AMD platform, is slow post common?

[drumn_bass]

Hi guys, so I just built a new system after about 6.5 years with i7 4770K. In the past, I didn't think much about boot times, but the Intel system on Z87 based Asus mobo would post in just a couple of second, and probably boot to log in screen in under another 10... Now on this new Ryzen 7 build, it takes over 20 seconds for it to post! Then a couple of seconds on the Bios splash screen, and only about 5 seconds to actually book into Windows, but that makes it an overall around 30 second from the press of a power button to Windows log in screen. Kind of disappointing to be honest. Other than that, everything works great so far.

 

My specs are:

-Ryzen 7 3700X

-MSI B550 Gaming Plus

-EVGA GTX 1070 (something to upgrade at a later date, good enough for now)

-GPU rizer card (maybe relevant, idk, I hear there are some issues with PCIe 4 and rizer cards)

-Samsung 970 Evo+ M.2 boot drive (but there are 3 other 2.5" SSDs, 3 internal and 2 external HHDs connected to the system, I'm a digital horder)

-EVGA 1000W 80+ Gold PSU

-Ballistix 32GB 3200MHz RAM

-Windows 10 Pro (probably not relevant as it boots very quickly, it's the post time that's slow)

 

BIOS mode is set to UEFI, and the manual states that UEFI can boot directly into OS and save the BIOS self test (whatever the "safe" means?). 

 

I searched the forums here and found a couple of threads, some good suggestions, but no real solutions. Also, there are of course many people that don't have these issues at all, but there are a bunch of posts on Reddit from Ryzen users that report the same ~30 second boot time with most of it being a slow post. Some people say it's just how it is with AMD platform, while others claim their systems boot in 3-4 second total (?). There seem to be a lot of reports of this behavior on MSI boards (X570, B450, B550), but not just MSI, Gigabyte too, and maybe others as well. My motherboard has post LEDs that show that it takes about 10 seconds for it to go past the CPU, then instantly posses RAM and another 12 seconds or so to get through the GPU and finally it goes into OS boot. The LEDs are CPU-DRAM-VGA-BOOT. So this sequence takes 22-23 seconds, then another 5-6 seconds for the OS.

 

Is this in fact common with AMD based systems vs Intel? Something to worry about? 

 

Going with AMD saved me about $100 over i7 10700K, but with this slow post thing, and all the reports of the possibility of issues with a rizer card, it makes me wonder if the savings were really worth it:/ And if I should expect more issues. I waited for a while to build an AMD system, and assumed by now all the issues and quarks were sorted out for the most part. 

 

P.S. If slower boot times are not an indicator of an issue, and maybe it's just my board or whatever, it's not really a deal breaker, as I usually only boot once a day in the morning, so I wouldn't be too worried about extra 20 seconds it takes. 

 

This guy's system behaves similarly, even worse than mine actually, but to give an idea, yeah it just feel like it's sitting there doing nothing, but the on board LEDs are cycling through. 

 

 

 

[SFFDesigns]

Yep. Mine took 20+ to start and now takes 17 or so.

 

first post took forever 

[Helpful Tech Witch]

just to check, is it the latest bios?

[drumn_bass]

Just now, HelpfulTechWizard said:

just to check, is it the latest bios?

@HelpfulTechWizard

 

Oh good question, sorry about that. Yes, the latest BIOS update from MSI Support page, and mist likely irrelevant, but also the latest chipset drivers.

[.Apex.]

12 minutes ago, drumn_bass said:

BIOS mode is set to UEFI

Have you disabled CSM in BIOS?

[drumn_bass]

2 minutes ago, Hymenopus_Coronatus said:

Yep. Mine took 20+ to start and now takes 17 or so.

 

first post took forever 

@Hymenopus_Coronatus

 

Yeah man, the first boot took about a minute I'm guessing, I was freaking out thinking it wasn't gonna post, but it did. Just took a very long time. Makes me wonder if it just gets better over time?

[.Apex.]

 

According to this it seems to be normal for it to take this long to post, 16 seconds to get into BIOS

[drumn_bass]

1 minute ago, Syn. said:

Have you disabled CSM in BIOS?

The CSM was gray/disabled, UEFI was white, so enabled. I believe the setting is to switch between the two, it looks like attached image (from the manual), which the manual says I want to see.

 

 

[drumn_bass]

@Syn

 

Nice find. If it's normal for this motherboard, I'm fine with it, it's not that big of a deal. What are those AGESA versions? Is it something that just gets updated with BIOS updates?

 

Do you have a link to those MSI results you found?

[drumn_bass]

Looking at MSI's support page, there was a new BIOS update every month so far for this board, with two updates in August. I guess I'll need to get used to that, and re applying all my BIOS settings after each one. 

[Nena Trinity]

Anything over 10 sounds a bit much to me, could be a manufacturer thing?

[drumn_bass]

@Nena Trinity

 

I hear you, I was expecting it to be super fast, but so far it's looking like it's just how my motherboards works, and I'm not going to look for another and rebuild my system over few seconds of boot time which I only have to deal with once a day. 

[Nena Trinity]

2 minutes ago, drumn_bass said:

@Nena Trinity

 

I hear you, I was expecting it to be super fast, but so far it's looking like it's just how my motherboards works, and I'm not going to look for another and rebuild my system over few seconds of boot time which I only have to deal with once a day. 

Yeah I am gonna bet it might be a way to fix it in BIOS or in Windows? Tried to enable fast boot?

