Extremely slow POST and UEFI on B650M and 9800X3D
Hi all,
So I honestly think it's my turn to live first hand through the AM5 drama. But my situation seems to be a little bit more slow burning.
Right now, since a week, my current issues consist of:
- Often terribly long POST times. Some are faster than others.
- Occasionally managed to boot into an incredibly laggy UEFI.
- Sometimes multiple boots/loops are required to boot into the OS.
- Due to the extremely laggy UEFI, I strongly suspect it's not a memory training thing.
- Once booted into the OS, everything runs fine.
My hardware list:
- MB: Asrock B650M-HDV/m.2
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D
- GPU: Asus Prime Gaming Radeon RX 9070 XT
- RAM: G.Skill Flare X5 F5-6000J3038F16GX2-FX5
I bought the Mobo and CPU back in April of 2025 as a packaged deal. It came with BIOS version 3.20 preflashed and preinstalled on the Motherboard. I do run EXPO 6000. I do not, nor have I ever overclocked/undervolt anything.
I found out about the Asrock/AM5 issues in May that same year. VSOC always looked stable in HWMonitor/HWInfo64. I've never had any random shutdowns. Since I found out I decided to avoid sleeping/hibernating the PC, and just shut it down at the end of every day.
I've upgraded to the newer BIOS versions as they came out. Currently I'm on version 4.10.
The PC has been running Windows 11 for the majority of its lifetime, but since Februari this year, I have completely switched over to single boot Linux Bazzite, and it has always felt stable.
Not a single mid-OS, mid-Gaming, mid-Idling crash or reboot has occurred so far. Neither on Windows nor on Bazzite.
I'm quite new to Linux and have not figured out how to read VSOC yet, but due to the slow boot times, I've opted for the time being to keep the PC switched on indefinitely. It's been very stable running for over a week now.
Now I have a couple of questions.
- Is there anything I can do to avoid the long POST times? i.e. reset bios and leave EXPO disabled?
- Is it worth trying to flash to BIOS version 4.21, which came out at the end of April this year, just before my problems started to occur.
- In the worst case scenario, living in the Netherlands, does an RMA need to be done via the retailer and not directly through AMD? And yes, I am strongly considering switching away from Asrock.
- Any other comments or tips? I've been seeing a lot of slow UEFI complaints recently on this subreddit, even with Mobo/CPU combos that aren't the usual AM5 culprits.
p.s. switch to Linux. It's friggin' amazing.