Asus Rog G18 G834JY 331 bios affecting undervolt and ram - black screen boot loop after cleaning

[Notion]

G834JY 331 bios affecting undervolt and ram 

Continuing old post, can't reply is locked due to in activity 

Thanks to @katana and  @Zalevskiy  for sharing your insights 

bought https://www.microcenter.com/product/677007/asus-rog-strix-scar-18-g834jyr-xs98-18-gaming-laptop-comp...

So, Last year I bought this, on discount, it was a good deal. 

everything was fine, given couple of random BSODs, Video_TDR_failure and some others.

Opened the system for cleaning in January, unplugged the battery, ram, heat sink re-paste etc, after cleaning it went in black screen boot loop, nothing on screen, failed to perform hard reset, no combination was working.

went to Asus support centre, they flashed the bios, ofcourse cleaned the data and everything, it was working fine, with random BSODs as usual.

In July, after 6 months, collected alot of dust, ( it runs for whole day as my work pc), opened it up again, unplugged the battery, went into same boot loop, nothing on screen, was not able to perform Hard reset, no combination no amount of holding the power button.

went to Asus support, RMA, again, they flashed the bios, wiped everything and it was working again, while sitting in their office, I opened it up again, removed the battery for sometime, removed the ram, recreated the cleaning scenario basically, but it took some time to memory train and came back to life.

this unit is still under warranty, so I was worried, what about after warranty ? talked to support staff, they said it's like 80 to 100 dollars for labour, if there is bios issue only.

that was two weeks ago, I came home, cloned my SSD, OS image, without raid, was working fine...

I was thinking I did nothing wrong, this could not happen, since I am an Engineer, Electronics and Computers,  using computers before 2000s, worked with electronics components, made circuits, soldering chips, coded in Assembly, flashed chips, programming and coding in different languages, after all this, How this is possible ??

So I opened it up again, yesterday, left the battery unplugged, for an hour, mimicked my cleaning routine, guess what, stuck in same boot loop again, and could not perform any reset function.

Why it worked when unplugged in their office and not working now ?? or before at home ?  --- possible answer is change of under voltage settings for CPU in BIOS.

In January, I did those, same in July, at home after restoring my OS, I changed them, and disabled useless e-cores ( artificial CPU usage 15%, temperature 85 degrees )

Now I have to pay them another visit for bios re flash, I don't have another DDR5 ram to test this, but it is clear, Hard reset/ EC reset, is not clearing those bios under volt settings or memory training data, in simple words BIOS in not going back to its default state.

From Engineering/Design perspective, it could be considered as an edge case, nobody tested bios for this, which is, under volting and then EC reset or different memory frequencies, it could be both or one scenario.

98% normal consumers will not be affected by this, but anyone who's tinkering with voltages etc, good luckkkkk.....

I assume, to avoid this, reset the bios to its default settings, before changing ram, SSD, or cleaning, before unplugging the battery.

today is Saturday, I will take it to ASUS on Monday, will get it back on Wednesday/Thursday/Friday, let's see if techs at support centre will assist me to confirm this. 

I was thinking to buy bios chips and convert pad to dip by soldering adapter on motherboard, for easy and quick resolution, you never know when this sh*****t is going to hit the fan.....

writing this post on my 8 year old Asus Strix GL753VD... stable machine.

[Notion]

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More info in a reply in reddit thread

Oh I was comparing different programs. You can copy the settings using

• INTEL XTU

• THROTTLESTOP

• or -30v minimal in the BIOS.

If you undervolt your BIOS let's say -30 volts, You can't use upgraded RAM. You have to reset your BIOS default before installing the ram and every time discharged the battery by unplugging it you will have to put your old RAM back in if you forgot to reset your BIOS settings to defaults each time you discharge your battery. So I don't undervolt my bios.

Or armory crate : Just manual mode (Do not overclock or undervolt the GPU, only do the CPU) And you want to adjust the PL1 PL2 VOLTAGE TO MAXIMUM .

The Intel XTU or throttlestop Used to undervolt. You can create a task scheduler in Windows to run throttle stop as soon as you boot up Windows.

If you untervolt in your bios, you will have problems with "memory training", only when discharging your laptop battery completely before installing hard drives or RAM, it will not boot up your computer after installing upgraded RAM. This happens if you did not reset your BIOS to default settings prior to installing the new RAM... There is a bug If you are in your BIOS and you undervolt using the BIOS settings to undervolt, Then it will not complete memory training or learn the new hardware you installed. You have to reset BIOS settings to default. Then you can discharge your battery. If you installed upgraded RAM while your BIOS was undervolted, You will have to reinstall your old factory RAM or hard drive then reset the BIOS settings to default, then install the new hard drive or upgraded RAM, then it will learn and boot up in 15 minutes. But I don't undervolt in my BIOS anymore because throttle stop is safer and so is Intel XTU since your computer has time to boot the

Armory crate: The only settings you change are ... Crank the PL1 and PL2 in manual mode. Every time your computer starts it armory crate will remember those settings.

