Severe X870 Tomahawk issues

[Leon255156302e1]

I recently bought the X870 Tomahawk to use with a 9800x3d and Corsair 2x16Gb 6000CL30 EXPO (CMK32GX5M2B6000Z30) but I'm having lots of issues...
Frequent crashes (windows sometimes shows "Clock watchdog timeout" BSOD, sometimes no blue screen), my NVME drives sometimes disappear (I need to turn off the power completely, a reboot isn't enough to show it again) making the OS unable to boot and I could not get the Wifi to work.

Today during a reboot there was a warning that the hardware changed so I press F1 to open the bios and the EXPO profile simply disappeared! I exit the bios, boot the system and now it only shows 4Gb of RAM?!? The system is very slow too.
I'm using the latest bios, but it isn't stable, please advise.

 

[agent1004115b802e2]

Wow man 1.35 on VDD thats good. Mine won't even boot under 1.37! I actually found some very last line instability running 1.40 VDD even and had to bump it up to 1.42 for 6000cl28 with those timings. Was able to lower my VDDQ to 1.20 though. I'll update my post. Also, I set VDDP to 1.0v instead of .950v.

edit: Can no longer edit my main post. I was also able to drop SOC voltage to 1.10v.

Are you on the latest bios? So far it's working really well with your settings at 1.35 on the latest for me, but I haven't run any stability tests aside from that 30m OCCT.

 

[Deleted member 1015767]

You should be able Edit only reasons you would not be able to are.
One not logged in
Two Forum playing up again
Three you got banned and that has not happened
Four Topics has been locked but that also has not happened.

Hey Alan, thanks for response. Yeah, edit button is not showing up for me on posts more than a few days old or so it seems. Double/triple checked by refreshing page a few times. I can also confirm that I am indeed logged in so its probably forum acting up again. And I don't think I'm edgy enough to be banned or have a topic locked I don't think...

Are you on the latest bios? So far it's working really well with your settings at 1.35 on the latest for me, but I haven't run any stability tests aside from that 30m OCCT.

Yeah I am on the latest official from the support page. Ive adjusted a few timings here and there and added a few bumps to some voltages as a failsafe for future instability. I don't like being "edgy" with voltages either.

If you're running OCCT, I like CPU+RAM with extreme toggle for 1hr+. It'll find stuff fast that most test won't allowing you to move on quickly to more tuning. After that, Testmem5 absolute/anta777extreme and whatever other tests you wanna throw at it for piece of mind.

Changes are:

tras-48 (tRCD+tRTP)
trc-86 (tRCD+tRP+tRTP+2)
twtrs-6 (found 4 to tight, causing small performance regression)

I bumped a few voltages just for long term safety:
VSOC-1.15
VDDQ/VDDIO-1.22

Also make sure you don't disable Bank Group Swap on this board with current bios and dual rank ram kit, it destroys read speed and slightly lowers write, copy and increases latency in AIDA. Just leave it on Auto.

 

[Alan J T]

Hey Alan, thanks for response. Yeah, edit button is not showing up for me on posts more than a few days old or so it seems.

Will report this to my Admin


Have spoken to our Admin, and this is as expected to prevent spammers from bypassing the spam filters by editing posts at a later date
Sadly it has become quite common and has made it harder to keep the forums free from undesirables elements

 

[Deleted member 1015767]

Will report this to my Admin


Have spoken to our Admin, and this is as expected to prevent spammers from bypassing the spam filters by editing posts at a later date
Sadly it has become quite common and has made it harder to keep the forums free from undesirables elements

All good and completely understandable in this day and age. I can just keep posting here. Thought about starting another thread for ram overclocking on x870(e) if anyone else was interested.

 

[davidalfredoguisad158a02e3]

All good and completely understandable in this day and age. I can just keep posting here. Thought about starting another thread for ram overclocking on x870(e) if anyone else was interested.

I'm interested, except from the "high voltage mode" issue (related to my Corsair kit) I've had plenty of success overclocking RAM with this X870 Tomahawk board.

