MSI 970 Gaming Motherboard - Slow Post

[DietDrThunder]

I bought a replacement motherboard for my daughter's PC (don't ask me why she had her PC plugged into the wall instead of the APC). Anyways, I swapped out all of the components from the MSI 890GXM-G65 to the MSI 970 Gaming MB. Everything works great, but I noticed that this motherboard takes a really long time during POST (or before the OS kicks off). I timed it to be around 58 seconds, but once that is complete, Windows 7 Pro boots at the normal speed. I timed the MSI 890-GXM-G65 that I have in my PC, and the total boot time from pushing the power button to getting to the windows 7 pro login screen is around 10 seconds. Does anyone know if there is a quick boot setting in the BIOS which I can enable? The only one I've been able to find is a Windows 8 quick boot. This MB has 32GB of DDR3 1600, and I get the feeling it is doing some sort of memory test on each and every boot. Any ideas on what to look for in the BIOS would be greatly appreciated.

Specs:
MSI 970 Gaming MB
32GB of DDR3 1600
AMD Phenom II 1090T Hex Core OC 3.8Ghz
Sapphire AMD Radeo HD 7970 3GB DDR5 OC PCI-Express Video Card
Samsung EVO 850 Pro 500GB SSD
HGST Deskstar 4TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s High-Performance Hard Drive
COOLER MASTER Silent Pro M700 RS-700-AMBA-D3 700W ATX12V V2.3 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply
Microsoft Gaming Keyboard
Roccat Savu Mid-Sized USB Wired Gaming Mouse
Samsung 24" LCD

 

[potzocalli]

I have a Gigabyte 970 that does exactly the same. It beeps several times and takes about 25 seconds to post. Once it posts it starts fine. Sometimes it will post right away (mainly if I reboot the PC). I swapped memory, cpu settings and nothing helped. As you say, it could be a memory test. If I remember any other detail I will repost.

 

[Killrose]

I know there is a "quick boot" app on the MSi Live update utility they provide with the motherboard. Mine seems to boot-up pretty fast, only slow if I get into bios and change something. Also I've never downloaded the quick boot app, so i'm not sure it would help your problem.

 

[Ketchup]

First thing I do in such a situation is to go into the BIOS and check for devices that I don't need. The VIA VL806 Chipset comes to mind. Temporarily disable it and see what happens.

Another thing to try, if nothing else works, is the latest BIOS. That's not the first thing I try, and the MSI site doesn't list anything related to that, but it's worth a shot if nothing else works.

And if you still aren't getting anywhere, but it's still bugging you, start unplugging things from the computer (USB devices, extra drives, etc) to see if any of those are causing your issue.

 

[DietDrThunder]

1) It takes approx 68 seconds (including me typing in the password) from the time I push the power button until the desktop is fully loaded.
2) The OS is installed on the SSD. The SSD is new (or a replacement I just got from Samsung since the original was bad). I did a clean install of Windows 7 Pro and all software.
3) If I disable OC, back to 2.8 Ghz, no difference.
4) if I unplugged the HDD, no difference.
5) Unplugged the keyboard, mouse, Ethernet cable, and speakers. It made no difference. The only thing that was left plugged in was the monitor.
6) I took the Sapphire Video card from my other PC and installed it on the MSI 970. Still no difference in boot time.

 

[Ketchup]

I don't know if this is applicable in your situation, but I found this paragraph interesting:

Manually overclocking the FX-8350 requires a small amount of work in the MSI Click BIOS. Increasing the Northbridge voltage from 1.1V to 1.2V was easy, however raising the CPU by +0.3V caused the PC to freeze during POST. MSI has included a flick switch that forces the 970 Gaming to enter Slow Mode and allows you to recover to the BIOS without clearing the CMOS.

http://www.kitguru.net/components/motherboard/leo-waldock/msi-970-gaming-motherboard-review/6/

Just wondering if there is something that is causing the board to go into that mode every time. Maybe a strange BIOS setting.

 

[redzo]

Yup.
When I thought that I've seen them all - There's a freaking slow mode booting switch physically placed on the motherboard.
According to the user's manual:

SLOW_MODE: Slow Mode Booting Switch
This switch is used for LN2 cooling solution, that provides the extreme overclocking
conditions, to boot at a stable processor frequency and to prevent the system from
crashing.

Not messing with the switch while the system is on and unplugging the pc from the mains with be a good idea.

 

[Killrose]

Maybe check your boot device order and then remove any other choices from the list. Selecting the boot order is kinda goofy on his Mboard, i'd confirm that I've selected the correct first boot device. I do not use a password on my machine, so it boots into windows 10 in about 15sec and then loads some of the apps like the creative sound feature set, etc., for another 15secs (haven't timed it, but that's about right).