Z170 Extreme6+ slow boot

You described the situation perfectly. You even included the reason in your post.

POST is relatively long, and actual OS loading it extremely fast. Those two things, POST and OS loading, are affected by different factors.

Your answer to the situation is, "and some other harddisks...". If they are really spinning HDDs, they take time to get going, several seconds (5 - 8) and POST checks each one, and waits for them.

Older mother boards used to have delay times you could set in the BIOS to wait for HDDs to get going, up to 30 seconds. SSDs spoil us with their instant start up time, HDDs are another story.

Unplug one or more of your HDDs, and see how long your startup time is. One of them may be particularly slow. I've seen this issue in the other ASRock forum several times.

In case you don't know, the UEFI/BIOS update cleared any settings you changed in the BIOS, unless you redid them after the update. So the Ultra Fast setting may be gone.

svengru wrote: I am running into a similar issue with this mainboard. The post time increased from just under 5s to 8s when I updated from BIOS version 1.2 to 1.4. Going back to 1.2 solved this issue.   I reset and reconfigured the BIOS setting to the exact same ones for both versions.   Has anybody tried version 1.5?   I am hesitant to just try 1.5 since the upgrade also resets the ME config and thus the fTPM which makes me lose important settings in the OS like virtual smartcards.   -Sven

The description for UEFI version 1.50 is:

1. Improve DRAM compatibility.
2. Improve OC function.
3. Add NVME Configuration.

NVMe is Non-Volatile Memory Express. The NVMe configuration is for the new NVMe SSDs that are beginning to be available.

Is the ME you are talking about related to NVMe, or is ME the Intel Management Engine firmware or software?

If it's the Management Engine software, then you have nothing to worry about. Or do you know that the ME firmware is also updated in 1.50?

I don't have your board, so I can't comment on UEFI 1.40 being slower to POST than 1.20. The ironic part is the description for 1.40 is:

1. Improve boot time.
2. Update Microcode, ME, RC.
3. Improve DRAM compatibility.

"Improve boot time" might also include the POST time, which you say is slower now. Did you notice any new options in the UEFI that might cause the slower POST if not configured correctly? Did you use the Fast Boot option with UEFI 1.20?

I see that UEFI 1.40 includes an ME update. That is not the same as the NVMe configuration update in 1.50.

Or did you just type the wrong version number?

I just did some more test and installed 1.5 as well.

Hi Parsec,

Thanks a lot. I am not booting from it, but still did the update.