Blank screen when cold booting

killroy67

killroy67

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Oct 16, 2006
Messages
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So hello all, as the topic says Ive been getting a blank screen most of the time using two newer bios versions when starting from a cold boot. No leds are lit on the mobo, fans are spinning, keyboard lit, just nothing on screen, almost like Windows booted just fine but no signal. I can do a restarts and it's fine, boots perfectly normal. When I use two previous bios versions, it boots just fine, but as soon as I use the newer one it's a blank screen and I have to hit the reset button. The system is rock solid, Prime 95 ran for 30min with no issues,3DMark ran fine, games run great.

Summary:
bios versions 2.0 and 2.02 cause a blank screen from cold boot
bios version 1.28 and 1.30 are fine
system rock solid with games
I did the firmware update from Nvidia and it reported my card was already updated
 
killroy67 said:
So hello all, as the topic says Ive been getting a blank screen most of the time using two newer bios versions when starting from a cold boot. No leds are lit on the mobo, fans are spinning, keyboard lit, just nothing on screen, almost like Windows booted just fine but no signal. I can do a restarts and it's fine, boots perfectly normal. When I use two previous bios versions, it boots just fine, but as soon as I use the newer one it's a blank screen and I have to hit the reset button. The system is rock solid, Prime 95 ran for 30min with no issues,3DMark ran fine, games run great.

Summary:
bios versions 2.0 and 2.02 cause a blank screen from cold boot
bios version 1.28 and 1.30 are fine
system rock solid with games
I did the firmware update from Nvidia and it reported my card was already updated
Click to expand...
Come on, someone take a crack at it, guesses are welcome!
 
DP cable from 4080 to monitor? Try an HDMI cable or vice versa. Deselect fast boot in bios. There's a couple guesses.
 
so it does boot, you just dont see the post screen? either stick with a bios that shows it, swap to hdmi or live with it on the new versions.
 
learners permit said:
DP cable from 4080 to monitor? Try an HDMI cable or vice versa. Deselect fast boot in bios. There's a couple guesses.
Click to expand...

Furious_Styles said:
Fast boot disabled?
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Great suggestions, yet unfortunately I did try them and they did not work, I even switched monitors, cleared the cmos, changed memory speed, use the Nvidia firmware tool and already updated, and probably several other things.

pendragon1 said:
so it does boot, you just dont see the post screen? either stick with a bios that shows it, swap to hdmi or live with it on the new versions.
Click to expand...
yes, although only from a cold boot where the PC is powered off, reboots work fine, tried swapping cable and it made no difference. I also have it on a earlier bios version which works great. I do have a support ticket in with Asrock, I guess my big question is there something wrong with any of my hardware. I don't think so, it plays games, performs well on Prime 95, runs Cinebench without issue. The only thing I haven't done is run Memtest yet.
 
killroy67 said:
yes, although only from a cold boot where the PC is powered off, reboots work fine, tried swapping cable and it made no difference. I also have it on a earlier bios version which works great. I do have a support ticket in with Asrock, I guess my big question is there something wrong with any of my hardware. I don't think so, it plays games, performs well on Prime 95, runs Cinebench without issue. The only thing I haven't done is run Memtest yet.
Click to expand...
i doubt it. ive run into lots of systems that use oddball resolutions during boot/bios that just dont display, especially on TVs, at least not until windows is loaded. ive also seen them post so fast you dont see anything until it hits windows.
 
pendragon1 said:
i doubt it. ive run into lots of systems that use oddball resolutions during boot/bios that just dont display, especially on TVs, at least not until windows is loaded. ive also seen them post so fast you dont see anything until it hits windows.
Click to expand...
Hopefully Asrock support is decent and gets back to me soon and maybe shed some light on the problem, it could be just a buggy bios version. I have until Jan 31 to return the board to Newegg, so no big rush.
 
killroy67 said:
Hopefully Asrock support is decent and gets back to me soon and maybe shed some light on the problem, it could be just a buggy bios version. I have until Jan 31 to return the board to Newegg, so no big rush.
Click to expand...
They will likely tell you to just use the bios that works. That's sorta the rule anyway.
 
