New PC Dead on Arrival

BTW19995

Member
Hi all.

My PC is being RMA'd shortly, so I'm hoping this problem will be resolved once it returns to PCS. However, I'm wondering in the meanwhile if anyone has any idea as to how this issue occurred. Issue and specs below:

When I powered the PC on, the power button lit up and flashed every second, the fans spun a little, and there was a flashing red light on the motherboard along with a ticking/clicking sound. Absolutely nothing came up on the screen, and the system did not boot up at all. I'm just at a loss as to how it happened - clearly the PC was tested since windows was installed, and I don't see how anything got loose during transport, as it was packaged very securely. Specs below:

Case
CORSAIR iCUE 5000T RGB MID TOWER GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i7 12-Core Processor i7-12700K (3.6GHz) 25MB Cache
Motherboard
GIGABYTE Z690 AORUS ULTRA WIFI (LGA1700, USB 3.2, PCIe 5.0) - ARGB Ready
Memory (RAM)
64GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR5 5200MHz (2 x 32GB)
Graphics Card
24GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3090 Ti - HDMI, DP
Graphics Card Support Bracket
PCS ARGB GRAPHICS CARD SUPPORT BRACKET
1st Storage Drive
4TB Samsung 870 QVO 2.5" SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (up to 560MB/sR | 530MB/sW)
Power Supply
CORSAIR 1200W HX SERIES™ MODULAR 80 PLUS® PLATINUM, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1.5 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Processor Cooling
PCS FrostFlow 200 Series High Performance CPU Cooler
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
LED Lighting
2x 50cm ARGB LED Strip
Extra Case Fans
3x Corsair LL120 RGB LED Fan + Controller Kit
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card
10/100/1000 GIGABIT LAN PORT
USB/Thunderbolt Options
MIN. 2 x USB 3.0 & 2 x USB 2.0 PORTS @ BACK PANEL + MIN. 2 FRONT PORTS
Operating System
Windows 11 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [KUK-00003]
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language

Any possible ideas welcome. TIA!
 

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
Sadly I'm not comfortable going into the PC, as stupid as it sounds. Just had the PC collected now so fingers crossed.
It was likely just the CPU power cable attached to the motherboard.

This can easily come loose when removing the foam packaging.
 

BTW19995

Member
It was likely just the CPU power cable attached to the motherboard.

This can easily come loose when removing the foam packaging.
Is there any way to avoid this when it gets returned to me? Or is it any easy fix for someone who's not so savvy at fiddling with PC's?
 

RichLan564

Bright Spark
Is there any way to avoid this when it gets returned to me? Or is it any easy fix for someone who's not so savvy at fiddling with PC's?
Things do come loose, its a 30 second job to check its all plugged in correctly even if you are not tech savvy

PS, your drive configuration is a little bit poor on this build, is that the only drive you plan on having?
 

BTW19995

Member
Things do come loose, its a 30 second job to check its all plugged in correctly even if you are not tech savvy

PS, your drive configuration is a little bit poor on this build, is that the only drive you plan on having?
Yup, just want the one SSD for storing everything on
 

RichLan564

Bright Spark
Yup, just want the one SSD for storing everything on
Ok. Its your system but that's not ideal to be honest, certainly not going to get the best from it based on the rest of the components you have in there

You would normally want the OS on a very fast 500GB M.2 drive
 

BTW19995

Member
Ok. Its your system but that's not ideal to be honest, certainly not going to get the best from it based on the rest of the components you have in there

You would normally want the OS on a very fast 500GB M.2 drive
All good friend, I just want a working pc to be honest lol.
 

BTW19995

Member
No bother, as i say its your system, but having an HDD like that with a processor and GPU you have is like putting remoulds on a Ferrari...
I see - makes sense. If the computer finally works when it's returned to me, I'll have a look into upgrading that.
 

SimonPeters116

Well-known member
All good friend, I just want a working pc to be honest lol.
No bother, as i say its your system, but having an HDD like that with a processor and GPU you have is like putting remoulds on a Ferrari...

All joking aside. The way this works, as I understand it, is.
You have your OS is on a relatively small, ultra-fast drive. This gives you a very fast boot-up time.​
That's always been the preferred option, but 20 years ago there was limited space inside the box, because drives were big. So you'd have a 500GB drive with your Win XP OS, and your other high priority programmes on it. Then you'd have the data for those and your other programmes on another pair of RAID 500GB drives, 1TB used to be Massive, along with photos, office files, videos etc. That gave you fairly quick, for the times, boot-up and access to your programmes, without choking up your boot drive with data you didn't require, much of the time. Your back-ups would be on an external drive array.​

You have everything else, except your OS, on your main drive. In your case, that 4TB Samsung.​
Then you have another large drive for back-ups, that could be an old-fashioned internal HDD, or external NAS. It doesn't have to be fast, it does have to be reliable.​
From your spec, very nice by the way. You've got your essentials, all your luggage, plus the kitchen sink, on one big drive. SSDs are fast compared to HDDs, but they all handle storage the same way. I think you're going to find your new, all singing, all dancing computer is going to slow down significantly after a relatively short time, because it's going to be jumping all over the place to find files.
It's still going to be blowing mine into the weeds, speed wise, even after it starts to slow down. But if you put a small M.2 NVMe drive in, you'll avoid that. I won't see you for dust, ever.

Now I'm not telling you, you must, or even you should. I'm trying to explain the options. It's your system, to be built the way you want it.
I'm an old computer geek, who's got rather behind the times. I'd never even heard of an M.2 NVMe drive, until I looked into this forum. But when I did, and found out what one was, it was like opening toys at Christmas. WOW, I've always wanted one of these 😁
 
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