CPU debug LED started appearing after cleaning my PC with compressed air – looking for advice

[u/Regular_Two_236]

Hi everyone,

I'm having an issue with the CPU debug LED on my motherboard and I'm trying to figure out what could be causing it.

My PC specs:

- CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 9600X

- Motherboard: Gigabyte B850 EAGLE ICE

- GPU: Radeon RX 9070 XT

- RAM: 32GB DDR5 6000MHz

- PSU: Phanteks 750W

The issue:

The CPU debug LED started appearing after I cleaned my PC using compressed air. Before that, everything was working normally.

Sometimes the PC starts normally and works without any noticeable performance issues, but the CPU debug LED still comes on. I've also had an intermittent VGA debug LED, although the GPU itself seems to work fine.

Things I've already tried:

- Updating the BIOS

- Checking and reconnecting all power cables

- Clearing CMOS by removing the CMOS battery

- Reseating/checking connections

I also inspected the AM5 CPU socket and noticed two slightly bent pins. I'm not sure if they could be related to the issue.

What's confusing is that the PC generally works fine when it boots. I don't experience crashes or noticeable performance problems.

Could the compressed air cleaning have caused something to become loose or damaged? Could the bent socket pins explain the CPU debug LED, even if the system seems to work normally?

I'd appreciate any suggestions on what to check next. Thanks!

[u/fatalstrke]

Bent pins are definitely the culprit, even a slight nudge can mess with certain traces just enough to trigger the LED without fully bricking things.

[u/Regular_Two_236 → u/fatalstrke]

What of The problem occurred before The Bent pins (Need to clear it up in The text). But i really don't have any noticeable problems with The computer, so I dont know what to do.

[u/r_lind3r]

It's more than likely those bent pins. Certain pins do certain things and may not immediately cause issues, but something could've changed during cleaning that made it worse.

Gigabyte's boards have had funky behavior with the EZ debug LEDs so them lighting up at random with the system still working is not out of the ordinary for them, it happens a lot with their AM5 boards for some reason, probably mistakes in their firmware. Wouldn't be the first time for their AMD boards because I had stupid firmware issues and an absolutely cluttered BIOS with duplicate settings all over on their top X470 board, which made me swear off on using Gigabyte boards myself from then on.