ROG Flow Z13 2025 Issues

[GoodEnoughGear]

This thread is to consolidate 2025 Flow Z13 issues for convenience.

Issue: DisplayPort and PCIE over USB4 failing

New Flow Z13 here, with CalDigit T4 dock.  Dock works fine on my 2023 Acronym Z13 FWIW. The dock has a 2.5GBPS ethernet port that operates over PCIE through USB4, and DisplayPort support. All testing done with the power adapter attached. 

Out of the box Display port is problematic and the Ethernet adapter is not seen at all. After much testing with turning the dock off and on and the monitor (Samsung G9), I got proper DisplayPort output along with access to the Ethernet adapter and operation at 2.5GBPS. It seems random when it will work, but most consistently powering the dock off and on is key. It will not function correctly if the dock is powered on boot, you need to power cycle.

On May 27th a hotfix is released for AMD Chipset v 0.0.0.7 which I install and seems to promptly break everything. No DisplayPort at all via either port, ethernet adapter is not visible. No amount of rebooting, depowering of devices helps. Now the USB-C (USB4) ports are only operating at USB 2.0 speed.

Case opened, and about to do a full reset back to factory to test, but I am not encouraged by this so far. As I said, My 2023 Z13 works just fine, even just on PD powered through the dock. I have a 10 day return window, trying to see if I can resolve before that last resort. Any tips welcome.

Aside from that this device is awesome, this CPU is impressive.

[GoodEnoughGear]

OK, so a bit of an update - the response from Asus was essentially that the Caldigit dock required ThunderBolt and I need a different device 🤣.

I have since done a reset of the device, which required much less in terms of Windows Updates so it seems the recovery image is newer than the image it ships with. That helped stability, and I started methodically testing the chain, and found a smoking gun of sorts.

It seems that the Flow is sensitive to the orientation of the USB-C plug, for both straight USB Storage (Samsung T5 Evo in my case) as well as the CalDigit TB4 cable. When in the right orientation I get the expected approx 400MB/Sec on the T5 but limited to 40MB/Sec the other way 'round. Similarly for DisplayPort tunneling the correct orientation results in stable image at the correct refresh rate and access to the PCIE tunneled ethernet adapter at 2.5gbps. 'Upside down' results in no visibility of the ethernet controller and a washed-out image at incorrect resolution and refresh rate.

This seems to be something to do with the port, as this happens with different cables and devices.

I'll report back on stability in a few days.

[GoodEnoughGear]

So, the machine started with a series of bluescreens (BSOD) after the reset. I decided then to start from scratch, deleted all the partitions, installed Win 11 Pro, the AMD software suite (Adrenalin, Install Manager, Chat etc.) and updated AMD drivers that way. Installed MyAsus and updates but not Armoury Crate - using G-Helper instead. All devices are identified. Almost a week now, no bluescreens, and stable operation. 

You do need to make sure that any thunderbolt/USB-4 cable is the right orientation to drive DisplayPort and PCIE passthrough devices, and make sure to power on the Flow before the dock, or just power cycle the doc to get it to register. After the first boot, subsequent restarts seem OK.

Hopefully the power sequence niggles get addressed in the drivers, but for now this is not too bad.