Info Gamers Nexus Roasts Asus Behavior re: AM5 Motherboards

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CeltPC

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Steve of Gamers Nexus really rakes Asus over the coals for policies and behavior in response to the issues some people have had with the potential for failed AMD CPU's and MB's on AM5. Honestly it seems like they deserve it. I hate saying that, because I am a long term customer, and also recently built my new rig with an Asus MB.

It is not that the quality of the physical motherboards themselves is the problem, it is how they handled Bios development and updates. Additionally they have compounded this with statements regarding responsibility and warranty coverage that seek to avoid liability. It sounds like Asus has let the Attorneys take over the ship - which is almost always a grievous mistake.

It is a self-inflicted wound no company needs. I have not personally had any problems with my Strix B650E-E. I have to admit, though, if I was buying a new motherboard today this issue would definitely affect my purchase decisions.

I sincerely hope Asus cleans this up.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbGfc-JBxlY
 
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I feel ASUS lost their way around the 6th gen. Constantly losing motherboard round ups despite higher prices. More recently it is technical problems like this one. Backwards capacitors and other such issues.

ASUS GPU division still seems on top of it though.

I bounce back and forth between ASUS and Gigabyte, but more recently Gigabyte and even ASRock have been getting my purchases.
 
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Their entire video series on this whole debacle was great.

Just a PSA for anyone reading this... although ASUS boards were the vast majority of cases I've also seen reports of Gigabyte boards involved and my 7950x3D was running on an MSI board when it blew up on 4/22.

I updated to a new BIOS on 4/28 locking SOC at 1.3v (the BIOS I had been running was removed from the page by MSI) and the PC has fine since.

I've always ran MSI boards on every PC I've ever build and this was the first time I've ever had an issue. Even though I didn't deal with AMD or MSI directly because I just RMA'ed the dead parts back to Newegg I did get contacted by MSI after posting my story on their forums.
 
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Interesting. Apparently some people at Asus with decision making power are concerned enough about the hornet's nest they created to begin taking action. Asus has deleted all the verbiage about voiding warranty coverage and use at your own risk disclaimers from the Bios download description for my B650E-E Gaming.

Did Kyle (a credible guy) who did two excellent YouTube videos on analysis and a third specifically criticizing Asus, play a key role in motivating the change? Maybe. I have to believe it is a factor. 1.88M subscribers Is a significant audience in a key demographic for them to totally ignore and the buzz it generated has gone beyond that as others in tech media do their usual belated Me Too stuff.

DerBauer (another of the credible and savvy guys) deserves credit as well in bringing the problem of damaged CPUs / motherboards to light. He was even earlier in getting good information out there.
 
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CeltPC said:
Did Kyle (a credible guy) who did two excellent YouTube videos on analysis and a third specifically criticizing Asus, play a key role in motivating the change? Maybe. I have to believe it is a factor. 1.88M subscribers Is a significant audience

DerBauer (another of the credible and savvy guys) deserves credit as well
Click to expand...
Don't forget JayzTwoCents and his nearly 4M subscribers.

View: https://youtu.be/wZ-QVOKGVyM
 
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TravisPNW said:
Don't forget JayzTwoCents and his nearly 4M subscribers.

View: https://youtu.be/wZ-QVOKGVyM
Click to expand...

It does seem like they resell the RMA'd motherboards and also those which they previously sent to some reviewers and then received back.
How else could one explain the radiators covered in something that looks like sawdust and especially those greasy stains near the socket like in the pictures?

Xh5jsZQ.jpeg


https://imgur.com/Xh5jsZQ
View: https://i.imgur.com/Xh5jsZQ.jpeg

mObDtoX.jpeg


https://imgur.com/mObDtoX
View: https://i.imgur.com/mObDtoX.jpeg

4eLUN3P.jpeg


https://imgur.com/4eLUN3P
View: https://i.imgur.com/4eLUN3P.jpeg

The one I received had such a "greasy stain" near the socket too, first I blamed the local seller but then watched those videos and found out I wasn't alone.
I mean, those are clearly some sweaty fingerprints, aren't they?
 
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TravisPNW said:
Don't forget JayzTwoCents and his nearly 4M subscribers.

