Crosshair VIII Dark Hero - Randomly hardlocks

[D3hum4niz3d]

Hello,

I own two Crosshair Dark Hero boards (and a Strix X570-e that has never let me down) and both have the same two issues.

The issues being random hardlocking (requires powercycling the PSU for the system to get back up), which happened more frequently as I ran overclocked memory and a static noise when moving cursor on the right audio channel of the motherboard audio header. Note: the hardlocking was also happening when running completely stock settings.

Setup is powered by a Thermaltake Toughpower GF1 750W PSU, GPU is a Strix 5700XT.

The first board, I purchased originally in January 2021 and all was good with that board until I actually tried running XMP with a Samsung B-Die kit (HX432C16PB3K2 - Arguably garbage tier, but I didn't know any better) and a 3100, which was a placeholder for my current CPU, a 5900X. It would sporadically hardlock with XMP enabled. I went as far as RMA'ing it and the same stuff kept happening. Then, I went with a completely different kit, with Hynix DJR (F4-4000C18Q32GVK) and it still did the same thing. I later tried both CPU's and RAM kits and crosschecked, and it still kept happening. I gave the board for an RMA at my retailer, and they sent it to an ASUS repair center in the Czech Republic - The note was that there was no issue found. Since then, it kept repeating more often - even a couple times a day.

Then I switched back to an older motherboard, namely a Strix X570-e that never any issues. I even ran my manual RAM OC on that board with no issues at all and it never hardlocked! Not only that, there was no issue with static noise when moving the cursor on the right audio channel. Ran for a month on this setup and was really annoyed by the PCH fan whine, but whatever.

Then I purchased at an outlet another Dark Hero for crosstesting - and first thing I noticed, is that the electical noise on the right audio channel is still present. Still, I said to myself, it will probably not matter. I proceeded to set up the RAM OC and everything worked just fine with no hiccups for a month.

Until this morning. I left the PC in sleep mode, and what do I wake up to? Hardlocked with orange light and 00 Qcode.

This wouldn't be an issue for me, if the only thing I would be doing on this machine was bull****ting around in Cyberbug or whatever - but I'm actually also using it for school / work.

Please, someone help me here. I'm really so done with all of this.

Kind regards,
Matt / D3

[Megascrypt]

D3hum4niz3d wrote:
It's most likely a faulty ceramic capacitor on the memory circuit. I'll be giving one of my dark hero boards to a technician (has all the necessary diagnostic tools for this job) and will update accordingly with what they find.

Whether is that or something else we wont know till Asus addresses it. That is why I asked if by serial # or production date on the box and the boards that we currently own can be distinguish wherever this has been fixed in later production and our current boards are either clear or effected.

As I said, I have new board now that has 0 issues, but is that ticking bomb, or is that a board that has been already fixed, we wont know and despite the fact I have asked # of times, my question has been ignored.

[Megascrypt]

Whether is that or something else we wont know till Asus addresses it. That is why I asked if by serial # or production date on the box and the boards that we currently own can be distinguish wherever this has been fixed in later production and our current boards are either clear or effected.
As I said, I have new board now that has 0 issues, but is that ticking bomb, or is the board that has been already fixed.

[STARRAIN_ROG]

Hi Megascrypt,
Thank you for your information.
We will consult our tech team more about it.

[Megascrypt]

Thank you I appreciate your effort of trying to help.

[STARRAIN_ROG]

Hi Megascrypt,
Our tech team have tested ROG CROSSHAIR VIII DARK HERO motherboard at hand. Since we don't have the same ram model CORSAIR Vengeance LPX 64GB (4 x 16GB) CMK64GX4M4B3200C16, tested CMK32GX4M2B3200C16*4 instead with 5950X CPU but cannot reproduce BSOD or restart issue on bios 4021 under following tests.
- enable DOCP 3200 and able to boot into windows
- run CINEBENCH R23 for 80 minutes (10 minutes test for twice+ 60 minutes aging test)

As you mentioned the issues persist after downgrade bios, it is possible compatible issue or some components like CPU or ram are not stable.
If you would like to upgrade to bios 4021, but still have the same issues, we would suggest to cross check other components like CPU, ram or PSU.
Thank you.

