RIP ASUS X299 Strix I hardly knew ye

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Deleted member 72990

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Well I learned the hard way that the X299 Strix out of the box basically bricks itself if you have a bad overclock. There is no way to clear the CMOS or reset the board with the default BIOS. I found this out via various forums after I had a bad overclock of course! The board lasted me a solid 3 hours and it will not be forgotten. The RGB was pretty but I could feel the rainbow of colors mock me as a hopelessly tried to revive the board. My trusty Z77 Sabertooth was a champ for 5 years and is still in tip top shape so I guess I took a good motherboard for granted.

Thankfully newegg is giving me a refund and I have a second board on the way from Amazon being delivered today (I live close to a distribution center).

Moral of the story - might want to flash to the latest BIOS before you mess around too much with an X299 as I suspect they shipped with shit BIOS' since they were in a hurry to get them out the door. The experience definitely killed the excitement of getting new parts.
 
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Wow, first casualty I've read of the X299. Most likely won't be the last. Are you getting another Strix or a different model/brand?
 
Nebulous said:
Wow, first casualty I've read of the X299. Most likely won't be the last. Are you getting another Strix or a different model/brand?
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I'm going to try another Strix since it does look to be an otherwise very nice board. Seems like most X299 boards have quirks out of the box though. I'll be sure to update BIOS first this time.
 
Yeah these manufacturers rushed out these boards and of course glitches are bound to show/happen. Hopefully with the new bios update your board will rock steady. Good luck with the new replacement and keep us posted!
 
Got my new board yesterday with free same day delivery (thanks Amazon!) and it is running like a champ. First thing I did was update BIOS lol.

So far I have the CPU at 5.0 GHz and the memory at 3600 MHz quad channel. I need figure out the memory controller on the X299 and then get the memory speeds up to 4000. The CPU I purchased off of Silicon Lottery at was rated at 4.9 GHz at a fairly low voltage. It booted up at 5.0 and games no problem. Once I get the rest of the system sorted and start doing some stress testing I will see if I can push it further. Super excited about this new platform!!

The real test is when I will try Watch Dogs 2 with all sliders set to the max. Ran pretty solid on my Z77 system but CPU was bottlenecking quite a bit.
 
Don't mean to be harsh, but: The first thing you do after powering on a new MB is update the BIOS. ALWAYS.
I thought every [H]er knew this?

Why? Because the newer BIOS versions likely resolve issues with memory timings, CPU issues and other tweaks that improve general performance and stability compared to the "initial" release BIOS that is generally shipped with MBs, especially early in their release cycle.
Attempting to play around with OCing without the newest BIOS is pointless because everything can change with the new BIOS version.
What worked in the old BIOS may not work in the new BIOS and vice-versa. You are likely wasting your time tweaking things in the old BIOS.

The only reason NOT to upgrade to the latest BIOS is when it is known to be a crap version, which sometimes happens as MB manufacturers churn out new BIOSes at a rapid pace in an attempt to resolve issues quickly.
This is why you poke around various Overclocker-friendly forums to get a sense of what BIOS is best for your CPU.

BTW, the most fun is when you buy a MB with a BIOS version that does not support the CPU you want to install, but a newer BIOS version does support it. Now you must find another, supported, CPU for a few minutes of BIOS flashing to the newer BIOS that actually supports the CPU you want to use.
In years past, I remember reading about some guys buying Celerons just to put in and do a flash to the newest BIOS so they could install the CPU they wanted to use. What a waste of money and time.
Thankfully, some of the higher-end Asus boards (and now perhaps other manufacturers as well) can flash the BIOS without a CPU installed. https://rog.asus.com/technology/rog-motherboard-innovations/usb-bios-flashback/
 
I've been guilty of doing just that on new boards: buying a crap cpu to flash the bios so that I can use a newer cpu. Nothing wrong with that. With my current setup I went straight balls deep in overclocking the snot out of my 7700K. Got 5.0Ghz with 1.3v right out of the starting gate. Then I reverted back to stock, flashed to the new bios, rebooted into desktop, then I went balls deep again to the 5.0Ghz. I've been there ever since with no regrets. If the board would've taken a crap, then out comes the cash and I buy another one, done. Send the borked board in for RMA.

It's ain't [H]ard if you start waltzing around being cautious. You do or you don't, there is no middle ground here.

If we did that, there wouldn't be this forum.
 
I got my system running at 4000 MHz RAM by the way on the latest BIOS :)
 
Skyblue said:
Can you feel any difference?
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From 3600 MHz, I'm not really sure. From 2133 or 2400, yes - things are generally just smoother with the higher speed. However, I'm happy that I met all of my goals with this build.
 
bjornb17 said:
I'm going to try another Strix since it does look to be an otherwise very nice board. Seems like most X299 boards have quirks out of the box though. I'll be sure to update BIOS first this time.
Click to expand...

MSI's X299 SLI Plus was great out of the box. It wasn't quirky at all.
 
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