Furious_Styles said:
They will likely tell you to just use the bios that works. That's sorta the rule anyway.
Click to expand...
I talked to Asrock tech support and that's what they pretty much said. They also told me Gskill had more incompatibility issues than Corsair, even though this particular memory is on the QVL list. Also they said AMD AGESA could be the culprit, because AGESA controls the memory functions.

Now I also called Gskill. they put the blame on the bios versions put out by Asrock, saying they were buggy since the other two bios versions work just fine.

So thats where Im at right now, in all the years since working with 486/66's and Windows 95, I have been able to eventully solve problems, except this one. This is my first Asrock board, before this I have been running Gigabyte boards since the Intel I7 4790K and never had bios issues. So I guess my choices are:

1 Send the board back to Newegg and get a replacment (I have until the end of January)
2 Send the board back and get another board from possibly Gigabyte (their ratings are pretty poor)
3 Keep the board and just not bother updating the bios, at least to the current newer versions

Right now on bios version 1.30 the system is rock solid, no issues whatsoever

Opinions???
 
killroy67 said:
I talked to Asrock tech support and that's what they pretty much said. They also told me Gskill had more incompatibility issues than Corsair, even though this particular memory is on the QVL list. Also they said AMD AGESA could be the culprit, because AGESA controls the memory functions.

Now I also called Gskill. they put the blame on the bios versions put out by Asrock, saying they were buggy since the other two bios versions work just fine.

So thats where Im at right now, in all the years since working with 486/66's and Windows 95, I have been able to eventully solve problems, except this one. This is my first Asrock board, before this I have been running Gigabyte boards since the Intel I7 4790K and never had bios issues. So I guess my choices are:

1 Send the board back to Newegg and get a replacment (I have until the end of January)
2 Send the board back and get another board from possibly Gigabyte (their ratings are pretty poor)
3 Keep the board and just not bother updating the bios, at least to the current newer versions

Right now on bios version 1.30 the system is rock solid, no issues whatsoever

Opinions???
Click to expand...
Keep it, it works fine. It's just a lot more work to return/replace with almost no benefit.
 
killroy67 said:
I tend to agree with you, tearing this apart and putting it back together isn't high on my priority list, especially as you said for almost no benefit.
Click to expand...
You could even do more advanced troubleshooting to see if anything might be causing it besides the mobo. But even then that would take a significant amount of time that I probably wouldn't bother. I personally very rarely do cold boots.
 
Furious_Styles said:
You could even do more advanced troubleshooting to see if anything might be causing it besides the mobo. But even then that would take a significant amount of time that I probably wouldn't bother. I personally very rarely do cold boots.
Click to expand...
If it displayed issues with all bios versions then I would get more into it like trying another gpu, trying different memory, but when all the hardware runs flawless with the current version I find myself asking why. I don't think it's a hardware issue but rather a firmware issue.
 
For reference.
7800X3D voltages.png
 
killroy67 said:
If it displayed issues with all bios versions then I would get more into it like trying another gpu, trying different memory, but when all the hardware runs flawless with the current version I find myself asking why. I don't think it's a hardware issue but rather a firmware issue.
Click to expand...

Can you post a zentimings screenshot of your voltages? I have experienced this behavior several times with AM5 boards, and its always been either too much or too little voltage somewhere. Zen 4 chips seem to have much more variance in what they like than any other chip I've ever seen. Between the two I currently own they're as different as night and day with memory voltages, one likes very low and the other likes very high.
 
LigTasm said:
Can you post a zentimings screenshot of your voltages? I have experienced this behavior several times with AM5 boards, and its always been either too much or too little voltage somewhere. Zen 4 chips seem to have much more variance in what they like than any other chip I've ever seen. Between the two I currently own they're as different as night and day with memory voltages, one likes very low and the other likes very high.
Click to expand...
Screenshot 2023-11-29 110117.png
 
Looking at your HW info it looks like you have your modules in the wrong slots unless you have 4 modules they should be in slots A2 and B2 according to your motherboard manual. From the left these are the 2nd and 4th slots.
 
learners permit said:
Looking at your HW info it looks like you have your modules in the wrong slots unless you have 4 modules they should be in slots A2 and B2 according to your motherboard manual. From the left these are the 2nd and 4th slots.
Click to expand...
Yeah the 2nd and 4th slots, that's where I have them installed. So i was thinking of getting a set of Gskill Trident Z5 DDR-6000 memory and trying that in place of the Flare X5. The Gskill memory tool recommenced Flare X5, but it is not even on the board QVL list.
 
