DRAM debug LED on after CPU cooler installation

Tech Support

Hi guys!

Yesterday I installed a new CPU cooler with a radiator in my pc, because the temperatures of my CPU were getting a bit out of control and I was hitting heavy fps drops in games.

After installing the CPU cooler and radiator, my PC won't boot, even after troubleshooting. The debug LED indicating 'DRAM' on my motherboard is turning on almost instantly when I try to boot (the CPU led flashes shortly, so it seems my CPU is at least found and running).

I have tried all the things I have seen online, such as:

Reseating the RAM, swapping RAM, Booting with only one stick in the second position, reseating the CPU, checked the CPU for bent pins, booting without the cooler, cleaning the RAM sticks with an eraser, removing the CMOS battery for 10 minutes to make sure it's wiped.

The exact same setup was working fine before the installation and it seems highly unlikely to me that both my RAM sticks stopped working at the same time. I don't have spare parts that could help me to debug further, so I feel like I'm out of options here. Any suggestions?

My setup:

Motherboard: B450 Tomahawk MAX

CPU: Ryzen 5 5600X

GPU: Powercolor RX 9070 XT Hellhound 16G

RAM: Corsair VENGEANCE LPX DDR4 RAM 32GB (2x16GB)

Posted Jul 13, 2026, 10:33 AM UTC

33
Loading comments…