boot my PC from the windows boot USB. Windows will not install to an external SSD. I take apart the external SSD (with my friend's permission), take out the M.2, crack open my computer, install it. Windows refuses to install to that drive. I remove the old M.2 that I have and put the new M.2 into that slot. Windows refuses to install to that drive. I try reformating the drive. Windows refuses to install to that drive.
I call my friend to let him know of my issues. A new plan is set. I'm going to take my old M.2, put it into the external M.2 enclosure, bring it to my friend's house tomorrow morning, and try to see if it's readable, and if it is maybe update the firmware or at least download any data on it.
An hour later my friend reaches out to me, he has installed the ram I gave him into his computer, his computer now no longer works. The debug LEDs on his motherboard are flashing a CPU error.
End Act 2
Intermission
Begin Act 3
I arrive at my friend's house the next day, Saturday, at 11am, SSD in hand and hope in my heart. He invites me inside and offers me chicken soup. He has spent the morning fixing his computer. It is now operational, but only with the new RAM that I had given him, his RAM is borked, but he's figured out that his RAM works in certain single channel configurations, so it seems like one of his sticks is bad. We futz around with it for a while and figure out that his RAM will work if it's overvolted. His PC is working fine again. We try to read my SSD and are unable to. It's either corrupted or dead. We try to boot from my SSD. This results in a blue screen.
More money will be thrown at this problem, we go to Micro Center. I buy a 2TB Samsung 990 EVO SSD for more than 50% off, and my friend buys himself another 32 gigs of RAM, on sale for 40% off (for the sake of system stability to replace the RAM with a faulty stick).
We go back to my house, rebuild the computer again, add in the new SSD, install windows, everything works.
My simple upgrade of a CPU and GPU turned into a full system rebuild where the only thing left from my prior computer is the case and PSU. But...given that the problem was apparently a dead SSD, and a faulty stick of RAM causing an error to read as a CPU issue I may still basically have a fully functional second computer. I need to reassemble the old computer and test it with the SATA SSD I have. (I was unable to use this SATA SSD for testing prior because I can't find the SATA cable for my power supply, but I do have a second power supply from my old computer that I grabbed from my parents' house, and can use that for testing.)
Now I'm redownloading all my games and testing for system stability and temps, and benchmarking.
Also, when testing the M.2 SSDs I basically had to take apart and rebuild the computer like 7 times because the CPU cooler i bought is so massive that it makes it impossible to get to the primary M.2 slot, and also makes it very difficult to unlock the GPU from the mobo. I actually ended up ripping the GPU lock off the mobo because it was so annoying to have to unlock it each time.
Now the mystery, how the fuck did a stick of RAM cause both mine and my friend's computers to register massive CPU errors? We both did research and it shouldn't be possible. We need another sacrificial PC to test things on...for science.
