ASUS ROG G20AJ won’t boot, black screen

[BeerCat94]

DISCLAIMER: I don’t know much about computers. I know what components do what but that’s about it. None of the fancy technical stuff. Even opening up a computer feels like expert level stuff to me.

I have an ASUS ROG G20AJ-B07 desktop. For the past 5-6 weeks it’s been having issues booting up. Sometimes when I turn it on the LEDs and fans will turn on for 2 seconds, turn off for 4-5 seconds, then on again for 2 seconds. I will have a black screen and no signal to my keyboard or mouse. Eventually it will turn on (usually to the BIOS menu, in the past it went straight to Windows), after several attempts, after which it will work fine. Sometimes when it doesn’t boot, the cpu fans will spin and sometimes not.
The only thing I’ve changed about it from when I got it (used) is upgraded the GPU from a GTX 750 to a GTX 950. It’s functioned fine until now.
The other day (Sept 2) I turned it on w/ the 950 in it and got a black screen. I tried with no dedicated GPU and it booted normally. This led me to believe that the GPU is the issue, but I’m not sure at all. My BIOS (currently version 0401) is nowhere near up-to-date, and the ROG menu says there are no critical updates available. I don’t know if that’s causing the problem, or if the computer is just old. I’m wondering if this is worth fixing or if I should just buy something new. The thing sort of turns on only when it wants to.

So far I have:
- Cleaned out the PCI-e port with air, and cleaned GPU riser card
- Reset settings in BIOS, and manually using the CLRTC pins
- Turned on with no dedicated GPU

Monday (Sept 3) it booted to BIOS twice, but nothing past that. Yesterday (Sept 5) it did the same thing, and booted to Windows after I was done with the BIOS. Today (Sept 6) I noticed that the fans seem to spin a little slower than normal when doing anything. I’ve used SpeedFan in the past to try and get them to spin faster and it’s worked okay, but not now.

TL;DR, computer won’t boot most of the time, when it does it seems to be fine. BIOS problem, hardware, or something else? Is it worth saving a 4 year old computer when I could buy/build a new one?

[BeerCat94]

Bumping

I read that sometimes a dying CMOS battery can cause boot problems? And that they last 3-5 years. I’ve had this PC for ~3.5 years, so maybe that’s where I’ll start. *

[cl-Albert]

Welcome to the forums!

You may have tried it already, but if you haven't, try to put back the GTX 750 or another vga card if possible just to check that although it looks like your unit only came with one power supply, so you need to be careful not to use too high-end of a vga card.

Consider trying your GTX 950 in another system too if better to check it.

Depending on what you plan to use the system for, it's really personal preference if you want to spend the time and maybe money to get it working again, but if your system only came with one power supply, you will probably want to figure out how to set up the system to run with 2 power supplies if you plan to run higher-end vga cards.

The G20AJ also uses a custom case and proprietary motherboard as you may know which can complicate things since ASUS doesn't provide any support for these types of upgrades, so make sure that will be okay.

My personal preference is to just save my money for a newer system with warranty, but that's just me and I work for ASUS so can be biased.

Hopefully we can get more opinions from others about it.

[BeerCat94]

cl-Albert wrote:
Welcome to the forums!

You may have tried it already, but if you haven't, try to put back the GTX 750 or another vga card if possible just to check that although it looks like your unit only came with one power supply, so you need to be careful not to use too high-end of a vga card.

Consider trying your GTX 950 in another system too if better to check it.

Depending on what you plan to use the system for, it's really personal preference if you want to spend the time and maybe money to get it working again, but if your system only came with one power supply, you will probably want to figure out how to set up the system to run with 2 power supplies if you plan to run higher-end vga cards.

The G20AJ also uses a custom case and proprietary motherboard as you may know which can complicate things since ASUS doesn't provide any support for these types of upgrades, so make sure that will be okay.

My personal preference is to just save my money for a newer system with warranty, but that's just me and I work for ASUS so can be biased.

Hopefully we can get more opinions from others about it.

Thanks for the advice. I have tried putting the 750 in it and it has the same boot/POST problem. Same thing with no dedicated GPU too. I think it’s either the mobo, or the CMOS battery is dying (the PC was manufactured in 2014.)*

I just ordered the 180W power brick which should be coming soon; I’ll see if that helps anything alongside the 230W brick. I’ll also dust off the internal fans and replace the CMOS battery. I’m not *massively* emotionally invested in this PC, I won’t spend a ton of money trying to fix it, but I need it to last until I build a new one (which I *could* technically have done now since I have the money, but more than likely will be at least a few months from now).*

Also, do you happen to know if the G20AJ-B07 BIOS can be updated past 0401 without messing anything up? I’ve read about updating the BIOS and BIOS flashing, but I’m not 100% sure doing so wouldn’t make me lose everything on my hard drive (again, I know almost nothing about computers). *

[cl-Albert]

BeerCat94 wrote:
DISCLAIMER: I don’t know much about computers. I know what components do what but that’s about it. None of the fancy technical stuff. Even opening up a computer feels like expert level stuff to me.

The only thing I’ve changed about it from when I got it (used) is upgraded the GPU from a GTX 750 to a GTX 950. It’s functioned fine until now.

Actually, if you've upgraded the GPU yourself successfully, seems like you know a fair amount already.

BeerCat94 wrote:

The other day (Sept 2) I turned it on w/ the 950 in it and got a black screen. I tried with no dedicated GPU and it booted normally.

Still wondering about this statement if you would like to clarify, but if the system always seems to work fine with the integrated CPU graphics, seems like the motherboard should be working pretty well although there could still be a problem with the motherboard to work with dedicated graphics cards.
Not sure if you can just use the integrated CPU graphics for now until you get your next system, but will limit what you can do , of course.

BeerCat94 wrote:
Also, do you happen to know if the G20AJ-B07 BIOS can be updated past 0401 without messing anything up? I’ve read about updating the BIOS and BIOS flashing, but I’m not 100% sure doing so wouldn’t make me lose everything on my hard drive (again, I know almost nothing about computers). *

Don't know that I'm the best person to talk to about bios upgrades since I always think of the worst case scenario, but it's possible to upgrade your bios successfully too of course.
Wonder why you want to take the chance to flash the bios if everything was working fine before with the current bios version though.

If your system isn't working well, it could also increase your chances of having a bad bios flash.

Finally, if you can't get your discrete vga cards working, you don't want to flash to bios version 0703 since it disables your onboard CPU graphics by default as mentioned in the bios release notes, so you will not be able to change the bios setting to re-enable your onboard CPU graphics.

A bad bios flash could kill the motherboard, but wouldn't affect your hard drive or data normally, so you could always remove the hard drive and connect it to another computer by USB to retrieve the data.
If it makes sense though, you should just back up any important data first.