 

[John Cuppi]

Hey all, Ryzen 7 9800x3d and G.SKILL Trident Z5 Neo Series 64GB (2 x 32GB) F5-6000J3040G32GX2-TZ5N with the EXPO1 profile enabled. I switched it back to standard, and the results were even worse. Without expo enabled it's unstable in memtest86 and errors out, freezes and crashes. I am feeling lost, any advice?

 

[citay]

First, try each module individually in slot A2. If you get tons of errors with one module and none with the other, the first module is defective, then you have to RMA the kit. If both modules are error-free individually in single-channel, then it might be one of those BIOS shortcomings. But it's quite odd to get more errors on the slow default JEDEC profile compared to the EXPO.

 

[John Cuppi]

Yeah, I don't know what to make of that either. I just cleared CMOS and started all over. Started memtest86 with standard and didn't have any issues immediately like last time. So now I'm even more confused that before. I'll try single stick at a time but... enabled expo1 again and now running a full test again and won't touch it from here. Another question, I was reading a lot about memory context restore causing issues, is it still a known problem with MSI boards? Mind you, I didn't see anything about it for this board, the complaints were about X670E and some others.

 

[citay]

That MCR setting is mostly used for decreased boot times. Not sure how problematic it can otherwise be (i'm on Intel). Right now on AM5 800-series boards, a lot of things can be problematic.

 

[John Cuppi]

More issues with this board... LAN port won't light up, tried two known working cables.
Installed the realtek drivers from the x870 tomahawk's downloads page.
Am I looking at a dead LAN port or what?

 

[nunow155802d6]

well! after 2 months i decided to update my bios! i´ve been using the november bios since i bought this motherboard!
everything worked, 9900x, gskill 7200, xmp, lan, wifi, bluetooth, boot time super fast, etc

after update, everything works the same way! and now memory overlock shows an option for hynix 6000! i will still play with memory clock and timing, try to reach 8000

 

[John Cuppi]

Jesus this board has been a wild ride today.

#1. Woke up to a failed memtest86+. Following the memtest86+ errors that I woke up to this morning, I decided to just reset the CMOS. And this is with whatever the defaults were after a BIOS upgrade that night from an October bios version I believe to the newest bios as of December or "January".

#2. Did a quick CMOS reset. Enabled EXPO1. This time I disabled Memory Context Restore, thinking that might be the issue. Boot time went up to ~50 seconds doing this.

#3. Ran another memtest86+ test. Passed. Also the entire system just felt more stable.

#4. Decided to finally install Windows 11. No workable ethernet drivers or wifi. Ok, annoying but no big deal. Or was it?

#5. Realtek ethernet drivers installed, no luck. That's when I noticed my port had no light as mentioned in the previous post.

#6. Uninstalled and reinstalled ethernet drivers, no luck. Windows claims device is working fine. Full driver suite from msi is installed using msi center.

#7. I locate this post & where others had the same issue with LAN being dead on this board and suggestions for fixes.

#8. I was able to get the LAN jack to wake up it by turning off my PSU, unplugging the power cord as well, and performing CMOS reset that way (about 10 seconds on the button).

#9. This yet-another-cmos reset this time caused the system to not boot up getting all the up to the memory init and error code "EC" was shown. EC in the manual: "Reserved for future AMI error codes." Fantastic!

#10. Failing to get the computer to boot, I did another CMOS reset repeating what I did in 8, same error code while booting.

#11. I pulled a stick of my F5-6000J3040G32GX2-TZ5N 32GB out. Viola, it booted. Applied EXPO1 preset to the 32gb memory. Did not change memory context settings or anything else this time, those are set to all defaults of whatever the current BIOS tells it to.

#12. Ethernet fixed! Just like that, the CMOS clearance reactivated my ethernet jack. It is DEFINITELY not because of anything I did with drivers. Driver installs were a dead end. Why did that cmos clearance work? Who the hell knows, if MSI could explain it that'd be great.

#13. On the single 32gb stick I took this opportunity to run HCI memory tester in windows for a little over an hour. No errors found.

#14. I reinstalled the second 32gb stick back in. BIOS detected the change, jumped in, enabled EXPO1 presets again. Again this time I did not change memory context settings. Boot times are 15-20 seconds-ish with it on 'Auto' so it must mean it's actually on.

