Ryzen 9600X
ASUS TUF Gaming B650-E Wifi (latest BIOS)
Kingston Fury DDR5-6000 RAM (2x16GB)
Be Quiet! Pure Rock 3
Intel B580 graphics card
Seasonic Focus GX 750W PSU
M.2 SSD, DVDRW.
Fractal Design Focus G case
Spec-wise it's similar to my own PC, I went with the same case because the devil you know, and I vowed to try and make the cabling more tidy than my PC (I have no desire to build a case to go on the catwalk with cabling that's difficult to maintain, but less of a rat's nest would be nice). I planned ahead a little and put the CPU HSF in after installing the board in the case, and I ran the CPU power cables before installing the HSF because it was an absolute ball-ache getting them in before (plus there are blood stains on my CPU HSF from that experience).
The first point of rollercoasterville started here, because the PC took aaaaaages with memory training on the first boot (my AM5 system with 32GB DDR5-6000 RAM takes 30 seconds when it occasionally feels the need to do memory training, this PC takes just shy of two minutes!), once or twice it apparently failed to POST (it just sat there on a blank screen), then memtest86 10.4 hung on loading, leading me to post that thread and thinking that this is a faulty memory/board situation, I responded by updating the BIOS and updating the version of memtest86 to the latest versions (the BIOS update program had me worried that the instant it started reading the BIOS image, it spontaneously rebooted, making me think that I was playing with fire by attempting to update the BIOS with potentially faulty memory!). I did a quick single pass with the updated memtest86.
I installed Windows 11 between a single memory test pass and enabling EXPO, I wanted to see some evidence that this PC was playing ball. No problem there.
The PC settled down after that. It still had long POST times, yet the latest version of memtest did four passes this morning and I declared the job a good one. Sometimes the POST BIOS screen would sit there (I switch off the BIOS logo) for like 30 seconds for no apparent reason too. I enabled EXPO II as per @bba-tcg 's suggestion I then wanted to tackle the long post times by enabling Memory Context Restore and Power Down Enable (which did the trick on my PC), but those BIOS changes either did nothing or made the POST time *longer*, so I switched them back off again. At some point the PC apparently just decided it was going to boot faster.... I hate, *hate* it when a problem just "goes away" without any explanation!
Win11 has been the least of my worries this time around, which was nice. I'm used to its driver shenanigans on a fresh build so I know how to side-step those (I let Windows update the graphics driver itself then reboot then install the latest driver). CPU-heavy Prime95 for half an hour without issue last night.
At this point I considered the work on this PC mostly done, it's mostly a case of coming up with graphics card tests and final configuration work, so I thought this was a good time to test the case's USB 3.0 port with my memory stick and.... nothing. Plug it in again, nothing. Try the USB 2.0 port next to it, no issue. Check that the USB 3.0 cable is plugged in, yes it is. Power off, unplug cable and plug it back in again, still nothing. My anxiety levels skyrocketed at the possibility of having to take apart the whole fecking PC, send the case back, wait a while for my supplier to confirm the fault, wait for another case to arrive all while a bunch of homeless components sit somewhere in my room along with my two resident cats. At this point I bowed to the inevitable and filed a support ticket with Fractal Design. After I did that, I thought it would be best to rule out other possibilities like say a faulty board USB 3.0 socket or a loose plug at the USB 3.0 port end on the case, so I pulled out an old spare USB 3.0 port and cable that I don't think I've touched since I thought it might be useful to keep ten years ago, and sure enough the board's USB 3.0 socket worked. After that I took the DVD drive out and peered into where the case's USB 3.0 cabling goes but it looks like it's a molded connection so there's little I can do there for now. I put the bits back together, plugged the case USB 3.0 port back into the board, booted the PC and the USB 3.0 port inexplicably worked absolutely fine, despite the fact that I had replugged that connection 3 maybe 4 times after finding the problem!
<Deep breaths, go to my calm place>
I think any "gaming class" builds I do in future for customers have to have 2 more hours tacked on to my build cost; the hardware building has to be at least an hour longer than my typical average iGPU PC, and there's graphics card testing to consider too (which I don't have a standardised system for).
