ASUS Crosshair VI Hero BIOS Brick

ARGH. I got it in my head at some point that "Safe Boot" was the equivalent of Clear CMOS on this board. But looking at the diagram again, Clear CMOS is on the BACK, not the inside. When Safe Boot didn't work I gave up and re-flashed. So, more likely there's an issue with Safe Boot that Clear CMOS would have fixed.

Crap, I bet that's it. I feel real dumb right now lol. Still, it doesn't help my issue that changing settings borks everything.

To answer your other questions, I have tried setting DOCP, but quickly gave up on that. The only things I've touched are BLCK, DRAM frequency and Core multiplier. I recognize that those three are usually not enough for an overclock, but it worked fine on 0601. But, then again, the voltage is pretty high by default on 0601, so that might explain why I didn't need to change anything else. (It seems to run between 1.35 and 1.45v, which seems really high compared to my old Westmere, which ran at 4.4GHz with 1.32V)

Maybe that's why I found 0601 so "stable"? (Because all the voltages default really high, which allows overclocking without changing many settings?)

I just assumed that leaving voltages on Auto would work for this board because of Ryzen's XFR feature. And that seemed to be the case for 0601... I think I'm starting to see the issue now. None of this explains the oscillating temps on 1001, but still, I'm starting to see where I went wrong.

Update: Clear CMOS was the answer! I had tried "Reset to Optimized Defaults" after flashing the bios, but not that. So, 1001 sort of works for me now.

Temperature runs really hot, even at the BIOS, but overclocking is working for me now.

The 20c offset seems to be a real thing. Either that or in 1001 everything runs 20 degrees hotter. Where did the info about a 20degree offset come from? Is that confirmed?

My OC settings (4GHz, 3000MHz DRAM) are stable, but at 82c, which I'm not comfortable with. It was 63c with 0601, so here's the question: Was 0601 misreporting the temperature? Has it been running at 82 all along?

If not, I'm fine with using manual fan settings and running at "82" if it's TRULY 62. What's the scoop on that?

(Thanks for the help btw, Clear CMOS was a godsend!)

- - - Updated - - -

NM, answered my own question. Ok, I'll run at "82", lol

https://community.amd.com/community/gaming/blog/2017/03/13/amd-ryzen-community-update?sf62109582=1

The latest BIOS should be showing the correct temperatures now. But I could be wrong, the OCN thread is hitting like 100 pages a day now. I can't keep reading it.

I still hate the latest BIOS, I am on board 3 now and have tried every BIOS available. The 1001 and 0038 actually seem to clock worse with my chip.

cdawall said:

I still hate the latest BIOS, I am on board 3 now and have tried every BIOS available. The 1001 and 0038 actually seem to clock worse with my chip.

Click to expand...

I'm with you there, I've went back to 0902 for now

I am just going to give up again. Hopefully by the 25th something useful will be out so I can finish the competition I am in. This is getting stupid.

There are already benching comps with Zen? Man this thing is too new and too many boards have issues. I can't imagine HWBOT allowing validation atm with some of these board combinations.

Yeah, temps are still misreported in 1001. But that's to be expected given AMD's statement to that effect. Both the BIOS and all software tools that report temperature will have to use the new method to work correctly.

So far, now that I'm taking advantage of Clear CMOS, 1001 is working out nicely, if I just pretend that it's normal for my rig to report 78c temps at full load. I'm running 3.8GHz base, 4.2GHz boost, 3028MHz DRAM.

I chose this rather than run at fixed 4.0GHz because it is my current theory that this gives better results for gaming. When only one core is fully utilized it should run that core at 4.2GHz.

Most games have a single thread that bottlenecks the CPU. So... in theory this will boost the bottleneck thread to 4.2GHz, which should result in better FPS than running all 8 cores at 4.0Ghz, and keeps my temps under "80".

I haven't had time to test that theory in games yet, but hopefully I will tonight.

