FINAL UPDATE:
Went with an ASRock B650E PG-ITX Wi-Fi, Ryzen 7900X, Flare X5 DDR5-6000, and new (NVMe) SSD. Same PSU. Everything seems fluid thus far. So, indeed something borked about the Asus ITX board. And, I haven’t had a lot of problems adjusting to a different UEFI.
________
UPDATE 2:
This is turning out to be public troubleshooting blog, which is not what I intended/expected. I decided to replace my Ryzen 5600X with a 5700X3D, somewhat regretfully because now I have the added time and hassle of returning it. At first, it seemed like the fix, but eventually the freezing and reboots resurfaced, including during another Windows reinstall. Ugh! Therefore, now the culprit is realistically down to motherboard or PSU. I still don’t believe it’s the PSU as the problems occur just as much at idle, the PC can operate for quite some time at full load, full load should only be putting (up to) ~60% (capacity) stress on the PSU, and the rail power measurements look good, at least according to the motherboard BIOS. Speaking of BIOS, could it still be a bug with the current BIOS version? Maybe. I considered a BIOS ‘downgrade’ although I’m reaching an exhaustion in diagnosing, choosing to ignore/skip steps, for better and worse.
So… A platform (i.e., motherboard, CPU, RAM) upgrade? In that research, I’ve omitted Asus motherboards and focused solely on features and price. I’ve landed on ASRock models as my top pick.
I guess, keeping this content as relevant as possible to community involvement:
• What’s your PC enthusiast approach/experience regarding component picking?
• Are you finding yourself (far) less brand loyal these days? (Yes, I know, Apple-related forum and, yes, I still have reasonable brand preferences.)
• Any notable experiences with motherboard brands? (Obviously, recent generations/models are most relevant.) — As an aside, before jumping back into PC building, my initial run was during the early 2000s, when BioStar motherboards were quite popular for budget PC builds.
P.S. I know this is far from revelation on this topic, however, it has been a harsh wakeup call.
________
UPDATE 1:
So… I’m pivoting my conclusion after (a lot) more diagnosing. Now it’s looking like a possible CPU failure.
For starters, I placed the RTX 4070 Ti into the system it formerly called home and ran benchmarks/stability tests. I encountered no problems whatsoever. That’s what I suspected but decided I needed to knuckle under and put in the time and effort to verify.
Running low on hardware to eliminate, I decided to swap the memory sticks (2 x 16GB Corsair Vengeance kit) — it’s an ITX board, thus two memory slots — in one presumably final reseat. Welp… That resulted in a DRAM Q-LED light and no boot. Reseated again, however, no good. Removed one DIMM, which allowed the PC to boot though exhibiting frequent instability (again). Swapped in a single stick of Kingston Fury (from the other PC), same thing (i.e., unstable operation).
The situation reminded me of:
Lastly, yes, I’ve also tried several sessions with default/base/JEDEC (i.e., 2133 MT/s) memory setting. It was no better.
Am I barking up the wrong tree again? Perhaps.
Unfortunately, I think, the only way I’m going to (mostly confidently) narrow this down is by purchasing a new AM4 CPU.
Thoughts?
P.S. I’m not trying to slander any brands. Primarily, I just want to get this resolved. Although, these (and other issues) are doing well at snuffing my rekindling of PC building. ...And cost/prices, of course.
_________
ORIGINAL:
TLDR: BIOS v3607 for AMD B550 boards appears to have some serious problems that remain unaddressed.
rog-forum.asus.com
I’m still diagnosing.
• Several Windows reinstalls and ‘resets’ — via different sources
• Tested out-of-the-box Windows (10 and 11) as well as with certain updates — although, Microsoft has removed a lot of control on what, which, and when updates are applied.
• Sifted through and researched errors in event logs (i.e., Event Viewer)
• Re-seated RAM and GPU a few times.
• Used different input devices (i.e., keyboard and mouse, trackpad, trackball).
• Looked for any physical damage — I recently swapped graphics cards, and thought… Just maybe I made a whoopsie.
• Set BIOS to defaults (well, “Optimized Defaults” as Asus dubs).
The current step is disabling onboard components. Disabling the audio (Realtek HD) driver did appear to increase stability. However, following more (seemingly) random restarts, I disabled the audio controller via BIOS with no noticeable improvement versus via Device Manager. At the moment of writing this, I’m running stability and benchmark tests with the wireless chips (WiFi/BT) disabled via BIOS. I landed on trying this because the system appeared fairly stable in Diagnostic Mode (i.e., boot mode via System Configuration) and there’s not a lot left to eliminate.
By the way, the graphics card (RTX 4070 Ti) was working fine in the PC it was previously installed. And CPU and GPU perform as expected when the system stays on long enough to finish a benchmark.
Went with an ASRock B650E PG-ITX Wi-Fi, Ryzen 7900X, Flare X5 DDR5-6000, and new (NVMe) SSD. Same PSU. Everything seems fluid thus far. So, indeed something borked about the Asus ITX board. And, I haven’t had a lot of problems adjusting to a different UEFI.