ASUS TUF Gaming B650-E Wifi (latest BIOS)
Kingston Fury DDR5-6000 RAM (2x16GB)
Be Quiet! Pure Rock 3
Intel B580 graphics card
Seasonic Focus GX 750W PSU
M.2 SSD, DVDRW.
Fractal Design Focus G case
Spec-wise it's similar to my own PC, I went with the same case because the devil you know, and I vowed to try and make the cabling more tidy than my PC (I have no desire to build a case to go on the catwalk with cabling that's difficult to maintain, but less of a rat's nest would be nice). I planned ahead a little and put the CPU HSF in after installing the board in the case, and I ran the CPU power cables before installing the HSF because it was an absolute ball-ache getting them in before (plus there are blood stains on my CPU HSF from that experience).
The first point of rollercoasterville started here, because the PC took aaaaaages with memory training on the first boot (my AM5 system with 32GB DDR5-6000 RAM takes 30 seconds when it occasionally feels the need to do memory training, this PC takes just shy of two minutes!), once or twice it apparently failed to POST (it just sat there on a blank screen), then memtest86 10.4 hung on loading, leading me to post that thread and thinking that this is a faulty memory/board situation, I responded by updating the BIOS and updating the version of memtest86 to the latest versions (the BIOS update program had me worried that the instant it started reading the BIOS image, it spontaneously rebooted, making me think that I was playing with fire by attempting to update the BIOS with potentially faulty memory!). I did a quick single pass with the updated memtest86.
I installed Windows 11 between a single memory test pass and enabling EXPO, I wanted to see some evidence that this PC was playing ball. No problem there.
The PC settled down after that. It still had long POST times, yet the latest version of memtest did four passes this morning and I declared the job a good one. Sometimes the POST BIOS screen would sit there (I switch off the BIOS logo) for like 30 seconds for no apparent reason too. I enabled EXPO II as per @bba-tcg 's suggestion I then wanted to tackle the long post times by enabling Memory Context Restore and Power Down Enable (which did the trick on my PC), but those BIOS changes either did nothing or made the POST time *longer*, so I switched them back off again. At some point the PC apparently just decided it was going to boot faster.... I hate, *hate* it when a problem just "goes away" without any explanation!
Win11 has been the least of my worries this time around, which was nice. I'm used to its driver shenanigans on a fresh build so I know how to side-step those (I let Windows update the graphics driver itself then reboot then install the latest driver). CPU-heavy Prime95 for half an hour without issue last night.
At this point I considered the work on this PC mostly done, it's mostly a case of coming up with graphics card tests and final configuration work, so I thought this was a good time to test the case's USB 3.0 port with my memory stick and.... nothing. Plug it in again, nothing. Try the USB 2.0 port next to it, no issue. Check that the USB 3.0 cable is plugged in, yes it is. Power off, unplug cable and plug it back in again, still nothing. My anxiety levels skyrocketed at the possibility of having to take apart the whole fecking PC, send the case back, wait a while for my supplier to confirm the fault, wait for another case to arrive all while a bunch of homeless components sit somewhere in my room along with my two resident cats. At this point I bowed to the inevitable and filed a support ticket with Fractal Design. After I did that, I thought it would be best to rule out other possibilities like say a faulty board USB 3.0 socket or a loose plug at the USB 3.0 port end on the case, so I pulled out an old spare USB 3.0 port and cable that I don't think I've touched since I thought it might be useful to keep ten years ago, and sure enough the board's USB 3.0 socket worked. After that I took the DVD drive out and peered into where the case's USB 3.0 cabling goes but it looks like it's a molded connection so there's little I can do there for now. I put the bits back together, plugged the case USB 3.0 port back into the board, booted the PC and the USB 3.0 port inexplicably worked absolutely fine, despite the fact that I had replugged that connection 3 maybe 4 times after finding the problem!
<Deep breaths, go to my calm place>
I think any "gaming class" builds I do in future for customers have to have 2 more hours tacked on to my build cost; the hardware building has to be at least an hour longer than my typical average iGPU PC, and there's graphics card testing to consider too (which I don't have a standardised system for).