I still yearn for the temp issue to be fixed, because my crappy 92mm fan (ZALMAN CNPS 5X Performa) is really loud at 2800RPM lol. It's tolerable unless I bench though. I know it's running faster than I need it to, but I can't bring myself to reduce the speed until the temps issue is resolved.

Dolk said:

There are already benching comps with Zen? Man this thing is too new and too many boards have issues. I can't imagine HWBOT allowing validation atm with some of these board combinations.

Click to expand...

This is at my job. It is a single combo strix 1070/1800x/CH6H

My BIOS bricked my board as well. Dreaded "Auto updating BIOS..." It was stuck on that message for hours. I cleared the CMOS the old fashioned way by unplugging the PSU, and removing the CMOS battery for over 24 hours. The board RGB lights would light up but no matter what it would not power on. I even manually jumpered the "on/off" pins on the motherboard with a tweaker. I have since arranged for RMA with Asus and now the status is "Material/spare part(s) shortage. Item is on order and/or incoming." Been on that status for a week.

Same with me J-Bo. We will probably both get our sometime next week. Stores are expected to get another shipment sometime in the first week of April.

Dolk said:

Same with me J-Bo. We will probably both get our sometime next week. Stores are expected to get another shipment sometime in the first week of April.

Click to expand...

Man, they really underestimated things didn't they.

Well either that or they expected surges with a ceiling at a certain point.

It could simply come down to copper allocation for each company. Who knows, there are so many factors for board manufacturing these days that if a copper mine had a bad day, it could trickle down to a similar scenario.

Or it may just be that with so many RMAs and negative publicity about the motherboard's issues, they've just been holding on to their inventory until they come up with a fix. Why would Asus want to continue shipping a $250+ motherboard with a proclivity for turning into a brick?

They may have done that at a certain point, but not continuously over weeks. There may be BIOS issues that are "software" related that cause issues to a small portion of the people that buy the boards. This give reason for ASUS to conitnue to ship.

They may have held off for a week to update boards that were being shipped and arriving once the BIOS issue was found, but they would never hold off for a long time. This is a supply issue, not a hold off issue.

Source: I work in the industry that designs motherboards for servers. A similar issues have happened here and different procedures have been taken.

I have my fingers Crossed Dolk. This MSI X370 Gaming Pro Carbon has been a decent board but lacks overclocking tools the CH6 offers.

Dolk said:

They may have done that at a certain point, but not continuously over weeks. There may be BIOS issues that are "software" related that cause issues to a small portion of the people that buy the boards. This give reason for ASUS to conitnue to ship.

They may have held off for a week to update boards that were being shipped and arriving once the BIOS issue was found, but they would never hold off for a long time. This is a supply issue, not a hold off issue.

Source: I work in the industry that designs motherboards for servers. A similar issues have happened here and different procedures have been taken.

Click to expand...

From what has been experienced here and elsewhere it appears to be more than just a bad BIOS. People update the BIOS and it runs OK for hours or days and then BIOS bricks? Seems as if there might be a hardware engineering deficiency in the circuit design for that to happen. You think it's just software related? You must be a hardware engineer then - they always blame the software.

DaveB said:

From what has been experienced here and elsewhere it appears to be more than just a bad BIOS. People update the BIOS and it runs OK for hours or days and then BIOS bricks? Seems as if there might be a hardware engineering deficiency in the circuit design for that to happen. You think it's just software related? You must be a hardware engineer then - they always blame the software.

Click to expand...

Passive aggressiveness much?

Software controlled voltages can kill lots of stuff... Especially when it is coded bad. Just saying...

That would be a testing problem then....

J-Bo said:

That would be a testing problem then....

Click to expand...

And the motherboard manufacturers had approximately 3 weeks since the final revision of of Ryzen (from eng. samples to retail samples) if multiple sources are to be considered. How much time do you think they had to perform these tests? Don't you think that would be a fairly short time for a product such as a motherboard?