ASUS Zenith II Extreme TRX40 - Post Times?

[ApolloX]

I bought an Asus Zenith Extreme back when Threadripper first came out and am considering buying the new Zenith II TRX40 Version. My only complaint on the first board has been unusually long post times. It takes between 2-5 minutes to post (yes, I've always run the latest BIOS). While the system is generally stable, the long start up time before it shows a post screen is absolutely unnerving.

It's even worse on a cold boot. It turns on, cycles through a bunch of stuff, then shuts off and on again. This sometimes triggers my RTX card to go into a factory reset mode, where I have to reboot the computer after start up or the fans stay at full (the EVGA 3 Red light problem)

Anyone have the new Zenith Extreme II? How long after turning on from a cold boot (or warm) do you see the Post screen. What about getting into windows? I'm tempted to go with Gigabyte for my next build after my experience with the Zenith.

[Arne_Saknussemm]

I've had the Zenith for a while now 18.5s is my boot time....recently had a play with the new board...similar post time. Not sure what combination of hardware is giving you so much grief...it's certainly not the norm...

I now want a Zenith II for my home build...so...;)

[ApolloX]

Arne Saknussemm wrote:
I've had the Zenith for a while now 18.5s is my boot time..

It's really nothing special... RTX card, 1950X, 64GB ram across 4 slots. It might be a bad board, but since it only happens on reboot, and never fails to reboot, I'm inclined to pretend it doesn't happen. I rarely restart anyway.

The 3 red light issue is 'sort of' evga's fault. But, considering the motherboard power cycles during boot, I can legitimately see why the graphics card gets confused and thinks it is being asked to go into a safe mode.

Oh, I have seen posts where other people had unusually long post times.

[Arne_Saknussemm]

Yeah...understood....sometimes systems are head scratchers...

Is your RAM a single quad channel kit? Any weird usb devices plugged in?

[mboogie]

New Zenith + 3960x here and boot times seem fine - similar to Arne above, around 20 sec.
2-5 mins does seem excessive particularly with 1 x gfx card and 4 memory sticks as the only added components. I realise you'll have done this many times by now but, barring the gfx card or memory having issue/s, a BIOS re-install + optimised defaults routine, then fine-tuning what you don't need would seem all that is left (outside a motherboard issue - and do re-check all connections + seatings).

I do have an issue getting Ryzen Master to run/install with my system. I've just messaged support and will post here too. Seems that a number of users are having issues recently.

[bogdi1988]

ApolloX wrote:
I bought an Asus Zenith Extreme back when Threadripper first came out and am considering buying the new Zenith II TRX40 Version. My only complaint on the first board has been unusually long post times. It takes between 2-5 minutes to post (yes, I've always run the latest BIOS). While the system is generally stable, the long start up time before it shows a post screen is absolutely unnerving.

It's even worse on a cold boot. It turns on, cycles through a bunch of stuff, then shuts off and on again. This sometimes triggers my RTX card to go into a factory reset mode, where I have to reboot the computer after start up or the fans stay at full (the EVGA 3 Red light problem)

Anyone have the new Zenith Extreme II? How long after turning on from a cold boot (or warm) do you see the Post screen. What about getting into windows? I'm tempted to go with Gigabyte for my next build after my experience with the Zenith.

Do you have RAID set up? I noticed this for AMD boards, with RAID enabled, post goes up significantly vs plain NVME.

[bogdi1988]

I just got my board setup. Post is EXTREMELY fast even with RAID enabled compared to my old X399 Zenith Alpha.
Based on that, the 2-5 minute post seems to be bad so I would assume something is bad in your configuration - either RAM, or CPU is not seated correctly, or a PCIe device is having some issues. To confirm, you are running the latest BIOS?

[zl1_ghost]

Mine boots pretty quick, even with RAID NVMe. Under 30 seconds from a cold boot to the Windows login screen. Only thing that trips it up is that the CPU fan speed is sometimes not present requiring me to go into the BIOS.

[BigJohnny]

You have some hardware not playing nice. Try weeding it back to just the bare necessities at first then add. For it to reboot after a cold boot makes me think the OS drive is playing games. Disable windows fast start up and see what you get. That will alleviate any loading of the drivers in the hiberfil.sys file back into ram. Thats something that just never has worked right. if its worse from a cold boot than a restart thats definitely not playing nice.

[ApolloX]

BigJohnny wrote:
You have some hardware not playing nice.

You hit the nail on the head.

So I rarely restart my computer (once a month maybe...) but tonight I decided to sit down and unplug everything. All USB devices, PCIe cards, harddrives, everything. What I discovered is that I have a BAD Samsung 840 Pro 512GB SATA III SSD (model MZ-7PD512BW) harddrive. I had been using it as a temp drive but about a year ago it stopped showing up in my list of drives. I had assumed the file system had gotten corrupted and since it was a temp drive, I just ignored it.

Well, as soon as I unplugged it my boot times changes drastically. I clocked the times before and after unplugging. Then ran the test again just to make sure I wasn't crazy.

With the SSD drive plugged in:
Time to get a POST screen: 120 seconds
Time to get a Windows loading screen: 45 seconds
Time to get to Windows login screen: 90 seconds
TOTAL: Almost 5 minutes from power pressed to login screen

With the SSD drive unplugged:
Time to get a POST screen: 19 seconds
Time to get a Windows loading screen: 7 seconds
Time to get to Windows login screen: 21 seconds
TOTAL: Under a minute from power pressed to login screen

Honestly, a broken HDD was the last thing I was expecting. I assumed it was a bad power supply, or video card issue, or just the motherboard going bad. But as soon as the harddrive was unplugged, the entire boot process became painless. Thanks BigJohnny!