Asus dark hero startup issue ?

[karlosfandango]

Hi all
I have a Asus Crosshair VIII DarkHhero ...with an AMD 5900X , 32gb of Gskils ram

Had a few times over last few months since recieving board where the system wont power on.
You press power switch on case and nothing .
You press power button on motherboard ...nothing ....and its lit up white ...all rgb is working ( on when powered off )
If i turn off PSU and back then power it back on ...system boots fine.
It can then be fine for say 4 weeks ...then happen out the blue again.
Was ok with old motherboard....so only things that have changed is MB and CPU.

Tried reflashing bios back to earlier version ...no different.
Had new graphics card since last time so rules that out.
Tried taking ram sticks out ...no difference.

Seems starnge how can run for weeks without issue ( but dont use it every day )

Im using an EVGA supernova 850W PSU.

Not major issue as all have to do is power off PSU and all good again ...but got to be something wrong.
Asus say sounds like something tripping PSU protection ...will have to try unpluging 24 pin and 8 pin cables next time , then plug back in to see if motherboard or psu .

Any help most appreciated.
Karl

[Xairoo]

Hi STARRAIN@ROG,

did you guys already received my board? I returned it on 28.10.2021, you already have the RMA number.
Guess the RMA stuff would not be transported using a ship 😉 so you should hopefully have it.

I haven't done a BIOS reset before returning it. Anyway, this doesn't make a difference.

Let me know if I could help.

Anyway... still no problems with the new board.

[STARRAIN_ROG]

Hi lexis-ermakov,
Do you also face not startup issue after shut down and have to turn off and turn on power supply to boot?
How often do the issue occur? Do it occur every time you shut down the pc?
Thank you.

[lexis-ermakov]

STARRAIN@ROG wrote:
Hi lexis-ermakov,
Do you also face not startup issue after shut down and have to turn off and turn on power supply to boot?
How often do the issue occur? Do it occur every time you shut down the pc?
Thank you.

Yes, everything is exactly like that. Short-term shutdown (10-30 minutes) everything is fine, if 8-10 hours it does not turn on. Capacitors?

[STARRAIN_ROG]

Hi all,
If the issue occurs often on your ROG CROSSHAIR VIII DARK motherboard, and the bios is updated to 3081 with all default setting but the issue still occurs, could you please send RMA and PM me the following information?
- the serial number and RMA number of the motherboard
- How often do the issue occur? cannot wake up or cannot start up?
- bios version and bios settings
- the pc specs of the pc
Thank you very much.

[von_nihil]

Hi all,

I can also confirm that I have experienced this issue; now on two Dark Hero boards -- very disappointing.

In June I assembled a new system using the Dark Hero as the basis. I immediately experienced the problem described in this thread: that occasionally after shutting down and/or going to sleep the machine could not be started again (by the power button, keyboard, etc) without isolating the PSU from the power source for sufficient time for the motherboard to fully discharge -- then the PC could be started again as normal. This would happy approximately 1 in 10 power-down or sleep events.

I contacted local Asus support (Netherlands) and discussed the issue. They suggested that I return the board to the store, as it was new. I did so, and got a refund. I then bought the same board (Dark Hero) from a different vendor -- the issue was instantly resolved and I could not replicate the problem again after weeks of use.


Unfortunately, after around three months of using the new Dark Hero board, the same issue has begin to re-appear. Very sad.


Edit: to clarify -- during this ordeal, to make doubly sure the motherboard was the issue, I've independently swapped out everything else in the system one-by-one and can reproduce the issue. Everything except the CPU (as I don't have another CPU or X570 MB to test). But there are not other issues in regular use, under load or otherwise

The fact that this issue appeared again after some time makes me think it is probably some kind of hardware degradation, but I suppose it could still be something odd in the BIOS firmware. [I'm a computer engineer and design medical systems for a big tech company -- just my intuition based on experience]

I could return my current board for replacement again but since this is my second board, I have become doubtful that the replacement will resolve issue. Is it just going to occur again after some time? I would like some more insight from Asus before I waste more time on disassembling my PC and waiting for RMAs. I have the feeling that, if this is a hardware issue, it is a fundamental design flaw.

[As a side note, and as someone in this thread already pointed out, you can observe immediately whether the power-down/sleep failed: by setting the motherboard aura lights to be in 'stealth mode' during sleep/power-off (bios setting), all of the lights should go out during a successful sleep/power-off -- in the case of this failure, the 'start' button light on the motherboard remains on immediately, indicating that this fault has occurred and the system will not restart in either a power-down or sleep. At least in my experience, the fault does not occur as the result of accumulation of time after sleep/power-off but immediately at the moment of the power event.]

@ASUS: do you recommend that I spend time returning this board again? Do you have confidence that board number 3 will be different from the others? i.e. Has any relevant issue been resolved in production that could affect this?

