Edge Z690 WiFi - Clock Watchdog Timeout BSOD

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Ezmafl

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Finally installed my Z690 Edge WiFi DD4 with a 12900K last night. My G.Skill 32gb 3600 CL16 (2x16, Ripjaw) were carried over from my Z490 Gigabyte board, known working and installed in the appropriate slots for two modules. I freshly installed Win11 via media creation tool. No issues until I started installing drivers. I experienced freezes, Blue Screens and Black Screens with Clock Watchdog Timeout.

The only bios settings changed were: XMP Enabled and Resize Bar Enabled. No overclocking. Board shipped with 100 Bios, I flashed and retried everything with 110. Same issues.

Late last night, I ran across a post on Toms Hardware forum. Same issues, same board. The culprit and fix?

I had a WD 4TB Blue HDD and an Asus BD Drive connected to SATA ports A and B, respectively. Sure as hell, I switched both ports to like SATA 5 and 6, freshly installed Windows for the fourth time — and zero issues.

Hopefully this helps someone. For what it’s worth, my WD HDD was coming up as ejectable via the USB icon, too. Even though Windows Device Manager saw it as a disk drive. After switching SATA ports, that issue was corrected, too.
 
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Stuff like this might be solved in a future BIOS update... the system should be stable no matter which SATA ports are used. But thanks for posting this "workaround" of sorts, it might help others who have this problem.
 
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Just wanted to post to thank you. I've been trying for hours to figure out what was causing my CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT BSOD error whenever I was trying to update my drivers or install certain programs and it turns out it's because I had two of my SSDs plugged into SATA A and SATA B. This has saved me a lot of headaches.
 
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frostysprit154902d8 said:
Just wanted to post to thank you. I've been trying for hours to figure out what was causing my CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT BSOD error whenever I was trying to update my drivers or install certain programs and it turns out it's because I had two of my SSDs plugged into SATA A and SATA B. This has saved me a lot of headaches.
Click to expand...

So it has to do with the ASMedia SATA controller:

Screenshot 2022-01-21 at 18-53-14 MPGZ690EDGEWIFIDDR4 pdf.png


The four chipset-controlled SATA ports are ok, but the ASMedia ports might need a driver update or something.
The cheaper MAG Z690 Tomahawk WIFI DDR4 is not affected, as all SATA ports are supplied by the Z690 chipset there.

The newest ASMedia drivers can be found here at the bottom: https://station-drivers.com/index.p...Drivers/orderby,2/page,2/lang,en-nz/?Itemid=0

However, these controllers also have their own firmware and corresponding updates: https://station-drivers.com/index.p...rmwares/orderby,2/page,2/lang,en-nz/?Itemid=0

In case of a firmware bug, this might be more complicated. I don't know if one can easily update the firmware using an official updater. On the Z590 boards, when there was a problem with the audio chipset, MSI supplied a firmware updater for that, so it's certainly possible to update the firmware of a certain chip somewhere on the board.

M1904 said:
Increase DRAM or Cache voltage
Click to expand...

Unlikely, what makes you think that that's related?
 
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Agreed that increasing DRAM, CPU or cache voltages are likely irrelevant in this SATA situation. Usually, yes when overclocking with that BSOD, but not for this issue.
 
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Same issue on a Z690 Carbon WiFi, 12700K (DDR5) Was literally about to tear down the system to start RMA'ing components when I stumbled on this forum post. Been 3 days without a BSOD and the clock watchdog timeout. Going to give it a few more days to see if things "stay fixed".

Same symptom list:
Intermittent BSOD Clock Watchdog timeout at/just after startup
BSOD Clock Watchdog timeout when updating drivers
Intel Tuning Utility occasionally showing watchdog failure
Random SATA drive listed as removable media

Literally ran through every troubleshooting step tech support and I could think of, just didn't think the specific SATA port in use was an issue.
 
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eric_staufe15ec02f2 said:
Finally installed my Z690 Edge WiFi DD4 with a 12900K last night. My G.Skill 32gb 3600 CL16 (2x16, Ripjaw) were carried over from my Z490 Gigabyte board, known working and installed in the appropriate slots for two modules. I freshly installed Win11 via media creation tool. No issues until I started installing drivers. I experienced freezes, Blue Screens and Black Screens with Clock Watchdog Timeout.

The only bios settings changed were: XMP Enabled and Resize Bar Enabled. No overclocking. Board shipped with 100 Bios, I flashed and retried everything with 110. Same issues.

Late last night, I ran across a post on Toms Hardware forum. Same issues, same board. The culprit and fix?

I had a WD 4TB Blue HDD and an Asus BD Drive connected to SATA ports A and B, respectively. Sure as hell, I switched both ports to like SATA 5 and 6, freshly installed Windows for the fourth time — and zero issues.

