Slow POST when starting my computer

Hi there!

My new computer is slow with the POST. From the moment I push the power button to when the POST report appears, nearly a full minute has passed. 56 seconds last I took the time. After the report screen appears, I’m in my desktop within 15 seconds or so, which is fast.

I’m not sure what could cause this. My understanding is that this is abnormal. My old computer used just a few seconds before the report screen appeared.

My hardware:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3950X
RAM: G.Skill Trident Z DDR4 3600Mhz (4 sticks, 32GB total)
Motherboard: ASUS ROG Strix X570-F
GPU: ASUS GeForce RTX 2070
Storage: Corsair Force Series MP510 480GB M.2 SSD (boot drive), 4x WD Red 4TB drives and a 500GB WD Blue SSD.
Expansion: Creative Sound Blaster ZxR

I have not overclocked anything, except setting the RAM speed manually to 3600MHz. Auto set it to something much slower (2100 MHz or something). This isn’t unusual I guess, had to do the same manual setting on my old hardware.

Ran memtest86+ and got no errors on the RAM. I have also tried leaving all drives disconnected, except the boot drive. No change.

Any suggestions to what I can do to improve this?

EDIT: Some changes I have done in the BIOS, besides the RAM speed.

Disabled the onboard audio controller (since I use a Sound Blaster card)
Disabled the RGB LEDs
Disabled power to the USBs when powered off
Set Secure Boot to Other OS (I run Fedora 32)
Enabled CSM
Disabled Fast Boot
Disabled Boot Logo
Disabled something called ASUS Armoury Crate

I have tried these settings in the opposite selection without any change.

Is it still slow if you run that RAM at slower speeds? I know that with AM4 getting four sticks of RAM up to high speed is much more difficult than two sticks. There are some odd things involved with running four sticks on a dual channel controller.

Oh hey if you don’t need CSM then turn it off. And if Secure Boot is working for you then you don’t need it.

try enabling Fast Boot.

If post state takes longer then usual, but does show motherboard splash screen.
then there is often a initalization issue with a certain hardware component,
or usb device.

The things that i would suspect then are either.

  • Soundblaster card.
  • One of the HDD´s.

Double check if all those hdd´s are in perfectly working order.

If the post state takes too long while the screen stays blank.
Then it might be something related to the memory or gpu.
Cpu kinda less likely, unless you tried to overclock it before.

  • Update the bios to the lastest version.
  • Double check memory voltage (1.35V), when xmp profile is loaded.

Also this. :slight_smile:

I would say try unplugging everything apart from the OS ssd, one stick of ram, and a GPU, with UEFI to not load splash screen?
In case the system is piling all components, and getting stuck somewhere?
UEFI should allow simultaneous checking of everything, which Should make it quicker than bios, but the more things to check, the more chance to stumble?
If no faster, I would swap the memory stick out for another one in another slot?
It’s not normal to be doing Nothing for ages, even a screen up saying loading…
Here’s hoping the os ssd is fine, as that might be one is the last things you want to check.

My system boots real slow, but I have all pci slots populated, and ram channels, and extra m.2 and usb stuff to pol, but it at least has a screen up.

Might it also be some power saving in the monitor side? Some don’t light up for a few seconds as well

I apologize for the slow response.

BIOS (or UEFI?) is at latest version.

I removed everything unnecessary and started the daunting process of elimination.

The POST was very snappy with all drives (except the m.2 boot drive) disconnected, no sound card and one RAM stick.

I proceeded with enabling the proper speed for the RAM, then populated every slot, still snappy. Voltage is at 1.35V, which I assume is where it should be.

Put in the sound card, still snappy.

Connected the SSD drive I have, still snappy.

Connected one of the WD Red drives, and it got slower. Connected one more, and it got even slower.

So apparently the culprit here are the WD Red drives. Is this a sign they are starting to fail, or just normal behavior?

I believe that may be normal behavior. It is probably spinning the drives up and searching for boot entries.

Make sure you aren’t running Compatibility Support Mode (CSM), make sure you don’t have any UEFI boot entries except for your primary. If there is a boot entry on a hard drive address it might search for the drive. Make sure you aren’t using any kind of RAID mode, since the boot firmware might delay to search for RAID signatures on all the drives.

And activating Fast Boot should leave out all device initialization except for the primary boot device. Although if you’re running Linux I’m not sure if this works automatically since I think Fast Boot requires that the OS mark a successful boot, or it won’t continue to Fast Boot. Also remember Fast Boot is only fast on the second boot.

I’ve got a system with four WD Reds on it, and it does not boot especially slowly. It does take almost 30 seconds to mount the btrfs array, but that’s all after boot.

i assume you selected the Os drive as main boot drive,
and as first priority?

It could be that one of the WD red drives might on its way out.
How do you use those drives?
Just individually as storage, or otherwise like a raid configuration?

The m.2 drive is the only selected boot device. Fast Boot doesn’t improve anything for me. CSM is disabled for now.

The WD disks are not in a RAID configuration. They are individual disks purely for storage. They are formatted with btrfs and partitionless (appear that was the preferred way with btrfs).

I do plan to set up a NAS and move everything over there, which would eliminate the need for the WD disks in my desktop.

Thank you everyone for suggestions and input. The culprit was found, and I suppose this will naturally solve itself when I get the NAS up and running.

That is so weird. With Fast Boot turned on the motherboard should only bring up the hardware required for boot. It should be ignoring the hard drives. It should not even configure the SATA controllers.

If you really want to figure it out you might want to throw a post onto the manufacturer’s support forum.

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