Zenith II Extreme Alpha instability and restarts with BIOS 1603

[beastie]

My system has ben running perfectly stable with the following hardware:

MB: Zenith II Extreme Alpha
PROC: TR 3990X
RAM: 128GB G,Skill Trident Z 3600Mhz
GRAPH: EVGA RTX3090

I multiboot diferent OS's mainly Windows 11/ Proxmox 7.1 / VMware ESXi 7 and had been fine since I built the system almost two years ago and about 8 months with BIOS 1502.

Since the update to BIOS 1603 with AGESA 1.0.0.7 I'm having spontaneous shutdowns and restarts without any pattern and with any of the OS I boot, in Proxmox (Linux) I can see the following messages preceding the crash:

Apr 21 10:46:55 pve3 kernel: mce: [Hardware Error]: Machine check events logged
Apr 21 10:46:55 pve3 kernel: [Hardware Error]: Corrected error, no action required.
Apr 21 10:46:55 pve3 kernel: [Hardware Error]: CPU:0 (17:31:0) MC25_STATUS[-|CE|MiscV|-|-|-|-|CECC|-|-|-]: 0x98004000003e0000
Apr 21 10:46:55 pve3 kernel: [Hardware Error]: IPID: 0x000100ff03830400
Apr 21 10:46:55 pve3 kernel: [Hardware Error]: Platform Security Processor Ext. Error Code: 62
Apr 21 10:46:55 pve3 kernel: [Hardware Error]: cache level: RESV, tx: INSN


Reverting to BIOS 1502 makes the system rock solid and no unexpected shutdowns/restarts.

Someone have the same problem?

Is the any way to open a ticket with Asus to help in troubleshooting it?

Thanks!

[framm100]

I started experiencing TPM related issues after upgrading to 1603. Gonna revert soon I think!

[Karl-Johan]

No issues at all here.

[beastie]

Seems something related to the voltage control: undervolting a bit the SoC and the processor core, is stable like in the previous version.

[Mappi75]

Updated this Bios version too and i got 6 reeboots during idle on one day.



Some problem with photoshop too...

running TM5 with:
Config Name=Default
Config Author=1usmus_v3
Cores=0
Tests=16
Time (%)=100
Cycles=20
Language=0
Test Sequence=6,12,2,10,5,1,4,3,0,13,9,14,7,8,1,11,15

Gives an error - now is set the CPU SOC voltage higher,
using a 256GB 3600 CL16 Kit with AMD 3970X CPU.

@beastie

you mean the CPU SOC voltage ?

[Mappi75]

I set:

VSOC voltage in Bios to 1,05v = 1,0188v in ZenTimings

VDDG IOD was on Auto before ZenTimings shows 1,0979v

i set this voltage in bios to 1,0000v > ZenTimings shows 0,8973v

This makes running TM5 for 4 hours without any errors.

Still testing if its working now. But much better than before!

[Mappi75]

VSOC: 1,05v
VDDG IOD: 1,000v

These voltages helped me to get the system stable,

testet with:

tm5: 9 hours
Adia64 Stresstest: 4+ hours
Karhu RAM test: 12 hours and still running.


Edit:
it must be VDDG IOD instead manually using 1,000v the board sets on AUTO = 1,1000v
which seems to be high (with 1603 bios maybe the voltage is even higher as shown).

Lowering VSOC to 1,00625v dont seems to be problem here - but atm i stay atm @ 1,05v
think this should be ok for 256GB ram (to keep stability).

[Mappi75]

Sadly i got still problems to running 256GB RAM 3600 CL16 stable.

Test running really well but installing Windows 11 when i enter the product key the system hangs or reboots.

When i finshed installing Win 11 the reliability and maintainability surveillance shows lots of errors - when i tied to install Creative Cloud/Plugins Tools and so on...

so i have to run the RAM @ 2.133Mhz - even 2.666mhz wont run stable.

This is the first time that i installed win 11 without any errors and nor errors was found by sfc /scannow.

[Mappi75]

Since updating to bios 1603 i got massive problems too!

MB: Zenith II Extreme Alpha bios 1603 incl. dedicated asus TPM 2.0 module
PROC: TR 3970X
RAM: G.Skill Trident Z Royal gold DIMM Kit 256GB, DDR4-3600, CL16-22-22-42
GRAPH: PNY RTX A6000
power supply: Corsair AX1600i
Asus Hyper Card with 4x Samsung 970pro 1TB / 2x 970pro 1TB on board

1. When installing Windows 11 Pro Workstation and entering the product key the system hangs (forever)
2. or later when i select the partitions in the setup using diskpart the system hangs too
3. sometimes during installation the pc reboots..
4. after installing win updates there are "red" errors in the reliability monitor in Windows
5. even installation of creative cloud gives errors in the reliability
6. sfc /scannow gives errors after fresh installed windows and all updates.
7. created a new windows 11 image via HP Zbook does not helped (workstation 100% stable)


First i thought it has something to do with the voltages of:
VSOC: 1,05v
VDDG IOD: 1,000v

but its NOT the solution!

I replaced the mobo (same model) using another graphics card PNY T600,
changed the power supply (same model), removed asus hyper card,
and the errors with bios 1603 are all replicable !

I got the system over two years and never got this hard issues before.

Even undervolting the memory can help here: 3200Mhz wont work stable, 2.666Mhz wont work stable
only at 2.133Mhz the system "began" to get stable.

Interessing on load the systems looks stable tested with:
tm5: 9 hours
Adia64 Stresstest: 4+ hours
Karhu RAM test: 12+ hours

But on low load or during installing windows 11 the system crashes/reboots and so on..

Going back to bios 1502 fixes all.

@Asus please fix bios 1603 for a newer agesa version which works,
thank you.

[lightknightrr]

Just like to chime in, @Mappi75, you are a ******* for having the very video card I was drooling over yesterday (an A6000). Here I am, stuck with an EVGA 3090 with 24GB of VRAM...

But more seriously, and I know this isn't the advice you want to hear, but buy this memory (256GB (8x32GB) DDR4-3200 Mhz PC4-25600 ECC UDIMM 2Rx8 1.2V Unbuffered Server Memory by NEMIX RAM) & use it: https://www.amazon.com/2x32GB-DDR4-3200-PC4-25600-Unbuffered-Memory/dp/B09GGX77TH. It's ECC, you own a Threadripper, show that motherboard some love and get it some ECC RAM. Works fine with the latest BIOS, don't even need to configure anything for it to run stock at 3200Mhz. And one guy on there, in the reviews, has apparently gotten it to run at 3600Mhz (on a Threadripper). I'm tempted to do the same, after I resolve that ACPI 15 problem (and after I order up some RAM heat spreaders, fans, and graphite thermal pads).