Windows Lag on ASUS B250 Mining Expert

[swogerino]

Here's a crazy thought, can Windows activation possibly have anything to do with this?

Trying on un-activated Win 10 instance..

I am using an i3. It does not help at all...
Also (just a coincidence) this one Rig I am using has an activated windows.
So both points should not be relevant. 

It occurs AFTER installing drivers, right?
So maybe we have to try even older drivers?

Can you install the Blockchain drivers? I am getting blue screen.

That board is one of the most problematic ones in Windows, I have been able to successfully run 11 cards though with only 8 GB of HyperX RAM DDR4 and an G4400 processor. It is definitely a driver problem from what I see. However I would suggest the following:

Update BIOS of motherboard, turn all PCH in BIOS in Gen1 as a riser slot is Gen1 . Install Windows , UEFI one , you can download it anywhere for free and buy a sticker if you want it activated (but that is not relevant). Install only 1 card and install latest AMD drivers from the official website. Make sure to disable windows updates at services.msc , shut down your PC. Plug all the cards you have an turn it on, it should recognise all cards without any issues.

This was my personal experience with this board and it recognised up to 11 RX 580 cards.

[1715458014]

1715458014

[AVP]

Here's a crazy thought, can Windows activation possibly have anything to do with this?

Trying on un-activated Win 10 instance..

I am using an i3. It does not help at all...
Also (just a coincidence) this one Rig I am using has an activated windows.
So both points should not be relevant. 

It occurs AFTER installing drivers, right?
So maybe we have to try even older drivers?

Can you install the Blockchain drivers? I am getting blue screen.

Yeah I feel we're describing the same issue. It happens as soon as driver installation is finished. Very often the installation does not complete and rig will freeze, then reboot by itself.

I haven't tried original Blockchain drivers since current drivers have it.

Have you tried connecting GPU's 1 by 1 and setting each GPU to compute mode before connecting the next?

[duhjeff]

Having an issue with ASUS B250 Mining Expert, where windows starts to lag after a 5th card is added. For now I plan to run 12-13 AMD cards.

3 or 4 cards seems ok, but with 5th windows lag is unusable. Opening device manager, seems like its refreshing every ~30 sec as in like looking for devices or something, which is weird.

This I tried so far:
- With & without iGPU
- various slot, card & riser combinations to rule out defective hardware
- installing drivers via windows update & installing manually from AMD's site (DDU cleaned each time).
- update latest BIOS & Asus chipset drivers
- set virtual memory at 36-52GB


Hardware:
- CPU: Pentium G4560 Kaby Lake Dual-Core 3.5 GHz
- 8 GB RAM / 120gb SSD
- MSI RX 570's (unflashed, yet)
- Windows 10 Pro (latest updates)

Anyone face a similar issue?

Any pointers at this point would be appreciated. Thanks.

Need 16gb ram.  I had the same issue with 2 of my 13 gpu rig and 16 gb with 32 gb virtual mem solved the problem

[Andartis]

I have 16 GB RAM and virtual memory is 96GB minimum. So thats not the problem.

[AVP]

I have 16 GB RAM and virtual memory is 96GB minimum. So thats not the problem.

If you open Device Manager and leave it, does it refresh for you every 15-30 sec, as in like scanning for device?

Mine seems to do so..

[Andartis]

If you open Device Manager and leave it, does it refresh for you every 15-30 sec, as in like scanning for device?

Mine seems to do so..

Yes it does that.
I will try tomorrow a clean install, then putting in one vega, install drivers, reboot, check and so on. Erverybody says that should work.

[AVP]

If you open Device Manager and leave it, does it refresh for you every 15-30 sec, as in like scanning for device?

Mine seems to do so..

Yes it does that.
I will try tomorrow a clean install, then putting in one vega, install drivers, reboot, check and so on. Erverybody says that should work.

Ok, a bit of progress to report, on the Device Manager refreshing issue. Seems to be resolved by unplugging unused pcie usb cables that were still plugged in to the motherboard. Or by setting 3 available BIOS settings to Gen 1. I made a bunch of changes together..

