Asrock X370 loses BIOS settings upon power loss

[fleshconsumed]

As the title says, my Asrock X370 Fatality Professional Gaming loses BIOS settings upon power loss. I've noticed it shortly after upgrading to 4.40 BIOS, could be a coincidence though since I rarely completely disconnect the power. Basically all I have to do is flip the switch on my power supply to off, wait 5 seconds, flip the switch back on, and when I power on, all my BIOS settings are lost.

Things I've tried: swapping battery, clearing CMOS, upgrading to BIOS 4.60, disconnecting every peripheral except for video card, keyboard, and mouse. Nothing helps. The only thing left to do is try to downgrage BIOS to 3.10, but I'm not even sure if I can downgrade that far.

Never seen anything like this. Anything else I should try or is it RMA time?

 

[UsandThem]

I'd personally RMA since you've tried all the usual trouble-shooting steps. It could be a broken trace on the PCB or something like that, or like you said it could be a BIOS bug. However, if it's a bug in the newer BIOS versions, you'd likely find quite a few people posting about it.

Also maybe sending this question to their support team, and see what they have to say about it. I've seen from several users on here over the years Asrock's support team is usually more responsive to stuff like this than the other motherboard manufacturers.

 

[XavierMace]

Asrock's 4.x BIOS's on their AMD boards have been pretty crappy to put it politely. You can go look on their forums and see oodles of issues, especially for Raven Ridge users. It's also evidence by the rate they've been having to release 4.x updates. I've left my TaiChi on the 3.x chain but Raven Ridge requires 4.40 or later. So, I had to RMA my Asrock board and replace it with a Gigabyte.

 

[Micrornd]

Don't forget to check that the "clear cmos" jumper is in the correct position.
I lknow it sounds dumb, but always worth checking.

 

[alexruiz]

I would say it is a common occurence.
I suspect dead CMOS battery.
I have a X370 killer sli/ac that does the same, but i have been lazy to replace the BIOS battery

 

[LTC8K6]

I would say it is a common occurence.
I suspect dead CMOS battery.
I have a X370 killer sli/ac that does the same, but i have been lazy to replace the BIOS battery

Battery was changed and that did not cure the problem.

 

[Iron Woode]

I had that same problem on my old Asus m4a88td-v evo/usb3. It drove me nuts. I changed the battery and updated the BIOS and nothing helped.

I finally solved it by checking all the jumpers on the board. I saw one that was for overclocking. It was set to overclock. I set it back to default and all the problems went away.

 

[fleshconsumed]

To all, as I've said I've already swapped the battery, I tried different power supply (not sure why that would matter but I did just in case), I tried different videocard, again not sure why it would matter, I removed the second stick of RAM, I disconnected every single wire running to the motherboard including fans, hard drives, usb headers, audio panel headers, even front panel power/hdd leds, I power on by pressing built in power button on the PCB. The only jumper on the motherboard as far as I can see is for clearing CMOS, and I put it back into default 1-2 position after I cleared CMOS. I've tried disabling on boot memory training, I don't see any "overclocking" jumpers on the motherboard, and I have no interest in overclocking anyway so I just leave those on default settings whatever they're.

I guess I'll try downgrading to 3.30 BRIDGE BIOS tonight, and if that doesn't help all the way down to 3.10.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Don't forget to check that the "clear cmos" jumper is in the correct position.
I lknow it sounds dumb, but always worth checking.

Also, jumpers break down and fail, they are actually rather frail, and not meant to be moved often. I had to replace my "clear CMOS" jumper on one of my boards because I used it so much, and it loosened up, and wasn't making good contact. Maybe that's the case here?

 

[fleshconsumed]

Well lads, I'm officially out of ideas. I've downgraded all the way down to 3.10, and I've also tried a new jumper for Clear CMOS switch. Did not help. Not sure if I should bother contacting support or just straight RMA it. The board should keep BIOS settings if I unplug PSU from the wall and yet it doesn't.

 

[LTC8K6]

Did you load the bridge BIOS 3.30 before going to 4.40?

IOW, if you are at 3.10, you have to go to 3.30 before going to 4.40 or higher.

Have you tried upgrading in that order?

 

[fleshconsumed]

Did you load the bridge BIOS 3.30 before going to 4.40?

IOW, if you are at 3.10, you have to go to 3.30 before going to 4.40 or higher.

Have you tried upgrading in that order?

Yes, I did follow Asrock instructions. I went 3.10 > 3.30 > 4.40 > 4.60. When downgrading I also went through bridge BIOS to be safe, so my downgrade path was 4.60 > 3.30 > 3.10.