Diagnostic help: Asus b550-i died mid game and can't get it to boot [SOLVED]

You know, when I got mine back in January, I tried to do just that. Spent about an hour trying to perform the flashback and it wouldn't even start. I finally decided to just throw the 5800x in there with my 2700x's stock heatsink, the only thing I changed, and the board would perform the flashback just fine on the first try.

Just my experience.
I could be mis-understanding the feature. A CPU may be required in the socket, for the board to power and for the board logic related to flashback to function.

The endpoint being that you should be able to use bios-flashback to update the bios of the B550-i, so it will then work with a Zen 3 CPU (which may need to be socketed, even if the computer otherwise won't boot normally).
 
I could be mis-understanding the feature. A CPU may be required in the socket, for the board to power and for the board logic related to flashback to function.
That was what I got out of that experience. However I have seen plenty of other vendors motherboards with no CPU at all in the socket perform a flashback just fine. Again though, it was just my experience in that instance.
 
That was what I got out of that experience. However I have seen plenty of other vendors motherboards with no CPU at all in the socket perform a flashback just fine. Again though, it was just my experience in that instance.
Yeah I think Gigabyte may advertise on some of their boards, that you can update the bios without a CPU in the socket.
 
I just keep a SPI flasher to recover bricked boards, which helps in some cases. It's trickier on newer boards because the BIOS image you download isn't what ends up on the SPI ROM. There's some board specific information stored in the ROM in addition to what is in the BIOS image and the flashing software does some witchcraft to merge the two together. I think the MAC address and some other information for the Ethernet chip is stored in the main system ROM, which is dumb.

To fix a bricked bios board, you have to dump the corrupted ROM and separate out the stuff that doesn't get changed and merge it with a clean ROM image and reflash it to the board. It's a convoluted annoying process. I like Ryzen CPUs, but how AMD handled the AM4 socket is just bad. They never should have promised the backwards and forwards compatibility for nearly all of the parts available on the socket.
 
Are you sure you have the correct BIOS version on the board? There are B550 boards that don't have the correct BIOS version to support Ryzen 5000 series CPUs. You need to use a 3000 series CPU to flash it to the latest BIOS that supports 5000 series parts.

I had this exact issue with a customer's ASUS B550 board several weeks ago, had to take it back to the store to be flashed since I didn't have a 3000 series CPU lying around.

The behavior of the board was the same as yours, didn't do anything when powered on. Just sat there with fans spinning.


And a huge thanks to you because I never would have thought of this without prompting. The new motherboard is booting and I'm back in windows. Although I have to get everything sorted and managed in the case again.
 
Crappy ASUS strikes again. You'd think all of the boards with old BIOS versions would be out of the supply chain now, or ASUS would tell vendors to update boards before they shipped them out. At this point, it's just making them look incompetent.

Good that you got your rig going again.
 
Well it may not be all good news. I can do boring work stuff just fine, but gaming seems to be a no go. Everything is crashing in fairly short order after displaying anything 3d, especially if DX12. DX11 stuff seems to be able to go longer, but still dies in under a minute.

Furmark was fine for a 30 minute run last night, but trying to game is a near total failure. *SIGH*

Furmark runs stable and at a reasonable temp similar to initial break in of the system

Prime95 gets the cpu to 90-91c which is the same as when new. If anything it seemed to take longer to do it. And it still stresses it more than occt does.

Only thing of note is windows update pushe 21h1 or whatever it was and there was a new Nvidia driver street being shut down for a week plus.

Maybe I'll set it with Memtest overnight.

Most of the crashes are top desktop, but I've gotten a couple of blue screens which hasn't been a thing before. I might have to nuke it and reinstall.
 
Last edited:
E23B468F-7047-48D0-8C27-3A6001A09CFD.jpeg
Hmm that doesn't look encouraging
 
The spec for that corsair kit says it needs 1.35v, but it may need more in some configurations.
 
Hmm so no love from upping the voltage.

So far or seems to be working without errors at base settings with docp disabled.
 
Hmm so no love from upping the voltage.

So far or seems to be working without errors at base settings with docp disabled.
try leaving it off and use manual settings to bring it up to speed
 
try leaving it off and use manual settings to bring it up to speed

I could, but I don't have much experience with tweaking memory by hand. I have generally bought stuff with decent xmp specs and it has worked out. I mean this was stake with docp for months. I'm guessing it was marginal and now is not up to pulling off its promised performance.

Any good guides any overclocking ram manually?
 
I could, but I don't have much experience with tweaking memory by hand. I have generally bought stuff with decent xmp specs and it has worked out. I mean this was stake with docp for months. I'm guessing it was marginal and now is not up to pulling off its promised performance.

Any good guides any overclocking ram manually?
go into the bios, set it to docp and write down all the timings. then turn of docp and manually enter them. you could also try just dropping the main 4 down one step.
 
go into the bios, set it to docp and write down all the timings. then turn of docp and manually enter them. you could also try just dropping the main 4 down one step.
I found some guides online for tweaking stuff. It definitely doesn't want to do the XMP profile numbers. I might be able to sneak up on something less than that, but it has a lifetime warranty and it's sold as doing those numbers. Oddly, in looking for tuning tips, I ran into a lot of people having similar issues across multiple brands. It seems working as specified for many months and then refusing to hit specified clocks later on is a seemingly common failure mode.

It's stable at basic slow ass settings and can game. I've got new ram on the way then will try to warranty this pair with issues.
 
Well got my new RAM and installed it, and it passes memtestx86 and seems to run stable. We'll see how RMAing the ram goes. I'm curious if I cna revive the original motherboard witha bios flash.
 
Well got my new RAM and installed it, and it passes memtestx86 and seems to run stable. We'll see how RMAing the ram goes. I'm curious if I cna revive the original motherboard witha bios flash.

Just make sure the system has good RAM and is stable when flashing. If the BIOS image gets corrupted in memory when being read from the source media, it's possible that the flasher won't catch it.
 
Just make sure the system has good RAM and is stable when flashing. If the BIOS image gets corrupted in memory when being read from the source media, it's possible that the flasher won't catch it.
You don’t need ram in the board. You also in theory don’t need a cpu, but the new board wouldn't start blinking until i put one in.
 
Last edited:
FYI, I got the motherboard back to working with the 3700x in it and am using it for the memtest86 runs corsair wants me to run on the modules.
 
And now the ram passes memtest86.... could it just not be happy with the 5900x?
 
And now the ram passes memtest86.... could it just not be happy with the 5900x?

Try running the 5900x with SMT off and see if the behavior changes. I've seen reports of 3xxx and 5xxx Ryzens which get unstable when SMT is enabled, including one of my customers that had a 3700x which did it.
 
I would flash the bios again, with your 3700x in it.
boot into windows and uninstall the AMD chipset drivers. shudown the computer.
then put the 5900x in and clear the CMOS before booting it.
then reinstall the latest AMD chipset drivers.

and then test and tweak.
 
Back
Top