________
UPDATE 2:
This is turning out to be public troubleshooting blog, which is not what I intended/expected. I decided to replace my Ryzen 5600X with a 5700X3D, somewhat regretfully because now I have the added time and hassle of returning it. At first, it seemed like the fix, but eventually the freezing and reboots resurfaced, including during another Windows reinstall. Ugh! Therefore, now the culprit is realistically down to motherboard or PSU. I still don’t believe it’s the PSU as the problems occur just as much at idle, the PC can operate for quite some time at full load, full load should only be putting (up to) ~60% (capacity) stress on the PSU, and the rail power measurements look good, at least according to the motherboard BIOS. Speaking of BIOS, could it still be a bug with the current BIOS version? Maybe. I considered a BIOS ‘downgrade’ although I’m reaching an exhaustion in diagnosing, choosing to ignore/skip steps, for better and worse.
So… A platform (i.e., motherboard, CPU, RAM) upgrade? In that research, I’ve omitted Asus motherboards and focused solely on features and price. I’ve landed on ASRock models as my top pick.
I guess, keeping this content as relevant as possible to community involvement:
• What’s your PC enthusiast approach/experience regarding component picking?
• Are you finding yourself (far) less brand loyal these days? (Yes, I know, Apple-related forum and, yes, I still have reasonable brand preferences.)
• Any notable experiences with motherboard brands? (Obviously, recent generations/models are most relevant.) — As an aside, before jumping back into PC building, my initial run was during the early 2000s, when BioStar motherboards were quite popular for budget PC builds.
P.S. I know this is far from revelation on this topic, however, it has been a harsh wakeup call.
________
UPDATE 1:
So… I’m pivoting my conclusion after (a lot) more diagnosing. Now it’s looking like a possible CPU failure.
For starters, I placed the RTX 4070 Ti into the system it formerly called home and ran benchmarks/stability tests. I encountered no problems whatsoever. That’s what I suspected but decided I needed to knuckle under and put in the time and effort to verify.
Running low on hardware to eliminate, I decided to swap the memory sticks (2 x 16GB Corsair Vengeance kit) — it’s an ITX board, thus two memory slots — in one presumably final reseat. Welp… That resulted in a DRAM Q-LED light and no boot. Reseated again, however, no good. Removed one DIMM, which allowed the PC to boot though exhibiting frequent instability (again). Swapped in a single stick of Kingston Fury (from the other PC), same thing (i.e., unstable operation).
The situation reminded me of:
Lastly, yes, I’ve also tried several sessions with default/base/JEDEC (i.e., 2133 MT/s) memory setting. It was no better.
Am I barking up the wrong tree again? Perhaps.
Unfortunately, I think, the only way I’m going to (mostly confidently) narrow this down is by purchasing a new AM4 CPU.
Thoughts?
P.S. I’m not trying to slander any brands. Primarily, I just want to get this resolved. Although, these (and other issues) are doing well at snuffing my rekindling of PC building. ...And cost/prices, of course.
_________
ORIGINAL:
TLDR: BIOS v3607 for AMD B550 boards appears to have some serious problems that remain unaddressed.
PC stuck in continuous reboot after bios update
I have a PC that has been running great. Until a bios update on my Asus motherboard appears to have broken it. Specs below: Ryzen 7 5800x3D, Asus ROG B550-F gaming wifi, Asus ROG RTX 4080, four 8gb Corsair Vengeance RAM sticks, Asus ROG LC II aio, Asus ROG Thor PSU, 3 coolermaster sickleflow...
I’m still diagnosing.
• Several Windows reinstalls and ‘resets’ — via different sources
• Tested out-of-the-box Windows (10 and 11) as well as with certain updates — although, Microsoft has removed a lot of control on what, which, and when updates are applied.
• Sifted through and researched errors in event logs (i.e., Event Viewer)
• Re-seated RAM and GPU a few times.
• Used different input devices (i.e., keyboard and mouse, trackpad, trackball).
• Looked for any physical damage — I recently swapped graphics cards, and thought… Just maybe I made a whoopsie.
• Set BIOS to defaults (well, “Optimized Defaults” as Asus dubs).
The current step is disabling onboard components. Disabling the audio (Realtek HD) driver did appear to increase stability. However, following more (seemingly) random restarts, I disabled the audio controller via BIOS with no noticeable improvement versus via Device Manager. At the moment of writing this, I’m running stability and benchmark tests with the wireless chips (WiFi/BT) disabled via BIOS. I landed on trying this because the system appeared fairly stable in Diagnostic Mode (i.e., boot mode via System Configuration) and there’s not a lot left to eliminate.
By the way, the graphics card (RTX 4070 Ti) was working fine in the PC it was previously installed. And CPU and GPU perform as expected when the system stays on long enough to finish a benchmark.
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