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reply by bhartman102890

https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLaptops/comments/1hdzl74/asus_rog_strix_g18_guide_for_how_to_undervol...

[Zalevskiy]

I was thinking to buy bios chips and convert pad to dip by soldering adapter on motherboard, for easy and quick resolution, you never know when this sh*****t is going to hit the fan.....

I'm glad to see another reasonable person on this forum 🙂

Keep in mind that after the modified bios, you may have problems with the OEM drivers. A specialist from YouTube https://youtu.be/lb4FML8rbhg?si=nP6PBdVx_gHgAL70 helped me replace 331 with 313, while keeping the EC region from the 331 version (I don't know why, but it's probably necessary). Additionally, the Minor version changed from 27 to 26 in the 331 version. I should have 313 + Minor 26 version, but I have 313 + 331 + Minor 27 version (AMI mutant).

In general, it's been working for 2 months, but there were some oddities, such as the laptop freezing on a black screen during reboots, but then turning on normally after holding the power button for a long time. There were critical sensors errors in Linux, but they were fixed after an update. But over time, all these errors went away. In these models, it is very important to install all the drivers correctly. When I tested Windows 10, I found problems with RaptorLake, and I had to modify the power plans. And when I updated the pch driver separately from the Microsoft software catalog, I saw 70-80 degrees after waking up from sleep mode with the fans not working! Previously, all these problems were solved by the factory, but Asus decided to block compatibility with 22H2 from the G614JI model with my G814JV, and now when I install OEM windows, the protection is triggered due to EC region 331, and my speaker sound sounds like s***t. As a No OS laptop version owner, I am unable to find OEM windows for the G814J.

Now, I have to manually disable and enable the drivers to ensure that the devices are in the started state. I don't understand why it's so difficult to revert the device to its original state, but it could be due to the Dolby licenses, which are designed to encourage users to discard their laptops once the warranty expires. I would also like to mention that my model has the least amount of problems with audio and video when the tpm abd defender is removed from Windows.

https://archive.org/details/windows-11-21-h-2-build-22000.1641-multi-5-speed

https://gist.github.com/lamperez/862763881c0e1c812392b5574727f6ff?permalink_comment_id=4531290

I noticed that after downgrading the bios, audio worked correctly in OpenSUSE after the NVRAM update option, but as soon as I installed Windows + Windows or Windows + linux on the same disk, the bios audio driver settings bug was transferred to linux (a consequence of closed-source software and inadequate protection).

nvidia hdaudio patch (it can also be used to bypass certificates and other nonsense that causes problems after updating the bios)

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/aaf-optimus-dch-audio-modded-driver-for-windows-10-11-for...

[Zalevskiy]

Repair drivers after bios downgrade

https://www.mediafire.com/file/zcpjdjnrqmfewbj/device_start_fix.rar/file

[Zalevskiy]

Interesting

I wonder if shorting the Realtek chip pins will allow me to downgrade the bios on 2023 Intel models. If there are any desperate kamikazes, I would appreciate a report on the results. I have no intention of becoming a slave to ASUS, as this extreme bios is terrible.

3:17

https://youtu.be/0vLou1nJRx0?si=O5JcU_3r9h0LMwlL

[Notion]

@Zalevskiy  Thanks for the reply.

I am getting older, thus enthusiasm and pace of keeping up with new technologies is fading away sloooowly. Once, I was of fan of assembly debuggers, Linux, compiling your own executables... things are getting complex day by day, so me getting lazy, looking for easy solution, relaxing....
I had no idea about the importance of DDR5 memory training, data eye, but learned alot in past 2 weeks.
I can see, driver compatibility issues of this modern hardware in Linux, sound and video, and in Windows 11 as well, flickering after attaching the second or third screen, stutters, sound delay, crashes, BSODs, or plain simple crash no warnings.. etc etc

I think, same is happening with new and old developers, it's hard (read extremely hard) to glue everything together, old developers are retiring or are unable to keep up, or use their skills with modern systems, corporations are getting greedier, young don't have enough experience, everyone is in hurry, quality is fading in all aspects of life, or maybe I have gained experience and demanding more than in the past. 

