AM5 mobo swap - 20 minute boot times and chugging CPU

[RedTeamBry]

Hey guys,

TLDR; upgraded from AM4 to AM5 with no other changes, got crappy performance and excruciating boot times. Please help.

 

I just upgraded my Windows 10 desktop from a Ryzen 5700x on an Asus Rog Strix x570 gaming mobo, to a new 7950x and an MSI Mag x670e tomahawk motherboard, and it's been rough going since then.

 

The windows boot process takes 18 minutes, no exaggeration. There is over a minute of BIOS time every boot, too, which is long but not my main concern with the windows boot taking so long. Once we finally get into the OS, everything stutters a couple times a second at random intervals. Task manager shows CPU usage spiking randomly to 80+ on random cores the entire time the system is running.

 

I did not do any prep before swapping the mobo/CPU - no SysPrep or anything - but I already activated a new Windows product key.

 

The system seems to run normally aside from the constant stuttering - no major errors, all drivers and devices look good, etc..

 

I already ran the typical SFC scan, chkdsk, Dism restorehealth command... I am out of ideas. Please let me know if you've heard of anything like this or have fixed this before. Any shot-in-the-dark ideas are welcome, too.

 

• Windows 10 Pro 64-bit, 19045.3324
• Ryzen 7950x, stock clocks
• MSI Mag x670E Tomahawk Wifi, BIOS 1.3 AGESA 1.0.0.7a
• 4x16 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR5 3600 (expo off)
• EVGA RTX 3080 FTW3 Ultra
• Corsair Force mp600 1tb SSD boot drive
• 2x Intel SSDsc2BP 240GB SSD
• 2x Western Digital WD 6003FRYZ 6 TB HDD
• Corsair hx1000i 1000w Platinum psu

Edited August 10, 2023 by RedTeamBry
PC specs

[emosun]

does it take a minute to get into the bios with the drive unplugged , did you check if the boards bios version is compatible with the cpu

[RedTeamBry]

With no drives plugged in, getting into BIOS is fast. The motherboard is compatible with the CPU, and I started it with the latest, beta release BIOS update from MSI which had the same problem, then downgraded my BIOS to the latest non-beta release available (currently installed).

 

Outside of trying to boot to Windows, things seem normal. Windows install media and winRE does not have the same stuttering as on the windows desktop.

[Dedayog]

26 minutes ago, RedTeamBry said:

With no drives plugged in, getting into BIOS is fast. The motherboard is compatible with the CPU, and I started it with the latest, beta release BIOS update from MSI which had the same problem, then downgraded my BIOS to the latest non-beta release available (currently installed).

 

Outside of trying to boot to Windows, things seem normal. Windows install media and winRE does not have the same stuttering as on the windows desktop.

Did you not reinstall Windows?  While removing all but the boot disk, so Windows doesn't put any partitions on other drives.

[RedTeamBry]

1 minute ago, Dedayog said:

Did you not reinstall Windows?  While removing all but the boot disk, so Windows doesn't put any partitions on other drives.

I did not reinstall Windows. I've done motherboard upgrades before without reinstalling Windows, and I've heard of people even going from Intel to AMD motherboard without wiping their windows install. If it ends up being necessary, I'll go that route, but I was under the impression that this kind of upgrade should be doable without an OS reinstall.

[Dedayog]

4 minutes ago, RedTeamBry said:

I did not reinstall Windows. I've done motherboard upgrades before without reinstalling Windows, and I've heard of people even going from Intel to AMD motherboard without wiping their windows install. If it ends up being necessary, I'll go that route, but I was under the impression that this kind of upgrade should be doable without an OS reinstall.

Did you at least get all the motherboard support files?  Granted it should work as you say, but there is a reason we say to use DDU for GPU swaps, and why I asked about Windows.

 

Yes, it CAN be just fine, but it's never suggested to do it that way because there MAY  be an issue.  This could be that one issue.  Or it could be a CPU or motherboard fail, but at least take the Windows out of the equation.

[RedTeamBry]

1 minute ago, Dedayog said:

Did you at least get all the motherboard support files?  Granted it should work as you say, but there is a reason we say to use DDU for GPU swaps, and why I asked about Windows.

Yes, I downloaded all the motherboard drivers and utilities from MSI and installed them right after the first successful boot on the new system. I also had some armory create junk left over from the Asus mobo that I uninstalled.

 

Is there a recommended "clean install" method for motherboard and CPU drivers, like there usually is with GPU driver installs?

[RedTeamBry]

As a new discovery, the stuttering and random CPU usage does not occur in safe mode or safe mode with networking. Reboots while safe mode is enabled also doesn't take 20 minutes like normal boot does, though it still takes a few minutes.

 

To my knowledge, this indicates some kind of driver or Windows configuration issue? Rather than faulty or incompatible hardware?

