Help! - Upgrading X370 to 3950x Ryzen CPU Troubleshooting

[CarryTrainer.Editor]

For the last 24 hours I’ve been trying to upgrade my render server from a Ryzen 1700 to a 3950X…

(This machine has two jobs: FFMpeg encoding and herding hard drives.)

Everything goes well until Windows 10 launches and the whole computer locks up (fans at 100% with power and reset buttons unresponsive). The crash happens right about when your mouse cursor appears… sometimes I’d see the log-in screen for a second.

I’ve got the flagship [Asrock Fatality X370 Professional Gaming motherboard](https://asrock.com/MB/AMD/Fatal1ty X370 Professional Gaming/index.asp) with the latest bios, 6.20. I tried 5.80 as well while troubleshooting.

I’ve tried booting up into an existing Windows 10 installation and countless clean installs of builds 1909 and 2004.

When I put my Ryzen 1700 back in the computer it works perfectly. Prior to this new cpu the computer’s been running stable encoding for about a year or two.

I also tested the new 3950x CPU in another computer with a Asrock B450M Steel legend motherboard… ironically the 3950x works fine in that little motherboard.

I’ve tried uplugging all the extra peripherals (15 Hard-drives).

I’ve tried installing the latest AMD chipset driver into windows, then swapping in the new CPU.

I also swapped out my ancient radeon graphics card for a RX580. Windows still crashed… it seemed to make no difference.

Here are my system specs:

Ryzen 3950x CPU
Asrock Fatality X370 Professional Gaming motherboard
8gb of Crucial Sport LT RAM (2400mhz)
120gb MyDigital NVME System Drive
15 hard-drives
Radeon HD 5450 graphics card
Cheap 720p monitor
Seasonic Gold 850w PSU

Are there any tips or tricks to making Zen 2 work with the X370 platform? … aside from the obvious bios updates

Is there a Windows 10 3950x patch I’m missing? Or some hack to allow 16 cores?

I’ve reached out to Asrock technical support, googled around a bit, but I’m out of ideas.

If I didn’t use After Effects on this thing once in a while, I’d be considering a move over to linux.

[mutation666]

@CarryTrainer.Editor

If I didn’t use After Effects on this thing once in a while, I’d be considering a move over to linux.

run a vm of windows?

Honestly you can clearly afford a new mobo just get an x570 or b550 also do yourself a favor and get an hba all that running through the mobo and that sata expansion card makes me nervous not to mention windows file system.

[CarryTrainer.Editor]

I talked by boss into buying the 3950x… and that motherboard for that matter. Most of the IT stuff comes out of my pocket though. I don’t get an IT expense account. Most of the Hard-drives are a Windows Storage Spaces Parity Array. I’ll study up on the virtual machine approach though…

Anyway, I think I got it! The Asrock Legacy bios 5.30 seems to be working although it wasn’t recommended.

[mutation666]

Bios on that big of generation change are almost always gonna be an issue, glad you found one that works. Deff majorly helpful to have earlier gen cpu.

[CarryTrainer.Editor]

SOLVED WITH BIOS 5.30… Yeah!

The 5.30 bios for the X370 Asrock Fatality Pro Gaming motherboard is working well for me… even though Asrock’s website says the 3950x requires 5.80 or higher.

The X370 Fatality 5.30 bios uses AMD AGESA Combo-AM4 1.0.0.1 published in July, 2019.