When we we see a decent bios update so that ddr5 runs in XMP ?

[Undertoker]

All I’ve experienced with a hero and an extreme z690 board thus far is annoyance and aggro
When will Asus release a bios that actually confirms to its advertised qvl listing ?*
You guys really need to get your act together frankly , it’s damaging your brand *

[adrianpavee]

I've just hit the 48hr stable mark with c-states turned off, so going to start testing with it turned on and logging CPU vcore voltage to see if that's what's causing the lock ups. Hopefully we can collectively get to the bottom of this, since Asus seems to be kinda slow moving.

[trihy]

Turning off c states or using fixed voltage are some kind of workarounds in the meantime.

Didn't expect to have so many problems with this platform. Random freezes are painful. Just hearing some music and random freeze with a beeeeeeee sound, what a pain.

Couldn't find more info about idle voltage. But clearly random freezes at idle are cpu bound.

[adrianpavee]

Sharing more information from last night's testing.

At least in my case I can clearly say it didn't seem to be low voltage that was causing the freezes, or at least... Not what HWinfo was recording. Yes it DID freeze again with C-states on when left idle, so I can at least confirm that works as a solution for me. Here's the Vcore values as recorded by HWinfo.

MAX - 1.279
Min - 0.719
Avg - 1.012
(Note, in Windows, I have basically zero power saving, everything is set to be at full 100%, no monitor standby even.)

Looking at the graph as well at time of freeze... Voltage never dropped below 0.7, at least not to the very very low numbers you guys were getting. I'm not sure why turning off C-States has actually given me stability, I suspect perhaps it DOES have to to with voltage somehow but I'm not sure. 0.7xx does not seem too low to me, it's only slightly lower than the lowest in spec (0.8) for the CPU. I don't know why in my case but C-states is somehow causing freezes. Remember I have no OC, no voltage offset at all, everything is stock except XMP II is enabled. I figure I have to get everything stable before I attempt any kind of OC-ing!

So, the mystery continues for me. Don't know what exactly but it my case it does not appear that C-states is lowering voltage too much and causing freezing. It could be a different voltage value I wasn't graphing, but yes... For now I have a solution that works for me. I hope it works for you too.

[trihy]

I guess it depends on which clock the cpu was when you were getting 0.7xx

Maybe voltage transitions are having some problems on this boards?

I read many oc guides and all says freeze are related to low cpu voltage. Bsod to unstable ram. But could be wrong.

Also some users getting 0.2xx drops and others 0.7xx Doesn't seem right.

[adrianpavee]

Yes very true. If I had to guess, what data we have gathered so far definitely point to voltage transitions causing instability... Unfortunately I wasn't monitoring CPU clocks simultaneously, though I could... For now though I think I'm going to enjoy the machine that I finally managed to get stable after 1 week of troubleshooting! 😄 I'll get back to testing at a later date, and probably post findings here. Don't let me stop you guys though, I'll still watch this thread for any updates and try to help when possible.

[spatula75]

adrianpavee wrote:
Yes very true. If I had to guess, what data we have gathered so far definitely point to voltage transitions causing instability... Unfortunately I wasn't monitoring CPU clocks simultaneously, though I could... For now though I think I'm going to enjoy the machine that I finally managed to get stable after 1 week of troubleshooting! 😄 I'll get back to testing at a later date, and probably post findings here. Don't let me stop you guys though, I'll still watch this thread for any updates and try to help when possible.

The puzzling thing in my case was that I had about two months of zero problems whatsoever, followed by a transition to problems almost like clockwork every three days. My RAM doesn't support XMP at all; it's super basic Samsung DDR5 4800, and it survived fine with 16 hours of Memtest86 pro.

All the trouble I've been having seems to vaguely coincide more with a Windows update circa April 5 than anything else, but I haven't been able to determine why for certain (yet).

[spatula75]

adrianpavee wrote:
Yes very true. If I had to guess, what data we have gathered so far definitely point to voltage transitions causing instability... Unfortunately I wasn't monitoring CPU clocks simultaneously, though I could...

FWIW, I bought a motherboard from a different manufacturer, and I can definitively say that Vcore never drops below 0.750v on this system, which has the same CPU, memory, and drives as the previous system; only the motherboard is different. I had it running all night watching Vcore, and exactly 0.750 is the minimum value. On my Z690-G board, it was quite common to drop down to 0.250, sometimes even less.

I don't think that was the cause of the problems I was having, but I'm sure it didn't help.

[trihy]

Thanks for confirm. Drops below 0.300v on vcore will never make a system stable, with any ddr5. It's way out of specs and we dont know what damage can do.

Please report this to Asus. I did and they ignore it. But they cant ignore us all.

[adrianpavee]

Just thought I would post a quick update on the ROG Strix Z690 Gaming E. The temporary RAM kit (Hynix, 2x 8GB Kingston 5600) has been replaced now with a new kit (Hynix, 2x 16GB XPG 6000) without any problems. Running XMP 2 without any problems, C-states is still turned off. System seems to be very stable, problem seems to have been solved by turning off C-states. No more random freezes during idle. I'm not sure what was causing it since my voltages were not too low but, I'm not complaining since the system is up and running fine now. Staying with BIOS 1304 for now and will wait for a better more stable update after 1403.

CPU waterblock has arrived and GPU and CPU loop are both active, temperatures are great, 1-2C near ambient when idle. Probably going to try a mild CPU overclock soon. So far so good! Hope everyone can eventually achieve this kind of stability running XMP.

[trihy]

Still nothing about this.

If you get crazy low cpu voltages, better RMA the board, so they learn the hard way.