[drumn_bass]

@Nena Trinity

 

I don't think my board has the Fast Boot setting, I couldn't find it (and apparently it's a thing with AM4 MSI boards, based on many users confused and upset about it), but while searching for info on this, I also found something from someone on Reddit:

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/MSI_Gaming/comments/dcxku1/no_fastboot_with_msi_x570_a_pro/

"Well, According to MSI, boot times of 20 seconds are totally normal, go figure

'' The boot time is related to the devices you installed, such as the CPU, GPU and SSD. Also the boot time for AM4 is a little long. We will continue to update BIOS for better performance. You can try later BIOS on MSI website. Thanks and sorry for the inconvenience caused you! ''"

 

So, an interesting statement from MSI support which appears to once again point to the "it's just how it is with MSI" conclusion:(

 

And I just double-checked, I do have the latest BIOS available for my board (MSI B550 Gaming Plus) 

[Nena Trinity]

2 minutes ago, drumn_bass said:

@Nena Trinity

 

I don't think my board has the Fast Boot setting, I couldn't find it (and apparently it's a thing with AM4 MSI boards, based on many users confused and upset about it), but while searching for info on this, I also found something from someone on Reddit:

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/MSI_Gaming/comments/dcxku1/no_fastboot_with_msi_x570_a_pro/

"Well, According to MSI, boot times of 20 seconds are totally normal, go figure

'' The boot time is related to the devices you installed, such as the CPU, GPU and SSD. Also the boot time for AM4 is a little long. We will continue to update BIOS for better performance. You can try later BIOS on MSI website. Thanks and sorry for the inconvenience caused you! ''"

 

So, an interesting statement from MSI support which appears to once again point to the "it's just how it is with MSI" conclusion:(

 

And I just double-checked, I do have the latest BIOS available for my board (MSI B550 Gaming Plus) 

Really weird I had a MSI board for the AM3+ & FM2+ this was not a issue with those, but to be fair I know MSI boards have a bigger storage chip to store more BIOS code for CPUs so I am gonna make a wild guess and assume it loads all the info on that chip causing it to take twice as long since the chip is twice as big?

[Rukazu_ar]

Hello. Msi B550m mortar wifi here. Same problem, no fast boot. 15-20 Last BIOS time, it takes a loooooong time to POST and show motherboard splash screen (or text).
Today I assembled my GF new pc, with a b550m asus tuf motherboard. Bios time 3-4 seconds, a cheaper and lower tier (at least in VRMs and materials) motherboard boots much more fast... I can't understand...
I need to reduce the post times. any suggestions?

[alyen]

Before 3rd generation Ryzen was available I swear my ASRock B450 booted fast with a 2700x on the older bios. Since upgrading to 3900x it takes like 20 seconds to post. I have been wondering if there are any B550 that can boot faster.

[Sarra]

My Asrock X570m Pro takes about 3 seconds to POST, then another 5-7 seconds to get into Windows. Using the latest BIOS right now. CPU is a 3900XT.

 

Very first boot out of the box took like 2 minutes, but after that, it went a lot faster. Got even better when I updated the BIOS.

[Mark Kaine]

yeap my Ryzen pc takes 19.9s to bios, my low end Intel laptop takes 4.6s

[Rukazu_ar]

13 hours ago, Sarra said:

My Asrock X570m Pro takes about 3 seconds to POST, then another 5-7 seconds to get into Windows. Using the latest BIOS right now. CPU is a 3900XT.

 

Very first boot out of the box took like 2 minutes, but after that, it went a lot faster. Got even better when I updated the BIOS.

So the problem is with the MSI's BIOS. Asus is fast (3 seconds last bios time!), Gigabite and Asrock too...

[Sarra]

32 minutes ago, Rukazu_ar said:

So the problem is with the MSI's BIOS. Asus is fast (3 seconds last bios time!), Gigabite and Asrock too...

Not necessarily.

 

I have an old Xeon system that's set up as a NAS and a basic transcode machine, and I have several SATA controller cards. With their RAID controller enabled, that system takes 2-3 minutes to POST, but with it just set up to host mode (no RAID), it posts in 15 seconds.

 

Beyond that, then yeah, it's probably MSI or whatever.

[Rukazu_ar]

23 minutes ago, Sarra said:

Not necessarily.

 

I have an old Xeon system that's set up as a NAS and a basic transcode machine, and I have several SATA controller cards. With their RAID controller enabled, that system takes 2-3 minutes to POST, but with it just set up to host mode (no RAID), it posts in 15 seconds.

 

Beyond that, then yeah, it's probably MSI or whatever.

with one ssd and one hdd (identical to my GF new setup that I mencioned earlier), I have 4 times slower POST times

[WhitetailAni]

My last BIOS time, according to Task Manager, was 33.7 seconds.

Booting takes ~1 minute.

That's insanely fast compared to what I had before - ~10 minute startup times.

[Sarra]

2 hours ago, Rukazu_ar said:

with one ssd and one hdd (identical to my GF new setup that I mencioned earlier), I have 4 times slower POST times

Have you gone in to your BIOS, selected 'set optimized defaults', rebooted, then gone back in, made any appropriate changes (enabling XMP, for example), then checked to see if that makes any difference?

[Rukazu_ar]

1 hour ago, Sarra said:

Have you gone in to your BIOS, selected 'set optimized defaults', rebooted, then gone back in, made any appropriate changes (enabling XMP, for example), then checked to see if that makes any difference?

Obviously. A lot of times, and a lot of different options. But (according to my research and personal experience), the MSI's POST times seems to be slow... And I do not understand why they don't add the Fast Boot option.