I wasn't looking to modify the bios, if  331 is working fine, idea was to clone current working bios, into 10 chips, solder the dip adapter ( with a clamp), open, flip, remove the old chip, install the working one, no desoldering or soldering, to reduce the downtime, but it was before I knew what was wrong. 

if anyone reading, basic technical information,

Processor works on a frequency (in hertz, mega or giga), voltages can affect those, similarly memory chips, all chips or ICs, which are making some calculations ( transistors making gates) , runs on some sort of oscillation or frequency, So a motherboard has alot of them, the firmware, which BIOS, is facilitating or trying to assert the best possible frequencies, between RAM, Processor, PCH,  data communication between SSD, RAM, CPU,  This calculation process is training, finding the voltages, frequencies for the best speed and least error or zero error rate. Bios save that training data, or value references for next boot, to reduce boot time, technically it should train at every single boot.

if you are going to change RAM, or voltages, BIOS can mess up, which results in black screen, failure to boot, in this case, BIOS is not clearing that reference data on hard reset, now you have to erase the BIOS chip and install/write the BIOS software again, so it can re-calculate everything..save.. then boot...

Silicon is unpredictable, it can work for 100 years, or can fail in a microsecond, or can fail partially, you never know, most scary thing in electronics circuits is a partial failure, components can behave well in test conditions or with testing equipments, then fail in products under load, or with small change in temperature or voltage or current, it is very hard to detect and fix these kind of anomalies, the main reason why I decided not to advance in electronics any further, the main reason why companies change your whole motherboard, instead of wasting time on a 1 cent capacitor or diode. 

I wrote to Asus, lets see if they can make changes in future versions of BIOS.

My first PC, had 128MB of RAM, 40GB HDD, 256MB RAM and CD writer was a luxury, now my phone is 1000 times better than that, laptop has 64GB of RAM lol, dail-up was real pain, so I am enjoying overall... giving the benefit of doubt to all the developers and engineers, we have travelled a long distance form telegram, punchcards, floppy drives, CD roms...

Be grateful 😀 

[Notion · Accepted solution]

Update :

they kept the laptop for two weeks, I was told they performed more tests this time, it was third time, so they replaced the motherboard

Result, restored same OS, cooler temps, staying 50-60 range under normal load, probably because of new pasting, and its bit faster, couldn't find out why tho, it's less laggy, I believe it's either new motherboard version or different batch of components.

not going to touch bios, but new vulnerabilities related to Asus software is all over the place.

if you think your issue is a serious one, Get in touch with their CEO office, 

ASUS Support | Contact Our CEO's Office (US and Canada Only)
https://www.asus.com/us/support/article/787/

I wrote them, explained how stupid bios is, asked them to deliver my message to concerned teams, I was told they will deliver it, got the call from the office, after repair was done, at-least they are listening and making efforts to support and stand behind their products, which is a good sign.

it's been two weeks, I did some tests, no crashes, no sudden BSOD or older errors, Intel and Nvidia updated their drivers lately, fixed issues related to external displays, so could be that.

did some more digging, tuned, windows, cpu, my apps,  no stutters no lags,  p-cores reaching 5ghz, drawing 6W to 150-160W as needed on load spikes, everything is instant, as it should be.

Seems like Windows is responsible for more than half of the errors.

[ElectroStingz]

From your other post, the XTU scores you show are a little low if you are running all E-cores active with the P-cores attempting over 5GHz.

Your screenshot

For example if I run my 14900HX at 4GHz P-cores and 3GHz E-cores with HT enabled I can get a very similar result with everything else on default settings and without using liquid metal. (Arctic MX-6 thermal paste)

This is not important to some extent as it depends what it is you are using the laptop for but if your intended use does not require the E-cores you are simply wasting power.

Boost performance also relies heavily on your power limits, the long and short duration numbers which you left at 175W, so even if you increased the IccMax setting to from default to over 500A it's kind of limited under multicore use.

For performance gains to the P-cores you must increase PL1/PL2 (long and short duration) from the default 175W but keep in mind that you will always be power limited by design, due to the laptop PSU and VRM capabilities. So be careful what you adjust as sometimes you are not actually increasing performance and losing out on efficiency. (Temperatures will increase considerably once you are past 5GHz)

[Notion]

thanks for the reply, it seems forum's back end have some database caching problems, posts appeared again lol

I am not running any games, and running some single threaded applications, because of random crashes, I couldn't figure out what the issue was, drivers, windows, cpu, 

now, I don't think I need it to undervolt or touch cpu, because everything is stable.

All e-cores are enabled

G-helper

silent = no increased power limits, CPU boost disabled ( limit clocks to base frequency) - for my normal browsing and other use

Turbo = full power 175w ( designed by Asus ) - Cpu boost enabled, Fans kicks in early, noisy - for work loads

Simple solution, done with tweaks and testings.