Maximus XIII Hero - Extremely slow to post.

[DarvinAtkeson]

Greetings,

I have the Maximux XIII loaded up with an Intel I9 11th Gen 11,900K, 64 GB RAM, using the onboard Intel UHD Graphics 750 till Nvidia RTX cards return to MSRP prices. For the most part the system runs well except for a few graphics card problems in Photoshop. The real problem is the time to post. I have never had a system that took so long just to get to the post screen. Close to 3 minutes just to see the ASUS logo post and get the option to go into the BIOS. Once it does post it can take another 3 minutes for the post screen to disappear and for Windows to finally start loading. At that that point the speed seems pretty much normal. Running a dual Toshiba SSD SATA RAID 0 setup for speed in Windows. 4 internal SATA drives of various sizes. And 6 external USB 3.0 drives.

Is anyone else seeing extremely long times just to post?
It may be related to a number of USB 3.0 drives (6) connected externally. Does anyone know of any settings to have the BIOS stop checking external drives?
Possibly a setting for locking down the drives so it never looks past the SSD RAID 0?

BIOS seems to hang the longest on B4. It's so slow it's painful. I shouldn't have to wait close to 7 minutes for the system to boot. This should be much faster? My older ASUS I7 4th Gen was far faster to post.

Help!!! Any suggestions welcomed.
Thanks in advance.
Darv

[Nate152]

Hi DarvinAtkeson

Yeah, that's definitely a long wait and could be because of all the drives.

So let's get this right, you have...

2 ssd's in Raid
4 internal drives
6 external drives

12 drives total

What are you looking to do, download the whole Steam Library?

Just kidding, I've never come close to running that many drives so I can't say for sure. But, I would lean towards the six external drives contributing to the long boot time.

I'd try disconnecting all 6 external drives and see how she boots.

[Jimbo93]

Hi Darvin, if the first suggestion does not get your post time down, another user recently found that a bios update helped. It seemed like the ram stability might have been the issue in that case. I’ll see if I can post a link to that thread might be helpful.

Here is that link.*https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?127736-prime-z690-p-d4-wifi-a-5-sec-delay-after-pressing-t...

[DarvinAtkeson]

Jimbo93 wrote:
Hi Darvin, if the first suggestion does not get your post time down, another user recently found that a bios update helped. It seemed like the ram stability might have been the issue in that case. I’ll see if I can post a link to that thread might be helpful.

Here is that link.*https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?127736-prime-z690-p-d4-wifi-a-5-sec-delay-after-pressing-t...

Thanks for the suggestion but that was my first thought too! I am on the current BIOS. Thankfully that wasn't a difficult a process as it was on my previous ASUS Z-87 Deluxe that had dual BIOS chips. I will however check out the thread. Thanks for including it.

-Darv

[DarvinAtkeson]

Nate152 wrote:
Hi DarvinAtkeson

Yeah, that's definitely a long wait and could be because of all the drives.

So let's get this right, you have...

2 ssd's in Raid
4 internal drives
6 external drives

12 drives total

What are you looking to do, download the whole Steam Library?

Just kidding, I've never come close to running that many drives so I can't say for sure. But, I would lean towards the six external drives contributing to the long boot time.

I'd try disconnecting all 6 external drives and see how she boots.

Yes, 12 drives. I had the same drives connected to my ASUS Z-87 Deluxe I7 4th Gen and it would get to the post screen in under 10 seconds and launch into Windows within less than a minute. I would have continued to run that system if not for the Windows 11 requirements.

I do photography and have a Nikon D800E and D850 (roughly 50 Mega Pixel RAW files). Add to it the Photoshop PSD files, the full size JPEG images that go to my website and the reduced JPEG files that I post to the web, then double all that for a backup and it adds up fast. I also do professional renders in Autodesk's 3DS Max but those don't take up all that much space. Then there are several system backups that I keep so I can restore Windows in the event of a crash.

I will have to check out this Steam Library as I am not familiar with it so who knows, you may have just made me have to get more drives. 😉

I will do some testing to see if it is something I can remove from the system but it seems odd that his beautiful motherboard would be so much slower than my ASUS z-87 Deluxe I7 is. Just would have though it would post faster.

Thanks for replying
Darv

[RedSector73]

How are the SATA drives hooked to the system OP. I would be tempted to see if one of them out of the system, testing each one, suddenly reduces the time significantly, which might be indicative of bad data cable.

[DarvinAtkeson]

RedSector73 wrote:
How are the SATA drives hooked to the system OP. I would be tempted to see if one of them out of the system, testing each one, suddenly reduces the time significantly, which might be indicative of bad data cable.

I will check that out. The SATA drives are connected to the six ports. I thought I had put the two Toshiba SSD SATA drives on the lowest numbered ports but I can't swear to that. I was going by the manual but they seem to show up in the BIOS as numbers higher than 0 and 1. I will give it some time trials to see if disconnecting helps any. I was hoping there was something in the BIOS to tell the system to ignore all the external USB drives completely during boot.

My old Z-87 had more SATA connectors than this board and I had them full up and it posted quite fast.

Thanks for the reply.

-Darv

[Nate152]

Ok, so you did have this configuration working before and on an older motherboard yet at that. I'd think it should work with a newer motherboard too.

You could check device manger to see all is good there.

As Jimbo mentioned updating the bios may help.

Code b4 = USB Hot Plug error.

Have you installed the chipset driver?

Would you have a gpu to try from your z-87 motherboard?

[DarvinAtkeson]

Well I have had some luck speeding up the system by removing one SATA drive that seemed to be problematic. It was a backup drive so hopefully when I put my ASUS Z-87 Deluxe back together in a new box I can see if the data on the drive is still available. I don't think it has anything real important. The drive didn't appear to be showing up on the Drive Manager.

So now I am down to 1:17 to post the ASUS logo.
I can reduce it further down to 32 seconds by turning off all the external USB 3.0 drives on the USB hub. But this doesn't answer why the system is so much slower than the ASUS z-87 Deluxe with the same configuration. I suspect there is something in the BIOS that I can toggle off to make it so it doesn't check those drives and lets Windows initialize them instead. If I turn the hub switches on while in Windows the drives come right up.

Any ideas on what settings in the BIOS I might try turning off to speed it up further? I'd really like to get it down to under 30 seconds if possible.

Thanks for all the great help so far.
-Darv

[Nate152]

You're getting it, but as for what settings to try in the bios I'm unsure of.

I don't want to tell you something that could break your raid but disabling fast start up could help with code b4. I'm not sure if disabling CSM would affect your raid but disabling this can help speed up boot time.

I suppose you're looking in the task manager on the start up tab for your boot times.