[von_nihil]

By the way, in the first round of my 'dark' experiences, I discovered that this exact issue is not only affecting the Dark Hero boards but also similar boards, take for example the regular 'Hero' variety -- you can see a nice documentation of exactly the same issue below:

https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/od1118/asus_x570_rog_crosshair_viii_hero_wifi_wont_pos...

Chipset issue? Common shared components? Common BIOS issue?

This is a very specific problem that seems to not be very rare, and even recur on multiple boards for a single user (see my previous post). Asus need to take this seriously or risk alienating loyal customers.

[JerJer123]

von_nihil wrote:
By the way, in the first round of my 'dark' experiences, I discovered that this exact issue is not only affecting the Dark Hero boards but also similar boards, take for example the regular 'Hero' variety -- you can see a nice documentation of exactly the same issue below:

https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupport/comments/od1118/asus_x570_rog_crosshair_viii_hero_wifi_wont_pos...

Chipset issue? Common shared components? Common BIOS issue?

This is a very specific problem that seems to not be very rare, and even recur on multiple boards for a single user (see my previous post). Asus need to take this seriously or risk alienating loyal customers.

Thank you so much for posting be this. The poster also provided a video which is exactly what I've been experiencing:



I've already RMAd my motherboard, but hopefully this can provide some insight to Asus staff

[Hardstyle]

von_nihil wrote:
Hi all,

I can also confirm that I have experienced this issue; now on two Dark Hero boards -- very disappointing.

In June I assembled a new system using the Dark Hero as the basis. I immediately experienced the problem described in this thread: that occasionally after shutting down and/or going to sleep the machine could not be started again (by the power button, keyboard, etc) without isolating the PSU from the power source for sufficient time for the motherboard to fully discharge -- then the PC could be started again as normal. This would happy approximately 1 in 10 power-down or sleep events.

I contacted local Asus support (Netherlands) and discussed the issue. They suggested that I return the board to the store, as it was new. I did so, and got a refund. I then bought the same board (Dark Hero) from a different vendor -- the issue was instantly resolved and I could not replicate the problem again after weeks of use.


Unfortunately, after around three months of using the new Dark Hero board, the same issue has begin to re-appear. Very sad.


Edit: to clarify -- during this ordeal, to make doubly sure the motherboard was the issue, I've independently swapped out everything else in the system one-by-one and can reproduce the issue. Everything except the CPU (as I don't have another CPU or X570 MB to test). But there are not other issues in regular use, under load or otherwise

The fact that this issue appeared again after some time makes me think it is probably some kind of hardware degradation, but I suppose it could still be something odd in the BIOS firmware. [I'm a computer engineer and design medical systems for a big tech company -- just my intuition based on experience]

I could return my current board for replacement again but since this is my second board, I have become doubtful that the replacement will resolve issue. Is it just going to occur again after some time? I would like some more insight from Asus before I waste more time on disassembling my PC and waiting for RMAs. I have the feeling that, if this is a hardware issue, it is a fundamental design flaw.

[As a side note, and as someone in this thread already pointed out, you can observe immediately whether the power-down/sleep failed: by setting the motherboard aura lights to be in 'stealth mode' during sleep/power-off (bios setting), all of the lights should go out during a successful sleep/power-off -- in the case of this failure, the 'start' button light on the motherboard remains on immediately, indicating that this fault has occurred and the system will not restart in either a power-down or sleep. At least in my experience, the fault does not occur as the result of accumulation of time after sleep/power-off but immediately at the moment of the power event.]

@ASUS: do you recommend that I spend time returning this board again? Do you have confidence that board number 3 will be different from the others? i.e. Has any relevant issue been resolved in production that could affect this?

Hello Von Nihil,
Thanks you for your great feedback. I get the same issue untill I changed the board with RMA. Since no more booting problem.
You scared me a lot with your 2d board who bugged after 3 months...
I think you"r right with the componant degradation theory. My first board destroyed the CORSAIR RAM I used. The 4x8 corsair ram was working perfectly with my old setup. Just after being plugged in the first board they were instantly broken (crashs, and failed memtest....) Here my post :
https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?124986-Asus-ROG-Crosshair-VIII-Dark-Hero-and-RAM-issues-(L...

Can you tell us what's the QCOD of you'r motherboard ?

[STARRAIN_ROG]

Hi von_nihil,
Does the issues only occur with stealth mode or occur with bios all default settings as well?
Thank you.

[von_nihil]

STARRAIN@ROG wrote:
Hi von_nihil,
Does the issues only occur with stealth mode or occur with bios all default settings as well?
Thank you.

It occurs in every BIOS configuration that I have tried. This includes 'optimized defaults' and a lot of other experimental variations. The only significant factor in stealth mode is that you can observe when the fault has occurred immediately by noticing full stealth-mode was not reached ('Start' button light remains lit).