[SOLVED] B450 F ROG Strix won't work with Ryzen 5 3600 anymore?

[leroyjenkins3000]

So, a very long journey but I think I've found out what's going on to some degree. This all started when I watched a "professional" YouTube video about undervolting in BIOS, which resulted in my motherboard giving the white qLED light of death. NO it's not a GPU error like so many posts want to answer, it's actually something to do with resetting the BIOS truly back to it's original non-flashed state....I think. Help prove me wrong or right here.

My methodology then involved swapping out and reseating over and over the different Ryzens I have on hand. I swapped out for a Ryzen 5 2600 I have and bingo, PC works fine and boots POST past the white VGA light and into Windows as normal. This led me to think I had fried my 3600 (which I thought isnt possible with undervolting), but remember I do have a spare working 3600 in another machine. Swapped out the 2600 for the alt 3600, and back to same problem, lots of flashes between red, orange light but ultimately ends up back at white VGA light with no POST, no video output, etc.

So does this mean the board reverted back to original non-flashed state? I'm going to swap my original 3600 which I thought died into other "flashed" machine to verify it is in fact a mobo flash issue, even though I don't know if that one is flashed or not.

I don't have a flash button unfortunately on the ROG Strix but was going to watch this video on how to proceed with flashing as I've never done it before:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2PuzplcBzw


Any other tips or advice you might have is much appreciated, it's been a lot of testing and I've used so much paste in last 5 hours just to figure out what the hell is going on lol.

Edit: and yes I was resetting CMOS and the pins a lot this whole time, but didnt think doing that would literally reset the board to a non-flashed state that doesn't support 3rd gen Ryzens?? So I assume the undervolting tweaking reset it somehow?? Will update here as I test more.

 

[Darkbreeze]

So, since you have a Ryzen 2600 that allows the system to work, if you THINK it might be a BIOS related problem, simply flash the latest version 4901 in the BIOS using the BIOS flash utility. If it's a BIOS issue that will solve that and if it doesn't then it isn't a BIOS version issue.

And no, undervolting cannot cause the BIOS to auto-magically revert to an earlier version. On boards that have a dual BIOS feature it might be possible for something like that to happen, theoretically anyhow, if somehow the backup BIOS did not get updated (Which shouldn't ever happen anyhow unless there is already an existing problem with the BIOS ROM or something related.) and the board experienced problems with the primary BIOS and switched to the backup, but your board does not have dual BIOS anyhow so it's not possible in that regard.

I would flash the latest BIOS version and then do a hard reset afterwards.

BIOS Hard Reset procedure

Power off the unit, switch the PSU off and unplug the PSU cord from either the wall or the power supply.

Remove the motherboard CMOS battery for about three to five minutes. In some cases it may be necessary to remove the graphics card to access the CMOS battery.

During that five minutes while the CMOS battery is out of the motherboard, press the power button on the case, continuously, for 15-30 seconds, in order to deplete any residual charge that might be present in the CMOS circuit. After the five minutes is up, reinstall the CMOS battery making sure to insert it with the correct side up just as it came out.

If you had to remove the graphics card you can now reinstall it, but remember to reconnect your power cables if there were any attached to it as well as your display cable.

Now, plug the power supply cable back in, switch the PSU back on and power up the system. It should display the POST screen and the options to enter CMOS/BIOS setup. Enter the bios setup program and reconfigure the boot settings for either the Windows boot manager or for legacy systems, the drive your OS is installed on if necessary.

Save settings and exit. If the system will POST and boot then you can move forward from there including going back into the bios and configuring any other custom settings you may need to configure such as Memory XMP, A-XMP or D.O.C.P profile settings, custom fan profile settings or other specific settings you may have previously had configured that were wiped out by resetting the CMOS.

In some cases it may be necessary when you go into the BIOS after a reset, to load the Optimal default or Default values and then save settings, to actually get the BIOS to fully reset and force recreation of the hardware tables.

 

[leroyjenkins3000]

UPda

So, since you have a Ryzen 2600 that allows the system to work, if you THINK it might be a BIOS related problem, simply flash the latest version 4901 in the BIOS using the BIOS flash utility. If it's a BIOS issue that will solve that and if it doesn't then it isn't a BIOS version issue.

