Just kidding on it is Caz's fault. Ha, ha.

However, he started it. After reading all his posts on how great his new flight sim puter was, I started thinking. (which can be dangerous)

My flight sim computer was just fine. However, my everyday computer, which is always the previous flight sim computer hand-me-down, was getting long in the tooth. So, I decided to build a new flight sim computer to "upgrade" my everyday computer. Thus Caz's fault.

Based on his comments and those of others, I decided to go with an AMD 7800 X3D CPU rather than my usual Intel purchase. Being an Asus ROG fan, I went with an AMD ROG Strix B650E-F motherboard. I selected 32 GBs of DDR5 RAM from the suggested RAM listed on the bottom of Newegg's page.

Everything came in on time and I put it together, reusing an existing case and PSU. When I fired it up on the bench all the pretty LED lights and fans lit and spun up. So far so good. However, after hooking up the monitor, keyboard and mouse I got no video. I swapped GPUs and monitors to no avail. I eventually realized (from a comment on AVSIM) that it wasn't even going to POST. So, I contacted Asus's support.

Let me say that Asus support was excellent. They have a chat feature (USA and Canada only) that allows real-time help. It still took a day to get the system working. I had to reflash the BIOS. However, the WIN 11 installation would stop loading at “needing internet service.” Hirens allowed me to get on the internet but not the Window's installation. By this time it was evening and I decided this was a problem for another day.

Yesterday morning when I sat down and flashed another Win 11 usb, thinking since my other flash drive with Win 11 was over a year old, maybe I needed a more recent version. The new system was back to not POSTing. Nothing but pretty LED lights and whirling fans.

Back to Asus support I went. An hour later the support person said that I was using an unlisted and unsupported version of RAM. AND, such unlisted and unsupported version of RAM could cause instability and failure to boot. Now, this is the RAM listed by Newegg as recommended.

My next contact was Newegg's return program. All went smoothly, they RMAed the RAM, I UPSed it out and ordered new RAM from Asus's listing of supported RAM.

So, I am grounded until my WIP ticket clears when the parts are delivered (and hopefully work). And I blame it on Caz. 😉