The MSI BIOS is smart enough (naturally) to not even recognize BIOS files that aren’t for the current platform. Tried it with Z690 BIOS, B550 BIOS and X670 BIOS on each of those platforms with the same FAT-formatted USB stick. Z690 BIOS only shows files on the USB stick that pertain to that platform; same with the B550. The X670 board is still a closed book. It’s not authoritative but it’s the best I have.
I think this topic is defunct until I get a new board in about 10 days and hopefully have some good news with which to revive it.
What have I learned so far? Getting a fancier board with 7-segment debug displays is a form of insurance. I didn’t want another CARBON though (don’t want ARGB), not at almost $500, plus tax. I’d have another UNIFY, but MSI hasn’t produced one of those yet for the AM5 platform (trying to force people to buy ACE and GODLIKE, no doubt. Godlike: ha! The most over-designed and expensive motherboard in the MSI range. No thanks MSI).
You can simply disable all the rgb on the board with a single setting in the bios.
At least on Asrock boards that is the case.
But i would assume that this would be the case with most boards.
No additional software needed to disable the rgb.
In regards to the Msi godlike that board is basically a waste of money.
Because the ACE is cheaper and offers pretty much the same.
Although the ACE is also ridiculously expensive as well.
All boards above the $500,- dollar mark are kinda pointless,
for a main stream system in my opinion.
If you want onboard 10G Ethernet then that could justify to go with the Asus X670E Pro Art.
But other then that i don´t see many reasons to pay more then $500 for a board really.
You can, but why pay more for ARGB, not to mention wasting the natural resources?
IMHO and for my money, the Unify is probably the best board in the MSI line-up, except as I mentioned it doesn’t exist - yet? - in the AM5 range. I have a Z690 CARBON which is excellent but it’s too gamer for my tastes (I basically ended up making a gamer PC, festooned with lights like a Hong Kong shopping district at night. My first and last…). The B550 Unify is more my kind of board, just that I’m trying to move to AM5.
I was trying to fight against the $500+ trend by going for the bargain-basement (relatively) PRO X670-P. I got a bit hoist on my own petard on that one thus far.
Also, I’m kind of stuck on MSI these days. I did a lot of investigation when I was putting together my first PC in over a decade earlier this year (now I’ve gone mad and made several) and came to the conclusion that the MSI offerings suited my use case best (development workstation mainly, dual-booting Windows and various flavors of Linux). You got a lot of M.2 slots which is why I ended up with a Carbon (5!). Now I don’t need so many (only 4 on the PRO X670-P, but I’m leaving one empty). I used to favor ASUS but heard their reputation for quality went down after the Gigabyte acquisition. ASRock were ruled out early.
One thing that is really nice from Msi is the bios.
However in regards to their AM5 lineup of boards they kinda missed the boat a bit really.
Because i think that the X670E Carbon is pretty much the only,
interesting board in their line up currently.
The X670-P is a decent budget board.
However at that price point there are boards with a nicer rear io.
I also don’t really like any of their B650 offerings,
because those are all 6 layer pcb boards.
you should try different usb sticks. some just don’t work even when everything else is correct.
if you have a usb stick with an activity light that’ll tell you some useful info. it usually has a blink pattern of slow blinks scanning the device and then fast blinks when it finds MSI.ROM
there may need to be nothing else on it, and it may need to be a relatively small capacity like 8 or 16gb, too.
the cpu has an igpu too. try it without any gpu installed, and a monitor plugged into the motherboard hdmi port. at least one system I thought was dead was booting to the igpu for some reason.
its lilkely this mobo has an out-of-date bios and that’s the main issue.
Thanks Wendell. I tried what you suggested - otherwise empty 16GB USB stick formatted on Windows. I checked the same stick in a Z690 Carbon and a B550 Unify builds. I started off with no graphics card installed, and HDMI out from the processor. Immediately the CPU and DRAM lights came on, but not the GPU or BOOT lights (EZ Debug lights that is). They go off after some number of ten second intervals. I tried HDMI out and DP out, from the iGPU and two dGPUs.