View: https://youtu.be/wZ-QVOKGVyM
Click to expand...
Well to be truthful, I did not forget JayzTwoCents as much as ignore him. The guy has a history of making angry bombastic pronouncements which were flat out factually wrong. Such as the one he made telling viewers who were "intelligent enough to understand what I am saying" to immediately go out and buy 30 series or AMD video cards "TODAY" because prices would not drop further and they would sell out existing cards and no 40 series would be available. He said anyone who refused to listen to him were idiots and just stubborn, and would lose out.

Of course shortly after his rant was posted, prices dropped significantly, and those who did listen to him lost hard earned money.

I do give him some credit for subsequently making apology videos, though they were not very convincing, ascribing further criticism to "haters". Anyway, I tend to not pay attention to his YouTubes. He just is not as astute or technically knowledgeable as the ones I did cite.

You are certainly correct that he does have a ton of subscribers. I had to laugh when he started off giving credit to Steve at Gamers Nexus for having unearthed the issues, then immediately took back the kudo by saying Steve did not actually unearth the issue, as much as Asus just made it "super obvious". Yea right.

Gamers Nexus and Der Bauer put in work and money to actually investigate and report on what they found. Only afterward did JayzTwoCents make his YouTube. Apparently he just found his outrage at Asus and integrity to "Fire Asus" to protect consumers despite saying he had seen the steady decline over the last three or four generations. I guess I missed the videos where he documented and shared the issues he observed and the long decline.

Speaking of mistakes and apologies, I checked back on the Asus Bios page, but this time clicked beneath the current release on "See All Downloads". Strangely, two previously issued Bios versions still contain the "we are posting this bios, but if you use it everything is your fault" language. I have no idea whether that was an oversight or perhaps leaving out the language on the others is the oversight :).
 
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Fourro said:
I mean, those are clearly some sweaty fingerprints, aren't they?
Click to expand...

That's what it looks like.

CeltPC said:
Well to be truthful, I did not forget JayzTwoCents as much as ignore him.
Click to expand...

Yeah I hear ya... and I can see why. I don't put as much stock into his expertise as I do GN and DerBauer... although it is kinda funny how he has twice as many subscribers that GN has and 25x the subscribers that DB has.

Probably has something to do with all those "subscribe and you'll be entered to win XXX hardware" he does every year. 🤣 🤣 🤣

I was just citing that his Asus hate video got seen by a lot more people is all.
 
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Per Tom'sHardware:

"In a statement that went out via email and press release(opens in new tab), Asus affirms that, despite repeated claims elsewhere last week, its AM5 motherboard warranty covers not only recent BIOS updates to Ryzen 7000 boards designed to fix voltage issues that led to chip and/or board failures for some users, but also all AMD EXPO, Intel XMP, and (Asus' proprietary) DOCP memory presets."

Good to see Asus publicly commit to doing the right thing. Going to take effort over time for Asus to recoup the lost goodwill and confidence though.
 
ASUS released BIOSes based on AGESA 1.0.0.7a, check out your motherboard support page. No beta this time. And this time both VDDCR_SOC and CPU SOC voltages seem to stay within 1.3V. It's a bit sad that it took such beating from several known youtubers for ASUS to realize simple things - you don't mess up with customers especially when you're the top brand.
 
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Fourro said:
ASUS released BIOSes based on AGESA 1.0.0.7a, check out your motherboard support page. No beta this time. And this time both VDDCR_SOC and CPU SOC voltages seem to stay within 1.3V. It's a bit sad that it took such beating from several known youtubers for ASUS to realize simple things - you don't mess up with customers especially when you're the top brand.
Click to expand...

MSI released the AGESA update for my board today as well.
 
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With the BIOS 1602 release (Combo AM5 PI 1.0.0.7), I was still seeing SOC voltages higher than I would prefer (1.33- ish), so I was running at a manually set 1.25 volts. Yesterday I flashed to the new BIOS 1616 (Combo AM5 PI 1.0.0.7.a).