Hopefully this helps someone. For what it’s worth, my WD HDD was coming up as ejectable via the USB icon, too. Even though Windows Device Manager saw it as a disk drive. After switching SATA ports, that issue was corrected, too.
Click to expand...

I had this exact problem (with an ejectable harddrive) and RMA'd two boards according to MSI support. I also noticed SSDs won't reach 500MB/s on those ports so I stopped using them on my third board and that probably accidently fixed my problem!
 
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I mean I'm glad my system is stable now (ish, wifi has been weird the past few days, I blame windows), but I would like to know for sure if this is a hardware issue or a firmware issue.

Idk, this issue seems to be obscure enough that it is hard to stumble on the workaround, and unless you run across a post like this you may never think to swap a SATA port for a CPU Clock realated blue screen. So be helpful people and spread the word if you see other confused forum posts out there, haha.
 
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Joe3020 said:
I mean I'm glad my system is stable now (ish, wifi has been weird the past few days, I blame windows), but I would like to know for sure if this is a hardware issue or a firmware issue.

Idk, this issue seems to be obscure enough that it is hard to stumble on the workaround, and unless you run across a post like this you may never think to swap a SATA port for a CPU Clock realated blue screen. So be helpful people and spread the word if you see other confused forum posts out there, haha.
Click to expand...

I reported two things to MSI… First, this ASMedia SATA issue (and included this forum post). Asked them to escalate and review thread post as others have similiar experience. Second, I also reported about the occasional 0c P-Core temp readings. Intel confirmed that it’s, indeed, a misreading bug on the processor. It doesn’t affect the E-Cores. When disabling C-State in the bios, the 0c reading doesn’t occur. Intel said they are working on a fix and a future bios update will fix that (assuming MSI incorporates the fix).
 
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I am having issues with my ASMedia controller in my MEG Z690 ACE. With SATA ports enabled I get the blue screen with CLOCK WATCHDOG TIMEOUT error when installing the Intel Chipset Drivers. I also get reboot/lockups when installing my Corsair iCUE software for my power supply. Disabling the ASMedia controller allows me to install both drivers and apps without issue.
 
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Ok, been just about a week and no Clock Watchdog BSOD after having switched off SATA ports A and B. Think it is safe to call this a workaround for my setup at the very least.
(If anyone ends up here cause I said wifi earlier, getting the current drivers from Intel's site fixed my issues)
 
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Well, imagine that, exact same issue. MSI B660m Mortar, i7 12700, Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti. Clock Watchdog freezes when installing drivers, immediately after booting into Windows. Network driver, display driver, chipset driver -- all sparked the freeze.
Will try disconnecting my optical drive from SATA B to see if it solves the issue and report back.

Any word from MSI on this issue? Is this a driver bug, or a firmware bug?
 
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citay said:
Do that, but also disable the ASMedia controller in the BIOS, see here: https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?...r4-clock-watchdog-errors.373897/#post-2117824

That controller causes nothing but problems. Perhaps it's a bug in the controller's firmware, hard to say.
Click to expand...

So, I unplugged the optical drive from the SATA B port, and everything seems working stable again! I was able to install the Realtek Ethernet driver (always caused a crash) and Intel IGPU driver without a BSOD.

However, I was not able to disable the external SATA controller in BIOS. The option was greyed out. Does that mean I do not have the ASMedia controller on my board? My board is the B660m Mortar. Anyway, still, unplugging that drive from SATA B seems to have worked. Time will tell.

So grateful for this community!
 
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Update: installed the chipset drivers without error, this was a driver that caused a crash 100% of the time. Seems the problem is resolved. However, I'm still curious why my board does not allow me to disable the SATA A and B ports...
 
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wpwentzel15e602ea said:
However, I was not able to disable the external SATA controller in BIOS. The option was greyed out. Does that mean I do not have the ASMedia controller on my board? My board is the B660m Mortar. Anyway, still, unplugging that drive from SATA B seems to have worked. Time will tell.
Click to expand...

No, you have the ASMedia alright:
  • 4x SATA 6Gb/s ports (SATA5~8, from B660 Chipset)
  • 2x SATA 6Gb/s ports (SATA_A & SATA_B, from ASMedia ASM1061)
And this has caused the problems for sure.

Do you have the B660M MORTAR, B660M MORTAR WIFI, B660M MORTAR DDR4, or B660M MORTAR WIFI DDR4?
If i knew which board you had, i'd link the support site with the newer BIOS versions. You should flash the newest BIOS to see if the option becomes available to you.
 
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Can you make a screenshot of the greyed out option in the BIOS? Press F12 to make a screenshot to a FAT32 USB drive (you might have to convert the BMP to PNG later to lower the filesize).
 
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