BC-250 No Display

[ozdenfurkan]

Hey guys,

Need some help with my BC-250 card. It was running totally fine liquid-cooled in a Pro Case, but I had to move that liquid setup to another PC. So I decided to switch the BC-250 over to air cooling in a Redux setup. I put new fans on and applied PTM7950 to the APU.

At first, the system was shutting down after 20-30 seconds. Turned out my thermal pads were too thick, so the heatsink wasn't even touching the core. I swapped those out for 1mm pads, which fixed the overheating completely—I can leave the card powered on for over an hour now without it shutting down.

The problem is, I get absolutely no display output, and LED16 is stuck solid red.

Here is what I've tried so far:

Tried booting with and without the SSD (it has a working Windows install, thought maybe that was messing with POST).

Pulled the CMOS battery and shorted the reset pins.

Swapped monitors and cables.

Checked the board carefully—it's not warped, and I don't see any chipped or missing SMD parts anywhere near the APU or RAM.

Tested on an open bench to rule out case shorts.

Even tried a quick power-on without the heatsink just to see if a splash screen would pop up before it got hot, but still nothing.

Since it's not overheating anymore, what else could be triggering LED16? Is it possible the pressure from those thick pads cracked a BGA solder joint under the RAM or APU, or could the constant thermal shutdowns have corrupted the BIOS?

Any ideas would be super appreciated!

[pacoperico-fl]

About a month ago, I received a BC-250 that had no video output. However, based on the LED behavior during startup, it was actually booting, just without video.

The LED near the RJ45 port tends to change from red to green and then back to red very quickly during startup. If you install an SSD, you can also see the red LED blinking during disk activity. If you see that behavior, the board is not completely dead. In the end, I returned that board to the seller. Others have been able to revive boards with similar issues after using a complete external BIOS flashing kit.

I recommend being extremely careful when handling these boards. In my experience, it is possible to accidentally make contact between the aluminum backplate and some solder points with just a small amount of pressure or weight. This can happen in the area right next to the DP video output connector, and it could potentially cause a short circuit.

[pacoperico-fl]

During the BC250 boot process, if everything is working properly, even though there is no video output, it should try to boot from the SSD. In that case, the red LED should show some kind of blinking activity. If it doesn’t, then the board is probably damaged.

[ozdenfurkan]

I think my only option left is to flash the bios using a ch341a programmer. If that doesn't fix it, I guess the board is basically dead. Am I correct?

[pacoperico-fl]

Sadly, I think so. I’m not sure if anyone else in the community might have a different opinion or another idea...

[ozdenfurkan]

Unfortunately, the result didn't change even though I reflashed the bios using the ch341a. I have one working led.

[NexGen-3D-Printing]

I assume you have tried connecting to a different display? some TV's have issues, I find these boards to be quite durable, if you have seen what I have put mine through, I had one soaking in a bath of 100% IPA while I scrubbed all the conductive Thermal Grizzly Pro Putty off the dam thing as it was shorting everything, that board still works perfectly, I have bricked all three of mine experimenting with overclocking the ram, all have recovered with a hardware flash, it does look like its your CMOS though, as that's how my bricked boards were, all the lights were on, but no one was at home :)

Maybe try a hardware flash again, try a different CMOS file, try the stock one, or the V3 one, or even the latest one from here: https://github.com/Forbidden-Darkness/AMD-BC-250-UEFI-v2.2-Firmware-Menu-Script

Cant hurt to try it again, I actually used a Pi Pico to flash all of mine.