Asking for help (SOLVED)

[Brett_md]

Howdy all, I'll try to be clear about this issue. A lot has happened and I'm at my wit's end with it. I'm hoping to find an "easy" fix.

A little back story. I recently upgraded some of my pc components and decided to build another pc with the old/leftover items taken out (going to gift it to my 9 year old niece as her first pc). I've shopped, ordered, received and built the pc with the old and new items.

The components:
OLD/USED
These items were all used together just recently and were working fine together.
-Asrock 990fx Extreme3
-AMD FX-8350 Black Edition
-G.Skill Aegis 4x4GB 240-pin DDR3 1600
-Nvidia EVGA 1060 3gb

OLD/USED
-HDD Western Digital 500GB Black (Formatted)

NEW
-DIYPC Rainbow-Flash-G1 Case
-TP-Link Archer T6E PCI-E AC1300 Wireless Adapter
-EVGA 600W BQ 80 Bronze Semi Modular PSU
-Microsoft Windows 10 Home - Full Retail Version (USB Flash Drive)

The mobo, cpu, ram and gpu all ran together and I had no problems with them. The hard drive has been sitting there not being used for quite a while, so I formatted it to use in this budget build.

All right, bare with me here (can't remember everything to a T)...

I finished the build, powered it on, got instant power. Yay!
Went into the bios and selected the Windows USB as the boot priority. After "Save and exit", it would give me "disc error" (not, disc read error) and the options to "Cancel" or "Advanced options". In advanced options, it would let me try to "System Restore", " System Image Recovery", "Startup Repair", "Command Prompt", "Go back to the previous version".
I tried System Restore, but it would tell me disc fail/error or something.
I couldn't understand why it wasn't just taking me straight into the Windows USB and installing Windows. It makes no sense that it was trying to repair. Unless the motherboard was holding info from when it was previously used. Does that make sense?

So, I cleared the cmos battery, thinking that it would reset the bios/mobo and I could install a fresh copy of Windows using the USB. I was wrong.
Now the monitor does nothing. Black. PC still has power, monitor has power, but nothing on the monitor (except for "monitor is going to sleep").
I tried another monitor. I tried different cables/adapters.
I thought maybe the new psu was having issues powering the gpu, so I tried a different psu.
I thought maybe the motherboard pci-e slot crapped out all of a sudden. I tried a different gpu with no results. This furthered my thoughts that the pci-e slot was bad. I tried the gpu in a second pci-e slot, nothing.
I tried the original gpu in a different computer and it worked, so it's not the gpu.
I tried taking the hard drive and sata cable to my other pc, they worked just fine.
I also ensured that the Windows USB works fine on my other pc.

I suddenly noticed that the keyboard and mouse being used to set it up had no power to them. I tried different usb ports, nothing.
I unplugged the mouse and keyboard, cleared the cmos, booted to a new screen that shows motherboard/bios info and says,
"press f2 or del to run setup" or "press f1 to load UEFI defaults and continue"
I plug in the mouse and keyboard.
I press del and enter bios. I've tried changing the boot priority to the HDD and Windows USB. Upon "save and exit" the monitor goes black again. AND the keyboard and mouse have lost power again.
I try to restart the computer. Nothing.
I reset cmos. If mouse and keyboard are still plugged in, I get nothing on the monitor. If I first unplug the mouse and keyboard before powering on, after clearing cmos, it goes back to the "press f2 or del to run setup" screen. Then I plug mouse and keyboard in and the whole cycle continues.
I have tried to change some settings in bios, such as disabling the USB Legacy, but nothing seems to change.
I am not familiar enough with all of the bios options to know what changes could possibly help keep the mouse and keyboard from turning off and keeping the monitor from working.

I tried putting the motherboard's bios on a different usb drive, entered the bios after cmos clear, instant flashed bios (it's already at it's latest version). Nothing has changed.
I also tried copying the Windows USB data to the hard drive and then changing boot priority to hard drive, but same results, monitor goes black and mouse and keyboard lose power. If I haven't said it yet, I've tried different keyboard and mouse.

I'm sure that I'm forgetting some steps that I've tried and encountered. Can't think about it all. I feel like it started as one problem and has morphed into a set of issues.
If anyone has any ideas, or need clarification about any of this, please let me know.
Thanks everyone.

 

[johnb35]

To be honest, I wouldn't be building a system nowadays using a mechanical hard drive. Buy a cheap Sata SSD. But to get back to your problem, try removing the motherboard from the case and build it on a piece of cardboard. There may be a standoff in the wrong spot between motherboard and case. Or possibly a piece of metal from the I/O plate inside one the ports on the back of the motherboard. If you build it outside of the case and it works correctly then you have your answer. Since you reset bios, you might have to go in and verify the settings are correct for your setup.

 

[Brett_md]

I'll put this one to rest.
I did as suggested and built it out of the case. Unfortunately, I didn't test each step as I went so I don't know what exactly fixed my issue. I reset the cpu, I reset the ram and I noticed a motherboard case standoffs was partially loose and tightened it down.
After doing all of that, the monitor was working, loaded into bios just fine, it read the windows usb instantly and installed just fine.
I appreciate the idea to build it out of the case to make sure nothing was causing a short.
Peace.

 

[Brett_md]

To be honest, I wouldn't be building a system nowadays using a mechanical hard drive. Buy a cheap Sata SSD. But to get back to your problem, try removing the motherboard from the case and build it on a piece of cardboard. There may be a standoff in the wrong spot between motherboard and case. Or possibly a piece of metal from the I/O plate inside one the ports on the back of the motherboard. If you build it outside of the case and it works correctly then you have your answer. Since you reset bios, you might have to go in and verify the settings are correct for your setup.

Yeah, I know. As mentioned, it was a drive sitting, doing nothing and this pc is for a nine year old. It'll do just fine for now.
That being said, Thanks for the idea. Building it out of the case gave me instant results. I reset the cpu and ram at the same time so don't really know the original cause of the issues, but it all works fine now, so thank you!