And no, undervolting cannot cause the BIOS to auto-magically revert to an earlier version. On boards that have a dual BIOS feature it might be possible for something like that to happen, theoretically anyhow, if somehow the backup BIOS did not get updated (Which shouldn't ever happen anyhow unless there is already an existing problem with the BIOS ROM or something related.) and the board experienced problems with the primary BIOS and switched to the backup, but your board does not have dual BIOS anyhow so it's not possible in that regard.

I would flash the latest BIOS version and then do a hard reset afterwards.

BIOS Hard Reset procedure

Power off the unit, switch the PSU off and unplug the PSU cord from either the wall or the power supply.

Remove the motherboard CMOS battery for about three to five minutes. In some cases it may be necessary to remove the graphics card to access the CMOS battery.

During that five minutes while the CMOS battery is out of the motherboard, press the power button on the case, continuously, for 15-30 seconds, in order to deplete any residual charge that might be present in the CMOS circuit. After the five minutes is up, reinstall the CMOS battery making sure to insert it with the correct side up just as it came out.

If you had to remove the graphics card you can now reinstall it, but remember to reconnect your power cables if there were any attached to it as well as your display cable.

Now, plug the power supply cable back in, switch the PSU back on and power up the system. It should display the POST screen and the options to enter CMOS/BIOS setup. Enter the bios setup program and reconfigure the boot settings for either the Windows boot manager or for legacy systems, the drive your OS is installed on if necessary.

Save settings and exit. If the system will POST and boot then you can move forward from there including going back into the bios and configuring any other custom settings you may need to configure such as Memory XMP, A-XMP or D.O.C.P profile settings, custom fan profile settings or other specific settings you may have previously had configured that were wiped out by resetting the CMOS.

In some cases it may be necessary when you go into the BIOS after a reset, to load the Optimal default or Default values and then save settings, to actually get the BIOS to fully reset and force recreation of the hardware tables.

Thanks for fast reply, I will definitely be following this procedure tonight. For the amateur do BIOS these days update themselves via Internet? Is that what you're saying? I was all ready to have to put stuff on a flash drive and get weird but would be a lot easier if it could update itself (assuming I need the 2600 in there + internet connection). I've also read that sometimes people try to slow update BIOS a few versions at a time, since making big jumps don't work sometimes?? I'll also post here what version this Strix is on.

Also update I did put the original trouble maker 3600 in the "flashed" machine and it's working fine, so thankfully didn't ruin anything, just mobo acting up. Will report back later tonight.

 

[Darkbreeze]

No, not via internet. DOWNLOAD via internet, unzip, put it on a properly formatted flash drive and update the BIOS, IN the BIOS, using the BIOS flash utility. Which is exactly what I said.

flash the latest version 4901 in the BIOS using the BIOS flash utility.

The only time you need to update the BIOS incrementally is if the instructions on a specific BIOS update specifically says you are required to do so. AND, if it's required, it WILL say so on one of the update listings so it's always good to read the description for all listed updated. I've already done that however and there is no requirement in this case. Simply update to the latest version and done.

 

[leroyjenkins3000]

Alrighty, 12 hours later and things are back to normal. Flashed to latest BIOS with 2600 and at long last was able to get 3600 recognized again by the board - of course not before accidentally dropping the CPU off my desk which unknowingly led to bent pin and resulting qLED errors lol. Learned quite a bit as an amateur PC build.

However the last hurdle I had to jump was some very weird behavior regarding RAM and the 3600 flashed on this Rog Strix. Depending on what version BIOS was in, what CPU was in, the RAM would not be recognized and threw a yellow light error. This despite having worked fine before. Additionally used literally three different sets of RAM on hand (all functional and "approved vendors") yet depending on the situation, either one or two had to be in A1 B1 or A2 B2, or just A1 or just B2. I don't really remember my Intel builds from five years ago acting so goofy like this, so, if you're having issues with inexplicable error lights just trying rotating RAM slots around and trying different RAM till board finally decides to boot.

So overall, yeah, was purely a flashing issue and again, not sure how changing undervolting resulted in the entire board being unable to recognize a 3600. Maybe it was from clearing the CLR pins + restting CMOS a billion times + reseating CPU over and over. Hopefully this helps somebody and I'm glad it's over.