motherboard ASUS Pro WS X570-ACE motherboard - regular inability to POST or fully restore from sleep

[intejax]

I bought this comparatively expensive ASUS Pro WS X570-ACE motherboard because it was advertised as "workstation" class but since the last BIOS update (version 1302) it's been very unstable, regularly not POSTing on cold boot or restart and not waking from sleep fully (on wake the fans will spin up and USB hub and monitor will turn on, but there's no signal to monitor or any other signs of life). During POST it will often halt at the CPU check or RAM check or just as likely POST and boot fine. Sometimes I'll need to cold boot or restart 10-20 times before I can get into BIOS. Other times it'll boot without a hiccup. Once booted, it's rock solid and stable - if it weren't wasteful I'd just keep the thing on 24/7.

 

I've submitted support requests to ASUS three times now and followed most of the suggestions, although I can't revert to the previous BIOS because some software I rely on (Substance Painter) doesn't work properly with the old BIOS. This seems to be an obvious BIOS issue to me but there's no confirmation from ASUS or ETA on a new version of the BIOS.

 

Is there anything else I can check or try myself? Should I continue waiting for a new BIOS version or cut my losses and return the motherboard before the warranty expires?

 

Here's my full system specs:

• ASUS Pro WS X570 ACE AM4 ATX Motherboard
• AMD Ryzen 9 3900X
• be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4 Cooler
• 64GB Corsair (4x16) DDR4 3200Mhz Vengeance LPX RAM
• ASUS RTX2080Ti 11GB ROG STRIX O11G Gaming PCIe Video Card
• Corsair HX750i Platinum 750W Power Supply
• 2TB Samsung 970 Evo PLUS M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD
• 2 x 2TB Samsung 860 QVO 2.5" SSD
• SilverStone FS204B SilverStone FS202B 5.25" To 2.5" Hot Swap Drive Bay
• ASUS PCE-AC58BT Dual Band Wireless-AC2100 PCIe Network Card with Bluetooth
• NZXT Internal USB Hub
• SilverStone ECU04E USB 3.1 Gen 2 PCI-E Card
• Microsoft Windows 10 Pro 64bit

 

Thanks in advance for any advice!

[-rascal-]

11 minutes ago, intejax said:

I bought this comparatively expensive ASUS Pro WS X570-ACE motherboard because it was advertised as "workstation" class but since the last BIOS update (version 1302) it's been very unstable, regularly not POSTing on cold boot or restart and not waking from sleep fully (on wake the fans will spin up and USB hub and monitor will turn on, but there's no signal to monitor or any other signs of life). During POST it will often halt at the CPU check or RAM check or just as likely POST and boot fine. Sometimes I'll need to cold boot or restart 10-20 times before I can get into BIOS. Other times it'll boot without a hiccup. Once booted, it's rock solid and stable - if it weren't wasteful I'd just keep the thing on 24/7.

 

I've submitted support requests to ASUS three times now and followed most of the suggestions, although I can't revert to the previous BIOS because some software I rely on (Substance Painter) doesn't work properly with the old BIOS. This seems to be an obvious BIOS issue to me but there's no confirmation from ASUS or ETA on a new version of the BIOS.

 

Is there anything else I can check or try myself? Should I continue waiting for a new BIOS version or cut my losses and return the motherboard before the warranty expires?

 

Here's my full system specs:

• ASUS Pro WS X570 ACE AM4 ATX Motherboard
• AMD Ryzen 9 3900X
• be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4 Cooler
• 64GB Corsair (4x16) DDR4 3200Mhz Vengeance LPX RAM
• ASUS RTX2080Ti 11GB ROG STRIX O11G Gaming PCIe Video Card
• Corsair HX750i Platinum 750W Power Supply
• 2TB Samsung 970 Evo PLUS M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD
• 2 x 2TB Samsung 860 QVO 2.5" SSD
• SilverStone FS204B SilverStone FS202B 5.25" To 2.5" Hot Swap Drive Bay
• ASUS PCE-AC58BT Dual Band Wireless-AC2100 PCIe Network Card with Bluetooth
• NZXT Internal USB Hub
• SilverStone ECU04E USB 3.1 Gen 2 PCI-E Card
• Microsoft Windows 10 Pro 64bit

 

Thanks in advance for any advice!

 

You might just need to continue to poke at ASUS' support team for a bit longer.

OR, you can to get in contact with one of ASUS' PR / Social Media people, and see if they can help push for a beta BIOS.

 

I don't know if ol' JJ at ASUS is still the guy to reach out to... he was like the Josh at Fractal...or Ed at Sapphire.

 

EDIT: 

Looks like he might still be...on Twitter ...

Juan Jose Guerrero

@ASUSTechMKTJJ

[intejax]

14 minutes ago, -rascal- said:

JJ at ASUS is still the guy to reach out to

Thanks @-rascal- I just reached out to JJ on Twitter.

[Guest]

Did you change any of the Realtek remote management settings?

[intejax]

12 minutes ago, Den-Fi said:

Did you change any of the Realtek remote management settings?

For a while I was getting an intermittent BIOS error on boot like:

Wait for RTL8117. An error occurred loading RTL8117

... and so I investigated that a little and IIRC settings were changed to:

Set RTL8117 kernal mode -> Normal
Skip kernal check -> enabled

That got rid of error, I assume because I'm skipping the check altogether.

 

But this issue seemed (based on my limited experience) to be unrelated to the POST issue, although I'm happy to be proven wrong.

 

[Guest]

1 minute ago, intejax said:

For a while I was getting an intermittent BIOS error on boot like "Wait for RTL8117. An error occurred loading RTL8117" and so I investigated that a little. IIRC settings were changed:

Set RTL8117 kernal mode -> Normal
Skip kernal check -> enabled

That got rid of error, I assume because I'm skipping the check altogether.

 

But this issue seemed (based on my limited experience) to be unrelated to the POST issue, although I'm happy to be proved wrong.

 

I was experiencing the 5-10 boot loops before POST like you were and it was because I changed some of the KVM settings. It didn't play well with high memory clocks.

[intejax]

4 minutes ago, Den-Fi said:

I was experiencing the 5-10 boot loops before POST like you were and it was because I changed some of the KVM settings. It didn't play well with high memory clocks.

Thanks @Den-Fi I will play around with those settings and see if that makes a difference at all but I'm still suspicious about the new BIOS software version as these POST issues only seemed to start after updating my BIOS.

[Guest]

2 minutes ago, intejax said:

Thanks @Den-Fi I will play around with those settings and see if that makes a difference at all but I'm still suspicious about the new BIOS software version as these POST issues only seemed to start after updating my BIOS.

Yeah, that's also possible. I haven't updated the BIOS in a few months though.