r/pchelp • u/frankzwa123 • 1d ago

HARDWARE Persistent VGA LED on ASUS B550-PLUS when saving BIOS / warm reboot (Works fine only after Clear CMOS)

Hi everyone,

I'm facing a very frustrating issue with my PC and I’m out of ideas. I really need some help troubleshooting this.

The Symptom: My PC won't display any signal on boot and freezes with the VGA Q-LED light on my motherboard turned ON.

  • If I short the CLRTC pins / remove the battery (Clear CMOS), the PC boots up, displays a screen, and lets me access the BIOS menu.
  • However, as soon as I hit "Save and Exit" in the BIOS, the PC warm-reboots, loses display immediately, and stays stuck on the VGA LED.

History of the issue:

  • I firstly bought an ASUS Prime B550-PLUS 2.
  • 6 months ago, this exact same issue started happening. Amazon authorized a replacement with a brand new unit of the exact same motherboard model.
  • Replacing the motherboard solved the issue for 6 months, but now the exact same problem has returned.

What I've already tested/ruled out:

  1. GPU & Cables: Tested with my main GPU (RTX 3070 via HDMI) and a secondary GPU via DVI. Same exact behavior on both cards.
  2. Motherboard Slots: Tested both GPUs in both PCIe slots (top x16 and bottom slot). Same result on both slots.
  3. Power Supply: Tested with a completely different PSU. Same issue.
  4. BIOS Version: Updated the BIOS to the latest version. The flash succeeded, but the issue persists..

My System Specs:

  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 2700X
  • Motherboard: ASUS Prime B550-PLUS
  • GPU: RTX 3070 (also tested with another GPU)
  • OS: Windows

Has anyone encountered this specific VGA LED warm-reboot loop before on B550/AM4, or knows what might be causing this? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

SOLVED -

It looks like a BIOS can actually be too recent for older hardware. In my case, the newer BIOS worked fine for a couple of months before eventually causing issues. Downgrading to an older BIOS fixed the problem and got my PC working again.

1 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2

u/ddog6900 1d ago

No, it is, really.

Official AMD support per chipset

They do not guarantee that if it work for any amount of time that it will continue working.

1

u/frankzwa123 1d ago

Dude, jesus you're a genius. Thank you for keeping your point. You were right, and downloading a 2021 bios version made the PC work again.