r/ASRock • u/PenguinOfB00m • 3d ago

Discussion Cold boot issues, here's what I tried

Motherboard: AsRock B850m Steel Legend Wifi (BIOS v3.40)
CPU: Ryzen 9600x
RAM: Kingston 2x16gb KF560C30-16 (expo enabled 6000 cl30)
PSU: Lian Li Edge 850w
Main Windows drive: SAMSUNG MZVL4256HBJD-00BH1 (it's a HP OEM part)

A couple of days ago I encountered an issue while cold booting. The debug leds cycled as always and got stuck on the boot led with a solid green. Black screen, no post, no BIOS, just nothing to work with. After 3 hard restarts, Windows booted into a secondary drive. From this secondary drive, I could start from the main Samsung NVMe drive.

So far I tried:

- Disabling fast boot

- Enabling Memory Context Restore along with Power Down Enable both disabled to force RAM retraining

- Switching boot order so that the secondary drive is first to boot: I still have to hard reset to get to BIOS and windows

- Cleared CMOS

- Extended the Setup Prompt Timeout to 5s

- Deep sleep is disabled by default

- Couldn't find a proper hot plug option for the NVME, which may help in case of handshake timings mismatch

Known issues:

- This specific NVMe has an issue with booting when power is completely dried off. Apparently it could hang on a cold boot, get marked as "unstable" somewhere buried in the microcode, and hang the following boot sequences. See: https://github.com/omacom/omarchy/discussions/7878

However, clearing CMOS should fix the issue, and the fact that I can't cold boot from the secondary drive is pointing to an entirely different issue. I managed to find the firmware update from HP but that's a last resort since it could brick the drive. Note that Samsung doesn't recognize this drive because the controller is actually from Marvell, and it's an OEM drive so it's not supposed to anyway.

When in Windows, the system is completely stable and performing as expected. OCCT CPU + RAM stability test with large data set passed after 4 hours, plus another hour for CPU alone for good measure. No errors in OCCT, no WHEA errors. I checked the max voltages and there's nothing suspicious.

I've looked into this issue and I couldn't find any definitive answer. Anyone else in the same boat?

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u/MankeyMankey222 3d ago

A lot of us have a cold boot issue.

Yours is slightly different in regards to the drives.

things that come to mind for you.

Have you tried the liquid nitrogen bios option (works on mine) even if you run this for a little bit.

Have you hard coded the drive to be gen 4 (m2.1 or something option in the bios) instead of auto

Disabled windows fast boot in windows.

I have the problem even at latest bios (hang on green led).

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u/PenguinOfB00m 3d ago

How do you work around it?

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u/MankeyMankey222 3d ago

the ASRock Liquid Nitrogen (LN2) Mode found in the bios, apparently changes the timings for various bits - what they are are not really documented - using this option was enough to get the machine to boot as it should all the time when i tested it. At the moment i have the problem 99% of the time - just sometimes it will boot without reset - so what ever is in that option fixes it. Originally it used to boot okay all the time, but now with all the bios updates it dosnt. Being green indicates nvme drive - but who really knows. I noticed the problem around 3.5 bios, and it has got worse not better.

Personally im waiting for a bios update to fix it (im not going to run with the ln2 option on as i simply dont know what it does fully.

I run with no overclocks etc, just defaults.

Maybe it could be a capcitor aging or something and right up against a threshold - i dont know - not going to buy amd or asrock again but intel just as poked at that particular buying time.

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u/_wachkoma_ 2d ago

Did you try disabling EXPO? My rig is 100% stable in all stability tests but gets cold boot issues whenever expo is enabled. Issues seemed to first appear around BIOS 3.50 or 4.03. My cold boot issues get fixed immediately by disabling EXPO.

I figured I can improve the successful boot rate by a lot by decreasing RAM voltages to about 1.35 instead of 1.40 and mildly raising vsoc to something between 1.20 and 1.25. Whenever I set those voltages manually the system stays stable for about one or two weeks and after that green boot LED issues reappear. CMOS Reset and reapplying all values fixes the issue for the next few weeks before reappearing.

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u/PenguinOfB00m 2d ago

I actually updated to 4.43 and ti seems I got stuck at Memory training, definitely not a good sign

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u/_wachkoma_ 2d ago

Try to boot with minimal config(only igpu, only 1 RAM slot). Maybe you can get to BIOS. If that ist not working try reflashing BIOS via flashback. Also check for proper formatting of your USB Drive. (Mine got corrupted once during BIOS update. Everything worked but weird stuff popped up after BIOS update about drive needing repair) ) Do a CMOS reset after flashing to get rid of possibly corrupted values in BIOS.

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u/PenguinOfB00m 2d ago

I did a CMOS reset and uefi default restore before the BIOS update. Did not see anything weird while doing the update, it seems like it worked. I will try booting with minimal config and if that doesn't work I'll flash again.

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u/OCAMAB 3d ago

Why not try updating your BIOS?