USB 3 Flash Disks/not showing in BIOS

[rosefire]

This is a new problem on a 2 year old PC. The symptoms are:
1. Larger/newer USB drives are not listed as USB devices in the USB Section of the Advanced menu.
2. Larger/newer USB drives are also not listed in the boot menu.
4. The problem occurs only if XMP is enabled when memory is otherwise not overclocked.
5. With XMP enabled, memory still reliably overclocks to over 4000.
6. Enabling/disabling safe boot doesn't help
3. Windows doesn't respond in any way when these drives are plugged into the USB ports,, including relevant event log messages.
5. Multiple passes with off-line memory diagnostic tests find no memory errors.
6. When XMP is not used, Windows 10 and 11 operate USB 3 devices as USB 2.
7. The problem occurs with multiple older BIOS known to be good in the past, including the original.
8. No new hardware was added.

Other co-incident observations that may be unrelated:
1. BIOS reports 3.3V as 3.21V
2. BIOS boot began hanging very occasionally displaying a memory detect message.
3. Computer blue-screens reliably if ASUS Fan Xpert Auto Tuning is run. The blue screen display reports various reasons. Fans all work if tried individually.
4. The problem may have started after upgrading to Windows 11. Enabling/disabling TPM in bios has no effect. Note that windows is not yet running when this problem is occurring.

Obviously, I put in a lot of time trying to solve this problem. I've run out of options I can ideas on what to try. The one I haven't tried is clearing CMOS, but the manual doesn't even mention CMOS. ASUS support said repair under warranty is their only remaining option. It doesn't seem like a hardware error, but I will send it in if needed. Any help you can offer would be great!

-K

[rosefire]

STARRAIN@ROG wrote:
Hi rosefire,
Our tech team found the similar issue with motherboard at hand.
After adjust BCLK value, the larger USB devices in USBG1_E5~E8 and USBG1_E34 are nor showing, so we would suggest use other USB ports instead temporarily, and will check the issue further.
Therefore, if the condition and affected USB ports are same as yours, repair probably cannot fix the issue.
Thank you.

Working around the problem is fairly easy, but seeing as the board is still under warranty don't I have to make a warranty claim? If they can't repair it, and I was told they don't replace, what is the most likely resolution?

[STARRAIN_ROG]

Hi rosefire,
After double check with our tech team, your BUS clock is increased to 101.6 and it is overclocking.
The devices are probably getting unstable when overclocking, so please adjust BCLK to100M or use other USB ports.
Thank you.

[STARRAIN_ROG]

Hi rosefire,
For your USB issue, our tech team has tested X299 motherboard from other brand has the same issue, so it is because of overclocking and not defective motherboard.
Therefore, RMA cannot fix such issue.
If you have other hardware related issue, you have right to make a warranty claim under warranty certainly.
However, if you would like to communicate with other customers about overclocking, please create new thread in the sub-board below.
https://rog.asus.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?204
Thank you.

[rosefire]

My Rampage Extreme Encore Edition motherboard has a defect confirmed by ASUS. The board is well within warranty. And the USB ports fail before the CPU or memory clock re increased by even one Hertz - but you are saying ASUS may refuse to honor their warranty???

That would be despicable.

That said, I've now confirmed that the problem occurs with optimized defaults, but only after every dozen reboots or so .This makes sense because the USB ports fail consistently in XMP mode where the ASUS BIOS automatically increases the Bus clock by a mere 1.6% (even though I do not want it to). Learning this, I’ve realized that two thumb drives I threw out this last year were probably good and that the motherboard was the failure cause. I've now confirmed that the problem occurs with different memory sticks and a different processor.

Now what worries me is that if I choose to go through the headache of disassembling my PC, doing without for weeks, then reassembling it, ASUS will return it unrepaired because the bug is hard to reproduce without using the XMP setting and even if they can reproduce it they will not know how to fix poor bus signal integrity.

Communicating with other customers about overclocking would not help. The problem occurs with default BIOS and with XMP enabled even when underclocking the memory.

[STARRAIN_ROG]

Hi rosefire,
If the occurrence frequency is less and you would like to send RMA for examination, please consider sending RMA when get the issue often.
Thank you.