So the Device Manager now behaves normally, but lag is still there. I have to say it is much better then before, at least windows is somewhat use-able. After all this time spent, I'll consider this a small "an improvement"..

[Three33]

Its windows 10 problem.

Windows 10 Pro
1703 running fine
upgraded to 1709 running fine
1709 upgrade 1803 random freezing, start menu not working, etc

Then done:-
clean install 1803 random freezing, start menu not working, etc
clean install 1709 random freezing, start menu not working, etc
clean install 1703 running fine again

[Andartis]

Ok, so I will try a bunch of things on 1803 and then will switch back to 1703 if you say it works.
Funny thing is that I had the startmenu not working problem on my NVIDIA rigs. Rebooting several times helped and then the problem disappeared. It was gone since 1803. 

[Andartis]

Ok, so I got it up and running!
Thank you toptek12 for the useful script.

The thing I did not notice and that I was up to try next was the Crossfire settings. I remembered that someone told me something about this for AMD cards (these were my first AMD cards for mining). You have to turn Crossfire and Ultra Low Power mode off in order to get the cards to work. This is possible via the registry, what takes some time to set. Then I found out that the AMD-Compute-n-Stability-Script_v2.0 that toptek12 mentioned in another thread does exactly that in a conveniant way. So I used it (DL from Anoraktech).

Step by step:
1.) Remove any drivers in Safe mode with DDU.
2.) Reboot, get into BIOS and make sure everything related to Link speeds is on Gen1. Disable the 2 virtualisation settings. Enable above 4G encoding.
3.) Boot.
4.) Shut down.
5.) Plug in ONE single Vega.
6.) Start up, install recent AMD drivers (ONLY drivers!).
7.) Reboot, check if everything works.
8.) Shut down.
9.) Plug in all the other cards. I just had the riser disconnected for convenience.
10.) Reboot, open Device Manager and wait until every card is installed and no triangles or unknown devices are shown.
11.) DONT REBOOT! Apply the AMD-Compute-n-Stability-Script_v2.0 (Both parts, read the readme.)
12.) Only after this is done reboot.

Everything should work fine now.

Regards

[AVP]

Ok, so I got it up and running!
Thank you toptek12 for the useful script.

The thing I did not notice and that I was up to try next was the Crossfire settings. I remembered that someone told me something about this for AMD cards (these were my first AMD cards for mining). You have to turn Crossfire and Ultra Low Power mode off in order to get the cards to work. This is possible via the registry, what takes some time to set. Then I found out that the AMD-Compute-n-Stability-Script_v2.0 that toptek12 mentioned in another thread does exactly that in a conveniant way. So I used it (DL from Anoraktech).

Step by step:
1.) Remove any drivers in Safe mode with DDU.
2.) Reboot, get into BIOS and make sure everything related to Link speeds is on Gen1. Disable the 2 virtualisation settings. Enable above 4G encoding.
3.) Boot.
4.) Shut down.
5.) Plug in ONE single Vega.
6.) Start up, install recent AMD drivers (ONLY drivers!).
7.) Reboot, check if everything works.
8.) Shut down.
9.) Plug in all the other cards. I just had the riser disconnected for convenience.
10.) Reboot, open Device Manager and wait until every card is installed and no triangles or unknown devices are shown.
11.) DONT REBOOT! Apply the AMD-Compute-n-Stability-Script_v2.0 (Both parts, read the readme.)
12.) Only after this is done reboot.

Everything should work fine now.

Regards

Bingo! Just tried this, and can confirm this works.

This is the most frustrating motherboard I ever had to work on.

Many thanks for sharing the steps!

[Andartis]

Glad to hear.
I can recommend OverdriveN Tool for configuration. If you dont install the AMD settings...

[HardCore12V]

Increase windows OS virtual memory and also pls decide to stop using windows OS and start using mining OS like hiveOS, this will erase any memory issues you having when using windows OS

[CrossroadBTC]

you must install Windows on GPT partition and boot Windows in UEFI mode to properly use 5+ cards.

Does this have anything to do with my motherboard with 6x pcie slots that only boots with 5 GPUs? Anything over 5 GPU the motherboard won't boot up at all 🤔🤔 so weird and confusing