Yea memory and memory controller voltages , drive strengths , and termination resistances have to be spot on especially for initial start up from cold. Maybe different memory would solve it.
 
learners permit said:
Yea memory and memory controller voltages , drive strengths , and termination resistances have to be spot on especially for initial start up from cold. Maybe different memory would solve it.
Click to expand...

Thats why I was asking for zentimings, it shows all of that stuff. I don't see the point of wasting money on hot-running Gskill crap anyways, I've used Klevv 16gb A-die blanks on probably 6 builds now and they run great and cost like $40 per. No insulator heatsink on them, I'm currently running a pair in my very picky Asus board at 6200mt/s CL32 with 1.35V and they don't even hit 40C during games.
 
LigTasm said:
Thats why I was asking for zentimings, it shows all of that stuff. I don't see the point of wasting money on hot-running Gskill crap anyways, I've used Klevv 16gb A-die blanks on probably 6 builds now and they run great and cost like $40 per. No insulator heatsink on them, I'm currently running a pair in my very picky Asus board at 6200mt/s CL32 with 1.35V and they don't even hit 40C during games.
Click to expand...
Did I send you the right information?
 
killroy67 said:
Here you go
Click to expand...

The impedance settings on that are bizarre, have you swapped a few kits around on this board?

Thinking about it now, when I ran into this "have to reset every other time to get it to POST" bug I would take the RAM out fully, reset the CMOS, power on with no RAM so it fails over and then reinstall it and let it retrain. I've run into several instances of really strange behavior when I swap kits around on AM5 and don't let it train from scratch. Just an idea.
 
LigTasm said:
The impedance settings on that are bizarre, have you swapped a few kits around on this board?

Thinking about it now, when I ran into this "have to reset every other time to get it to POST" bug I would take the RAM out fully, reset the CMOS, power on with no RAM so it fails over and then reinstall it and let it retrain. I've run into several instances of really strange behavior when I swap kits around on AM5 and don't let it train from scratch. Just an idea.
Click to expand...
No this is the first kit, brand new build, I have a second kit of Gskill that is on the way from Newegg and actually on the Asrock QVL list for this board.
 
killroy67 said:
The new Gskill memory is a little looser timings at 32-36-36-96, it's approved by Asrock so we'll see.
Click to expand...

Well good luck, just know that at one point I had 7 kits of RAM here and couldn't get anything to work properly so you might be in for a ride lol

Finally I completely gave up on XMP style presets and just manually tuned everything and it works great.
 
LigTasm said:
Well good luck, just know that at one point I had 7 kits of RAM here and couldn't get anything to work properly so you might be in for a ride lol

Finally I completely gave up on XMP style presets and just manually tuned everything and it works great.
Click to expand...
I won't go beyond another kit, it works or it doesn't. Right now the system runs great on the current bios ,no problems, so I'll just roll with it if the new kit doesn't solve it.
 
So I found out what is causing the issue, the 4080. I took out the 4080 and the system booted fine on AMD graphics, no problems. as soon as I put the 4080 back in, same cold boot blank screen problem. I tried the Nvidia firmware update and it came back that the card was already updated. Well at least I know what the problem is.
 
killroy67 said:
Here you go

View attachment 616917
Click to expand...
Ok, so that RttWr is too high.
Perhaps you can set the impedance to be like this:

ProcOdt --> 40 ohm
RttWr --> 40
RttPark --> 40
RttParkDqs --> 48

killroy67 said:
So I found out what is causing the issue, the 4080. I took out the 4080 and the system booted fine on AMD graphics, no problems. as soon as I put the 4080 back in, same cold boot blank screen problem. I tried the Nvidia firmware update and it came back that the card was already updated. Well at least I know what the problem is.
Click to expand...
Want to ask, when you use 4080 with the previous bios, did you encounter the same issue?
If not, perhaps you can start tuning the impedance as I wrote above.
 
riev90 said:
Want to ask, when you use 4080 with the previous bios, did you encounter the same issue?
Click to expand...
It works fine with the previous version 1.28 and 1.30, I've tried to contact Asrock about the issue but they have been pretty much useless.
 
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