Maximus VIII Hero: Computer will sometimes fail to shutdown

[m33ts4k0z]

Hello,

about a month ago I purchased this motherboard and I'm very happy with its performance. I have no other issues and in fact my PC performs great even on the most demanding games.

However this issue is quite silly and irritating. I've read a lot about people having this issue and I also tried almost everything except RMAing the board because I don't really believe this issue can be resolved with another identical board.

So to elaborate a bit... When shuting down the computer from the Win 10 start menu then sometimes (not always) the monitor will go on standby but the computer fans and LEDs will remain powered. I can then restart it by just pressing the case restart button or power it off by holding the case power button till it switches off.

My rig:

• Windows 10 Pro
  
• Intel Core i7 6700k stock - no overclock
  
• 16GB Corsair Vengeance XMPed to 3200MHz
  
• 4x HDDs
  
• 1x Samsung Nand Evo 950 PRO m.2 SSD
  
• 2x EVGA GeForce 980 Ti Superclocked+
  
• Asus Xonar Phoebus Solo 7.1 Sound Card
  
• Fractal Design 1000W Platinum PSU
  

Things I've tried:

• Formated and reinstalled my drive with Windows 10 Pro.
  
• Removed the AISuite 3 software.
  
• Disabled fastboot in Windows 10 Power Options.
  
• Tried about 5 different versions of Intel Management Engine drivers as suggested in other threads with similar problems.
  
• Disabled all intel services through msconfig as suggested in a thread.
  
• Started the computer with everything non-essential unplugged.
  
• Removed and put back the RAM.
  
• Tried another PSU.
  
• Removed the XMP setting from the BIOS.
  
• Cleared CMOS several times.
  
• Removed the battery several times.
  
• Tried different BIOS versions.
  

Note: The boards Qcode panel displays either 40 or A0 during the shutdown which I read are fine.

Solution: Following d4nYz3r0's solution helped me solve this odd behaviour. Here is what I exactly did:

Used the Flashback BIOS feature to flash the latest BIOS.
Unplugged the computer.
Removed the battery and kept the Clear CMOS button pressed for about 10 seconds.
Started the computer and in BIOS settings, I chose Load Optimized Defaults.

Someone on the Internet might find this useful.

[m33ts4k0z]

d4nYz3r0 wrote:
Hi m33ts4k0z,

Are you referring to my post?

Are you able to change any settings like OC etc? I figured out, if I change some settings (I'm not 100% sure which are ok and which not) I need to re-flash the BIOS while others work perfectly fine
For example ErP and overclocking with undervolting are two settings where the shutdown problem happens again.

ASUS support is not really helpfull, they just say I should check several things that I already checked the first time they asked me to and I should send an RMA. But I think it's no hardware problem since the board works perfectly fine with default settings
And waiting 3+ weeks just for nothing is not really helpfull

Hello and sorry for the late answer. Yes it was your post that helped me. I was also having the same behaviour as you when changing options in BIOS but in my case, just reverting the changes solved the issue.
Changing OC settings didn't cause me any trouble but messing with the ErP did. I anyway don't want to change the ErP settings since I'm using WoL and enabling S4 and/or S5 state will disable it. This is certainly a BIOS issue and replacing the motherboard won't help at all.

Also, Asus released a new BIOS update like 5 days ago for the VIII Hero which seems to solve the issue with the USB ports staying powered while the computer is off.

[Polyp]

I also some times experience this problem with this board:
Nearly same config only that I have a singel 980.
I nearly have that shutdown problem every second time after I install an nividea driver update.
In severall casses a deinstall and after reinstall of driver and nividia experience software solved the problem for me.

I do not know if this helps everybody in anycase but only for consideration because it was not mentioned yet