X370 Taichi fast boot

Another hint to reduce startup time, in the OC Tweaker screen, IF you board's UEFI has the AM4 Advance Boot Training option, set it to Disabled. I would suggest setting this option to Enabled if you increase your memory speed, or add more or new memory.

That option change might buy you a few more seconds, but it's not night and day. Also, using Ultra Fast will show up more from a cold boot/startup, since the Windows fast startup option is active at the time, but not on restarts.

If you haven't seen this page, there is a FAQ about the "boot time" of AM4 boards. I'll let you read that for yourself:

http://www.asrock.com/microsite/AM4TSD/

lflee wrote: Finally get the X370 Taichi MoBo from Micro Center, after trying out Asus X370 Prime and MSI X370 Gaming Pro Carbon. Couldn't get the Asus to post at all after chatting with their tech support - BIOS screen only shown briefly, once. The MSI board goes without any problems and is stable, I change the RAM to 2400MHz and is without problem. The only complaint I have with the MSI board is it's slow start - seem to spend a lot of time checking all the stuff in MoBo and don't have a 'fast boot' option. The CPU temperature also stay around 57C at idle. Set up my Taichi also without problem. It even start up Win 10 one time after I forgot to press the DEL key, with the Win 10 installed in the NVMe drive using the MSI board. lol. The only strange thing is that the stock BIOS version doesn't allow instant flash to update BIOS. I have to re-install Win 10, and update BIOS to ver 1.60 using the Windows executable. Good thing is CPU temperature reading is around 29C with the Taichi. I set the RAM to 2400mHz (my RAM is G.Skill 32GB, 2x 16GB), it took 3 BIOS auto restart to get it to work. I still think the boot time is too long (slower than the MSI board), took more than 10 secs for the keyboard to light up (to allow me to press DEL to get into BIOS). Then I select the 'Ultra Fast" boot option, it won't boot. Each time the error code seem to stop at F9. So now I am wondering if I should keep this board or the MSI board. If I cannot achieve fast boot with ASRock Taichi, I might as well just use the MSI board, with faster boot time than the Taichi. Can someone advise how to get the fast boot work? If anyone got it to work? I did some search and do I need to install Win 10 differently to get fast boot to work? My build, if helps to diagnose the problem: - Ryzen 1800X - G.Skill DDR4 2400 16GB x2 - EVGA 1070 SC - Noctua CPU Fan cooler - Samsung EVO 960 256GB NVMe SSD - ASRock Taichi X370 MoBo Thanks!

I have an ASRock X370 Killer SLI/ac board with a 960 EVO and Windows 10, installed in full UEFI booting mode, so I can use the Ultra Fast setting of the Fast Boot option. As you said, that requires Windows to be installed in a slightly different way, but also your video card must support the UEFI GOP protocol, which your video card does support.

I'll get to the punch line first, using the Ultra Fast setting makes no difference in the long POST time of a Ryzen system. The Fast Boot option is really 75% faster POST time, and 25% faster OS loading, which is the actual booting time. That is, as it works on Intel processor/chipset systems.

You would need to install Windows 10 again, with the following steps, in order to use the Ultra Fast setting:

1. In the UEFI, Boot screen, find the CSM option. Enabled by default, set it to Disabled. You normally cannot set CSM to Disabled after installing Windows with CSM set to Enabled, it won't work (see 3, below). You must Save and Exit the UEFI before disabling CSM is applied.

2. When you install Windows 10, in the boot order you must select the entry of the installation media with the prefix, "UEFI:". It will look like, "UEFI: < installation media device name>".

3. During the Window installation, choose a Custom installation. Delete all existing partitions on the OS drive first, and then click the New button. You'll get a pop up window saying multiple partitions will be created, just click Ok. You should get four partitions and will be GPT formatted, instead of MBR. This step is essential. You cannot boot Windows with CSM disabled, and the OS drive with MBR formatting. You'll also have an EFI system/boot partition, which is not used with MBR formatting.

That's it, besides the video card being GOP compatible. Just let the Windows installation continue from there normally.

What is actually happening is with CSM disabled, you will be actually using the capabilities of the UEFI firmware, instead of running it in emulated BIOS mode. CSM is Compatibility Support Module, that gimps the UEFI firmware into BIOS firmware mode from 1998, 16 bit mode, using 1MB of DRAM only, among other things. The only UEFI capability then being used is the GUI interface to the option settings. CSM is used because of all the old, non-UEFI hardware some people use, mainly old video cards that do not support GOP, and old HDDs. Intel's iGPU supports GOP since the Sandy Bridge processors. I hate "Legacy" hardware.

At best, all I gained was a few seconds (3 - 5) out of the 30 second POST time of the current state of Ryzen boards.

Unfortunately, apparently whatever the Ryzen memory training POST procedure must do cannot be skipped, and had no EFI POST equivalent. If you have a POST beep speaker installed, and the POST beep option enabled, you can see how long POST takes. Hopefully AMD can do something about the long memory POST procedure in the future. ASRock included the Fast Boot option, since it has been available for years now, and hopefully can be used as it should be some day.

clubfoot wrote: The only way you can make a valid comparison is to install Windows 10 fresh and clean in UEFI mode on the Taichi!

Thanks!!!
I have read about this... but thought might not be applicable. Is there a instructions on how to do this?

This is a brand new architecture, and the motherboard manufacturers kind of got blindsided by impossible deadlines to boot.  You cannot expect things to work flawlessly from the beginning.   As far as I know 16gb sticks of DDR4 are all dual rank, which are having more issues with Ryzen atm.  These are probably excuses you don't want to hear, and I can understand that, but it is the reality of the situation. 

If you were booting up quickly with the default settings, and that is what you want, then you should change the memory speeds back.  Be patient for bios updates.  They will come!   If you are brave, then you can try 1.94A, but I wouldn't recommend that.  

I had a similar issue with the taichi, but I only have 16gb of memory.  I could get 3200 to work in version 1.60, but it would drastically reduce my boot time.  Now, I am currently using 1.94A 3200 CAS 14, and it boots very quickly.  But again, I don't recommend this, as some people have reported issues.

The Taichi is a better board than the Carbon, but you can do w/e you want in that regard. 


Edited by mysticjbyrd - 06 Apr 2017 at 1:58am