I think where I went wrong, lulled into a false sense of complacency by having two previous MSI builds go perfectly, roughly following the same procedure, was that I put the processor, cooler, RAM and M.2 drives in the board before powering it on. Then had to start removing parts to see if it affected anything.
I’ve ordered a replacement motherboard - I’ve ruled out everything other than that and the CPU, and the motherboard is a cheaper option than a new CPU! - so I will try again but next time I’m going to try and flash the BIOS first thing before I plug anything into the board (other than power that is).
I figure the BIOS is out of date too, but flash-back is doing nothing, and obviously I can’t get to the BIOS to invoke M-Flash. Maybe it’s bricked somehow, maybe it’s a bad board. I don’t know, and EZ Debug is not helping!
I have to wait a week until the new board turns up, so I’ll just be twiddling my thumbs until then (with this build that is: I still have a working 12900 system and 5950X system. The 12900 gave up its 3050 GPU temporarily to test on the AM5 board as I was frantically swapping out everything I had two of while trying to find why the new build wouldn’t boot). Here’s to better luck in 2023!
The BIOS is good. The boards are good generally in my opinion. I figure, already owning a Z690 Carbon, that a more basic board is really all I need. We can get up-sold on features that aren’t super-necessary. I’d like a bit of a stronger VRM, maybe, but I’m sure the one that’s on the PRO X670-P will be just fine. The hardware debug facility has been disappointing, but I’m stuck with it now. The rear IO is fine: it has everything I need. The shroud is not fancy like the Carbon or Unify boards, but once it’s in a case it’ll be indistinguishable in use from those other two.
I considered a B650 but they’re difficult to get at the moment, particularly the Tomahawk which is the one I’d probably get. Also, I liked the idea of having a PCIe 5 M.2 slot even though my drive is only PCIe 4. See what I mean about getting up-sold?
BTW, this new build (when/if it works!) is going to be a Linux-first build: the others have been dual-boot Windows 11 & Linux but this is going to be Linux-only (on the metal once I’ve done basic burn-in and stress tests; Windows in QEMU-KVM once Linux is installed)
This is the reason I’m going all-AMD. I’ve had issues getting the AMD drivers running properly on the 5950X build with RX 6600 (they aren’t - I’m still stuck with Nouveau) and I’ve had other problems with RTX 3050s on a Fedora laptop and the 12900 build.
I keep periodically checking Level1Linux for anything helpful re: running a Linux distro (Debian and Fedora are my choices) with a properly configured AMD GPU driver and firmware. I’m zeroing-in on running Fedora since as much as I love Debian, I need a more current toolchain than that which comes with the LTS build. Is there anything upcoming on Level1Linux in this vein? Thanks.
Well basically the system should work out of the box.
So if you cannot get it to post and i assume you tried all the obvious things,
like one stick of ram and double checked all the connections.
Then it probably is the motherboard it self.
Bios flashback from usb should basically work.
However it shouldn´t be necessary to get it to post really.
So i would contact your seller or Msi for an rma.
In regards to X670E vrm´s they all have a good enough vrm pretty much.
It was apparently a dead CPU. First time I’ve experienced that. I RMA’d it and AMD sent me a new one.
I just re-read the thread. I did actually get a replacement MSI PRO X670-P motherboard, G.Skill DDR5 RAM and not only another 7950X processor, but a 7600X processor too. I basically swapped everything out then replaced each part until I’d proven it was the 7950X that wasn’t working.
I then had to return everything. The new 7950X was never opened but the other parts were. I kind of felt a bit bad about that, but modern retail allows you to return items you’ve tried and don’t want for whatever reason. I don’t normally do that. Still waiting - and hoping - on a couple of returns. It’s been a long drawn-out process. I started ordering parts basically on Black Friday or Cyber Monday last year and I still don’t have the machine in its case. The downside of online ordering is that it can take a long time for parts to arrive, especially in the “holiday season”!