Asus AM1I-A and Athlon 5350 - USB 3.0 host controller dies

[Tyrel]

Hi!

I have an extremely annoying issue with an Asus AM1i-A mobo and an Athlon 5350 that I've recently purchased. It would serve as a home server, but I never intended to use it on stock speed. This platform / this APU "asks for it", yet overclocking makes it pretty darn' useless. I see many people are overclocking these and I've successfully did so myself (didn't want to push it so hard, only 120 Mhz Bclk), BUT there are 2 things that every overclocker fails to mention:

1. Any Bclk speed above 105 MHz insta-kills the AHCI controller. According to what I've read this behavior is inherited from the FM1 platform and can indeed be surpassed by setting the SATA controller to IDE mode. This is stupid, but I could still live with it, though it would have been nice to know it in advance.
2. However, there is another game-breaking issue for me that made me absolutely lose my mind about this rig that I've recently started referring to as little **** because of this: if you touch the Bclk any way at all, if you change it from 100 MHz to something else, including so minor changes as 99 or 101MHz, then the integrated USB 3.0 xHCI controller blows itself to oblivion. It doesn't die entirely, but instead enters some kind of a safe-mode, falling back to acting as a standard USB 2.0 controller.

Having an USB 3.0 external hard drive that is the main media storage of this system, the above behavior is unacceptable. I've tried different BIOS versions, I've tried changing around A LOT of BIOS settings, tried installing USB 3.0 drivers (there are none for Win8 and above), but nothing helped this far. As soon as APU Frequency (Bclk) leaves its beloved 100MHz, USB 3.0 functionality goes out the window.

Has anyone ever seen something like this? Is there a workaround??

 

[ATMINSIDE]

Have you tried multiplier instead of bclk?

 

[Tyrel]

Yeah well I wanted to but AM1 doesn't really support it. The stock multiplier of the Athlon 5350 is 20.5, whereas the multiplier that it allows me to set manually is 8 - 21. Soo, yeah, 50 MHz is all I can gain from this.

I just don't understand why they advertise their processors and whole product lines saying that of course it's slower than Intel, BUT you CAN OC it... then it turns out that you really cannot. Feels like buying a car then realizing you have to remove the air conditioner to gain +10 horsepower. Like... WTF?...

This was the first time that I've decided to go with AMD instead of Intel, and quite possibly also the last.

 

[Mr.Scott]

Have you tried multiplier instead of bclk?

Multi is capped at 21x......for those who didn't know.
IDE mode is a must for bclk OC'ing.

 

[ATMINSIDE]

Multi is capped at 21x......for those who didn't know.
IDE mode is a must for bclk OC'ing.

Ah, darn

 

[Woomack]

For some reason on my board I could set higher bclk and keep AHCI and other devices to work but I don't remember what I did then. I had AM1I-A and Athlon 5150.
Actually best results are when you use pcie graphics card and then everything on pcie bus is starting to work at higher bclk. Of course when you set server then you don't want to invest in pcie graphics card.
I had no problems with USB on my board when I had overclocked 5150. I haven't been checking anything on 5350 except that AHCI is working and APU is overclocked but I don't remember how high. It's working in my mother's PC right now.

 

[Tyrel]

Well PCI-E graphics card is not an option for me. One of the reasons that made me vote for AMD was that in cases where I need some GPU power the IGPU of the 5350 is sufficient for the job, while a Bay Trail D's IGPU might not. I mean, why would I pick the APU with the strongest GPU of all the low-wattage desktop product lines if I then want to add a dedicated graphics card?

It could be that an active PCI-E magically solves the issues, but for me they still remain. I'm not really bothered by not having AHCI, it's a thing I can live without... but the ****ty USB 3.0 controller that AM1 has... man! What the heck? They couldn't have been serious when they made this thing, come on!
I've noticed that even without any kind of over- or underclocking the USB 3.0 port (even though it stays in USB 3.0 mode) can have some nasty speed issues. This just doesn't cut it...

 

[Johan45]

I can run my AM1M-A at 120 on the FSB in AHCI without any real issues. I can't speak for the USB3.0 since I don't really use it. You could always try a different BIOS, that may help with some issues.

 

[Chupacabra333]

For some reason on my board I could set higher bclk and keep AHCI and other devices to work but I don't remember what I did then. I had AM1I-A and Athlon 5150.
Actually best results are when you use pcie graphics card and then everything on pcie bus is starting to work at higher bclk. Of course when you set server then you don't want to invest in pcie graphics card.
I had no problems with USB on my board when I had overclocked 5150. I haven't been checking anything on 5350 except that AHCI is working and APU is overclocked but I don't remember how high. It's working in my mother's PC right now.

Never updated us on what happened in the RMA process of the Athlon 5350 and the Asus AM1I-A. Any details on what was the flaw? I just ask cause I have the same mobo and Its junk. We had a small discussion on the "AM1 overclocking thread".