[problemsolver]

35 minutes ago, RedTeamBry said:

As a new discovery, the stuttering and random CPU usage does not occur in safe mode or safe mode with networking. Reboots while safe mode is enabled also doesn't take 20 minutes like normal boot does, though it still takes a few minutes.

 

To my knowledge, this indicates some kind of driver or Windows configuration issue? Rather than faulty or incompatible hardware?

Yes everyone in this thread is correct (including you about safe mode).  You're re-using an old OS that was installed on a previous generation of hardware.  In addition, the title of the thread should NOT be AM5 Mobo swap because an AM4 mobo being replaced with a AM5 Mobo is a huge change.  You also changed the CPU since AM4 CPUs won't fit in an AM5 socket.  The thread title should be:  Used old SSD in new build without OS re-install.

 

 Safe mode doesn't load any of the (incorrect) drivers, so I'm not surprised it works better.

If you don't want to be troubleshooting issues from now until the end of time, you should install Windows fresh.

 

That being said, if you really want to play with fire, you need to:

1. Go to Control Panel and uninstall any device drivers that are removable from there
2. Uninstall all RGB software you may have
3. Uninstall & re-install things like Logitech G-Hub, and any other software that interacts with drivers in the OS
4. Go into Device Manager and remove most drivers, from chipset, so USB, to NIC etc.
   1. I don't have to time to write-up a full walkthrough... if you remove the wrong driver the computer may crash or not boot
5. Install the correct drivers in Device Manager
6. Usual suspects will be:
   1. AMD Chipset Driver
   2. Storage Drivers
      1. I.e. if you installed the Samsung NVME driver, need to uninstall it and re-install it
   3. Need to use DDU to remove all graphics drivers and re-install
   4. USB host controller drivers also need to go (and probably a lot of other stuff)

Sorry for the very vague and non-exhaustive write-up, but it's just too complicated to summarize quickly and depends on what software and hardware you've installed.

[RedTeamBry]

31 minutes ago, problemsolver said:

Yes everyone in this thread is correct (including you about safe mode).  You're re-using an old OS that was installed on a previous generation of hardware.  In addition, the title of the thread should NOT be AM5 Mobo swap because an AM4 mobo being replaced with a AM5 Mobo is a huge change.  You also changed the CPU since AM4 CPUs won't fit in an AM5 socket.  The thread title should be:  Used old SSD in new build without OS re-install.

 

 Safe mode doesn't load any of the (incorrect) drivers, so I'm not surprised it works better.

If you don't want to be troubleshooting issues from now until the end of time, you should install Windows fresh.

 

That being said, if you really want to play with fire, you need to:

1. Go to Control Panel and uninstall any device drivers that are removable from there
2. Uninstall all RGB software you may have
3. Uninstall & re-install things like Logitech G-Hub, and any other software that interacts with drivers in the OS
4. Go into Device Manager and remove most drivers, from chipset, so USB, to NIC etc.
   1. I don't have to time to write-up a full walkthrough... if you remove the wrong driver the computer may crash or not boot
5. Install the correct drivers in Device Manager
6. Usual suspects will be:
   1. AMD Chipset Driver
   2. Storage Drivers
      1. I.e. if you installed the Samsung NVME driver, need to uninstall it and re-install it
   3. Need to use DDU to remove all graphics drivers and re-install
   4. USB host controller drivers also need to go (and probably a lot of other stuff)

Sorry for the very vague and non-exhaustive write-up, but it's just too complicated to summarize quickly and depends on what software and hardware you've installed.

Thanks for the reply. As I have been going through Windows and stopping most of the 3rd party services and killing their associated processes, I noticed some of the slow stutters and big CPU use spikes going away, so I fear you may be right. I'll start going through the drivers and programs and ripping out/reinstalling each one and hope that makes a significant difference. Reinstalling Windows is something I can do down the road, but I need this PC working for this week at least.

[RedTeamBry]

After removing many drivers, when I finally got down to removing VoiceMeeter audio drivers from the computer, I finally saw the CPU usage drop to 0% and reboots finish much quicker. Not to say the other device drivers wouldn't have caused some issues, too, but it seems like the Voice Meeter drivers were the main culprit.

 

Thank you for pointing me onto the right path @problemsolver. 

 

 

[problemsolver]

3 hours ago, RedTeamBry said:

After removing many drivers, when I finally got down to removing VoiceMeeter audio drivers from the computer, I finally saw the CPU usage drop to 0% and reboots finish much quicker. Not to say the other device drivers wouldn't have caused some issues, too, but it seems like the Voice Meeter drivers were the main culprit.

 

Thank you for pointing me onto the right path @problemsolver. 

 

 

Thank you for the follow up! Since you mentioned VoiceMeeter, I'm sure you'll be doing it, but make sure you uninstall any mobo audio drivers & install the correct ones for your mobo (and any audio periphals).

 

Glad it worked out for you!