[Megascrypt]

STARRAIN@ROG wrote:
Hi Megascrypt,
Our tech team have tested ROG CROSSHAIR VIII DARK HERO motherboard at hand. Since we don't have the same ram model CORSAIR Vengeance LPX 64GB (4 x 16GB) CMK64GX4M4B3200C16, tested CMK32GX4M2B3200C16*4 instead with 5950X CPU but cannot reproduce BSOD or restart issue on bios 4021 under following tests.
- enable DOCP 3200 and able to boot into windows
- run CINEBENCH R23 for 80 minutes (10 minutes test for twice+ 60 minutes aging test)

As you mentioned the issues persist after downgrade bios, it is possible compatible issue or some components like CPU or ram are not stable.
If you would like to upgrade to bios 4021, but still have the same issues, we would suggest to cross check other components like CPU, ram or PSU.
Thank you.

Hello,

Thank you. Although, I still strongly believe that its either Bios 4201 or board or perhaps both.
I'm not the only one that have that issue, but again, I'm on bios 4006 for almost 4 weeks and so far very stable with absolutely 0 sign of issues, but there is a lot users that have Crosshair VIII Hero /Dark and either 3900X/5900X or 5950X that after updating to 4201 have similar issues.

Here are only few links for your future reference when after updating to 4201 some people exhibit all sort of different issues, might not be reboots and BSOD's, but other things, so all kinds of different small and bigger issues relation to bios 4201 and even after going back to their earlier properly working Bios, the issue would still persists...I still standby by what I said in my first post, 4201 brakes things to irreversible state that cannot be fix, all those users and relation to reboots, BSOD's weird restarts and shutdowns!.... Its has to do in combination within the boards themselves and Bios

https://linustechtips.com/topic/1438982-asus-crosshair-viii-hero-new-bios-boot-problem-4201-agesa-12...
https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?128867-BIOS-4201-Destroyed-Windows-on-Crosshair-VIII-Dark-...
https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/ud1bbu/asus_rog_crosshair_viii_series_4201_bios
https://linustechtips.com/topic/1431452-ram-issues-depending-on-agesa-version-1205-to-1207
https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/i-updated-my-bios-and-now-weird-things-are-happening.3769235
https://www.overclock.net/threads/crosshair-viii-hero-with-bios-4201.1800345/#post-29024258

As I mentioned earlier, this is my 3rd board and so far great, but I will take the plunge and update to bios 4201 and see what happens and I will report back.
Lets hope that my previous issues were related to the boards that were faulty by manufacturing flaw and were triggered to bring them up to the surface with Bios 4201 because I also mentioned, I have already swapped CPU, RAM and PSU with my previous boards which didn't made any difference.
Thank you

[Megascrypt]

I have been running My Crosshair VIII Hero Dark with Bios 4006 for almost 4 weeks and has been rock solid. 2 days ago I have updated to Bios 4201 and this morning restart on idle started again and you telling me its not the Bios 4201...100%.

Thankfully I was able to go back to Bios 4006 unlike with the other previous boards I couldn't and this time after going back to 4006 It feels OK again, so lest hope this will stay good.
ASUS need to fix Bios 4201 or better yet, take it off their support page, it does brake something and once again, I'm not the only one who can confirm that.

[DorCoMaNdO]

I've experienced similar system locks while testing the system for stability before I switched to it, when I was running Cinebench R20 and some of the memory benchmarks in Aida, my memory kit isn't in QVL, it's rated for 4000MHz but I'm using it with 3800MHz (wouldn't post otherwise), it's been stable with AMD's "1.5" command rate feature (I forget the name).

I don't believe the memory is directly responsible for these system locks as in my case I pinpointed the issue to the single-thread automatic overclock feature (again. I forget the name, but it's one that was claimed to be unique for ASUS, I believe it is right next to PBO in the bios), PBO works fine and is stable (5950X), but this other option does not and caused these system hangs, even when I ran the memory at default JDEC spec, when I turned it off I passed Cinebench and the Aida memory tests just fine, so I shrugged it off as unstable on my particular chip, but maybe the feature is just bad? Assuming the original poster might also have it enabled.

I am using BIOS 3801, the one that the motherboard shipped with, this is my first time using a Ryzen platform and I've done a bunch of research and many reports regarding OC/memory stability were that "AGESA 1.2.0.3 Patch C" was supposedly the most stable (I've seen reports that older and/or newer versions made some previously stable memory setups become unstable), and that's exactly what BIOS 3801 uses so I stuck with it.