With both EXPO Tweaked and AI Overclock enabled, everything else default, I am now seeing SOC at 1.237 volts. Looks good to me, with no stability or performance issues popping up. We justly criticise problems. so what the heck, I'll give Asus and the other brands kudos for making progress as well :)
 
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Yeah Asus screwed me over more times than I'd like to admit, I could post it all here, but it would be like a book.

I have an Asus x570 board atm, and while its been solid, this board is known to have problems with the PCIE retention clip fighting or getting stuck when removing a GPU or other x16 device, thats happened to me on my 6800xt, what a nightmare.

Asus fought me with my x99 Deluxe, my 5700xt, and my x299 Zenith Extreme, both the motherboard issues was not resolved and prompted me to build a new system both times, $300 usd I spent on shipping back broken items to them multiple times for either a replacement or repair which they didn't do either on both them boards, they did replace the 5700xt Strix for me, that had the same exact issue with the cooler not making contact with the VRM when it was installed, had to void my warranty and fix that myself, they were too stupid to fix it even though it was well known issue for a while.

Yup, screw Asus, I class them with Gigabyte when it comes to warranty.

I like AsRock, I always have, even their cheap stuff as been solid, but when I had to RMA 1 of my customers boards, man they were on top of it, crossed shipped and everything, and even gave me a direct line and ID for faster RMA requests as I was running a repair shop at the time.
 
My board bios updates just came out yesterday, we will try it out see how it does. (hoping boot times get better). Bios 1616 Asus B650E-F.

**update**

I have multiple systems to update (all the same board). First computer was 34 seconds boot down to 14 seconds on 1616. (32GBS of ram) (that was on first boot according to task manager)

System with 64GB went from 60-70 seconds down too, 28-29 seconds.

Wow that is some huge improvements.

ROG STRIX B650E-F GAMING WIFI BIOS 1616

Version 1616
9.07 MB 2023/05/16
"1. Update AGESA version to Combo AM5 PI 1.0.0.7.a
2. Support 48/24GB high-density DDR5 memory module.
3. Memory QVL amended to account for AMD 1.3V SoC voltage limit.
4. EXPO/XMP prompt notice removed.
 
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sonofjesse said:
My board bios updates just came out yesterday, we will try it out see how it does. (hoping boot times get better). Bios 1616 Asus B650E-F.

**update**

I have multiple systems to update (all the same board). First computer was 34 seconds boot down to 14 seconds on 1616. (32GBS of ram) (that was on first boot according to task manager)
Click to expand...
Does the "press F2 or DEL to enter BIOS" window appear on your screen at least for a couple of seconds?
Because for me it does not, the monitor turns on only when Windows starts loading.
 
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When I flash the bios on my board (B650E-F). After a flash it always pops up with a message and F1 to enter bios.

Check your bios settings, their are settings on how that pop up works in the bios.

I'm still so happy the post times dropped by 50%, I had been wondering about that ever since I went to AM5.
 
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Fourro said:
Does the "press F2 or DEL to enter BIOS" window appear on your screen at least for a couple of seconds?
Because for me it does not, the monitor turns on only when Windows starts loading.
Click to expand...

sonofjesse said:
When I flash the bios on my board (B650E-F). After a flash it always pops up with a message and F1 to enter bios.

Check your bios settings, their are settings on how that pop up works in the bios.

I'm still so happy the post times dropped by 50%, I had been wondering about that ever since I went to AM5.
Click to expand...
I prefer to disable fast boot, first because I know the memory training will insure stability, and secondly so that I have those few seconds on the boot screen to easily enter the bios.

Currently that means on a cold boot, 14 seconds to the boot screen, and 34 seconds to Windows loaded. This board has been completely stable throughout the various Bios iterations.
 
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Gamers Nexus has some interesting update information on the bios update statements by Asus and Gigabyte. Moreover, there is discussion of the separate issue of the Gigabyte broken bios problem, that means settings would show a change on volts was made on the screen, but not actually made, a quite "dangerous" situation..

Bottom line is update your AM5 Gigabyte bios to the latest version. Really any AM5 brand should be updated due to the SOC voltage issue, but the additional Gigabyte settings failure makes it an even higher priority. To the don't update bios unless it is broken folk - please note - it really is broken and needs the fix.
 
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