Installed a Ryzen 7 5700G processor to a Gigabyte GA-AB350M-HD3 motherboard. Plugged computer back in, hit power button. Computer powered on but no video output. Double-checked cables, then started Googling. Apparently this is commonly a result of an out-of-date BIOS. Got the latest BIOS update on a flash drive with my roommate’s assistance, then went to put the old processor (a Ryzen 5 1500X) back in so that I could run the system BIOS and flash the update, at which point I learned that I accidentally bent several of the pins when removing it. Tried to seat the processor out of a sense of wishful thinking, and sure enough, no number of attempts would get the computer to turn on with it inside.
So, in short: I have a new processor my motherboard doesn’t recognize, an old processor it does recognize but is now broken, and a BIOS update that would presumably let it recognize the new processor but that I can’t install without a working processor. I’ve read that some Gigabyte motherboards support loading BIOS updates from a flash drive without a processor, but as far as I can tell, the GA-AB350M-HD3 isn’t one of them. Not sure what I’m supposed to do here. I could order another Ryzen 5 1500X, but 1) that costs money and 2) I’d have to wait for it to arrive.
you can just bend the pins back. look up tutorials on youtube, it’s not as scary as it sounds. one thing to consider; it already doesn’t work. you can’t make it not-work more so may as well try.
I tried that with mine but ended up fucking up even more pins :(
rippp its always a possibility. but you didnt really fuck it up more if it was already in a state where bent pins stop it from working
Oh hey that’s exactly what happened to me
sorry to hear it :( shit sucks ass
Forget about the BIOS for a second, try to bend the pins back into shape. You can do that by using a moveable light source, a thin blade and a mechanical pencil without the graphite.
I bent pins back into shape with a safety pin and a credit card (to straighten the row). Definitely use an ESD wristband and mat!
Sure, I’ll give it a shot. Thanks for the suggestion!
Your phone camera doubles as a magnifying glass if the camera is decent. And yeah i find a razor blade is the right tool in this situation.
i did the same thing with a 9800x3d… i bent some pins on the motherboard and lost the ability to use half my ram
Fuck thats a costly mistake.
it never posted, i ended up sending it back to amazon, where i’m praying they refund it without trying to screw me, and then i had to buy a new motherboard just to get back to my old machine state, but this new motherboard’s bios is garbage
Wow, that sucks. You have my sympathies. Hopefully you get your money back.
thanks… it says it will be 2 weeks before they decide. that’s a lot of money to just have floating out there :(
How exactly would they be screwing you? I mean fuck Amazon and please defraud them, but that’s ridiculous.
because the system never posted with the processor… i didn’t do anything to it, so I hope they don’t try to screw me by saying it doesn’t work and it’s my fault
If you have any local PC repair shops left, call them and explain your situation. They may be willing to give you a hand for a small fee.
Looks like you’re right about the bios needing an upgrade to support it (Cezanne chips).
According to the docs, your motherboard supports Q-Flash, but it appears you need to be able to get to the bios. (Q-flash PLUS lets you do with a usb stick, but this mobo doesn’t support that)
Your external graphics card may not function here, are you using the onboard graphics?
It appears you’re out of luck unless you can bend those pins.
https://download.gigabyte.com/FileList/Manual/mb_manual_ga-ab350m-hd3_e.pdf https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-AB350M-HD3-rev-1x/support https://www.gigabyte.com/FileUpload/Global/MicroSite/121/flashbios_qflash.pdf
Right now my plan, assuming I can’t bend the pins back into place, is to order another Ryzen 5 1500X. Hardly ideal, but I can have it here within a couple days and it’s the one processor I can say with absolute certainty my motherboard will recognize.
Plug it in, keep it safe, fix your thingy, and return it
Try straightening the pins on the 1500X like another user already suggested. I’ve used a pocket knife blade between and outside CPU pins to get them aligned enough that they dropped back in with a slight push, and the lock-in action straightened them further. If no pins are broken off or bent too severely and the socket contacts weren’t damaged, it should start up again.
That board has dual firmware feature, so if/when you get to the Q-Flash screen, make sure to check “also flash to backup slot” or you may have this problem again in the future if the boot slot ever gets toggled somehow.
To respond to your other question, no, it won’t get firmware updates through Windows Update. That generally only happens with branded prebuilt systems like Dell, HP, etc. and laptops. You can and should get the latest firmware and drivers direct from Gigabyte’s support page for your model, just as you are now. The firmware update image can be read by Q-Flash from a USB stick or any internal or external non-encrypted hard drive partition.
Ugh, bent processor pins are the fucking worst. I always treat processors like they’re fragile lil insects because of that. As the others are saying, you can bend them back, but you need to be precise and it’s a tedious annoying process.
Also, powering on with no video output could be a couple of things. Try reseating the RAM, if it’s not in there right it would cause the same symptoms. Maybe try with just one stick of RAM as well to limit possible points of failure.
I don’t think it’s a RAM issue. I haven’t had problems with the RAM in years, and I didn’t touch it when replacing the processor. I had bad RAM seating in the past with this motherboard and I got a BIOS startup screen, it just never progressed beyond that. The motherboard also predates the Ryzen 5000 launch by a few years.
You could try to bend the pins back. You shouldn’t. They’re bad to break off in the socket after you get the processor back in. You’ll have a real pain in the ass on your hands then.
Take it to a pc repair shop or something and tell them what happened and what you wanna do. They’ll probably have a compatible processor on hand and loan it out to you or do the bios upgrade for you for a small fee.
No advise but I absolutely hate putting computer hardware together. I’ve built 2 computers and done some miscellaneous maintenance and it’s so stressful because of this stuff. Second computer didn’t work at first because I got sent a bad psu. Fuck hardware.
If you can’t straighten out the pins, I don’t suppose you have any friends who would be willing to lend you a CPU? A bit of a long shot but would save you money on something you only need once.
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MB should already have support for this cpu from bios v. F51g.
I would first clear the cmos. The pins to shortcut are just above the front panel connectors.
Do you have a old GPU collecting dust or one you could borrow?
Does the BIOS get updated automatically when Windows updates? I haven’t been manually updating it.
BIOS isn’t updated with Windows updates. It’s a manual process generally through a flash drive.
Looks like Gigabyte does not probably but it will if the manufacturer pushes them to Windows update. I’ve had BIOS updates from another board vendor delivered via Windows update (in the past, when using Windows). A work laptop did it a few weeks ago. Rebooted and said it was applying BIOS updates on a manufacturer splash screen.
Okay yeah then mine is definitely wayyyyy out of date, lol
fwiw you’re not generally expected to keep up with bios updates, usually you would only ever update it when there’s some actual concrete issue the update solves (e.g. hardware support)