#15. I have had no BSODs throughout my testing and use of windows this evening, the ethernet jack is stable, unplug and plugged in things to every USB port, I have not been able to trigger any instability. I ran HCI memory test for about 30 minutes and didn't find anything. But I am now hammering it overnight with HCI memory test to see if it can find anything on either of my two modules.

The LAN issue with this board I had just doesn't inspire confidence. And -- it's still preliminary, but I feel like the last CMOS clearance with the PSU off did *something* to smack this board back into working the way it should. I'm beyond disappointed at how buggy this experience has been and it's hard to trust it right now.

 

[lepardigepard159402e1]

Can anyone confirm if the primary M.2 slot works for the single sided Samsung 990 Pro?

Does it keep the temps below 70C in usage when you peel off the plastic in both top and bottom thermal pads and insert SSD?

Because I've read about the TOP heatsink thermal pads not making contact if you have a single sided SSD. Also read that you might have to leave the bottom thermal pads unpeeled with a single sided SSD (even though this is not mentioned in manual?)

 

[Alan J T]

Can anyone confirm if the primary M.2 slot works for the single sided Samsung 990 Pro?

No can not Confirm if the Samsung 900 series M.2 will work it is a bit hit or miss if it gets detected correctly
I would advise another brand that is not Samsung or Western Digital 800 series as these two have a problem with detection in some configurations.

 

[lepardigepard159402e1]

No can not Confirm if the Samsung 900 series M.2 will work it is a bit hit or miss if it gets detected correctly
I would advise another brand that is not Samsung or Western Digital 800 series as these two have a problem with detection in some configurations.

So the most popular and best drives are not detected... nice one.

 

[Alan J T]

So the most popular and best drives are not detected... nice one.

Only sometimes but it is impossible to say if you would have the problem or not only a few seem to be affected but it has been a long-standing problem for over 2 years or more ever since the Samsung 900 series and WD 800 series were released

I use the MSI SPATIUM M480 1TB Drive as a boot drive and three 4TB Lexar SSD NM790 drives and all will read and write at over 6000Mbs.
And the Lexars are a very well-priced M.2

 

[DeYReX]

Can anyone confirm if the primary M.2 slot works for the single sided Samsung 990 Pro?

Yes it works. I have as primary in M2_1 Slot the 990 PRO 2TB and in the M2_4 The crucial T500 2TB and it works perfect with both of them in the x870 tomahawk. Windows on 990 PRO

 

[DeKay]

#12. Ethernet fixed! Just like that, the CMOS clearance reactivated my ethernet jack. It is DEFINITELY not because of anything I did with drivers. Driver installs were a dead end. Why did that cmos clearance work? Who the hell knows, if MSI could explain it that'd be great.

<snip>

The LAN issue with this board I had just doesn't inspire confidence. And -- it's still preliminary, but I feel like the last CMOS clearance with the PSU off did *something* to smack this board back into working the way it should. I'm beyond disappointed at how buggy this experience has been and it's hard to trust it right now.

I'm guessing you are running the stock BIOS. I had the wireless LAN disappear on me and it had nothing to do with drivers because the device was missing in both Windows and Linux. The stock BIOS gets messed up and doesn't let the OS know the onboard peripheral exists. That is why clearing the BIOS brought the peripheral back for both you and me.

What you really want to do is upgrade your BIOS via M-Flash per MSI's instructions (don't do it from Windows). I'm on v1A2 from 2025-01-02 and my wireless LAN has been rock solid ever since I upgraded, though I still haven't gotten to overclocking the RAM. v1A2 also cleared up other very strange problems I had, like the BIOS reporting setting were cleared on boot now and then (even though they weren't).

It is too bad MSI released the BIOS in such a buggy state and continues to ship the board with that same BIOS. It really is a good board for both Windows and Linux (as long as you are using a recent kernel) but early BIOS problems have given it a bit of a bad rap for some.

 

[lepardigepard159402e1]

Yes it works. I have as primary in M2_1 Slot the 990 PRO 2TB and in the M2_4 The crucial T500 2TB and it works perfect with both of them in the x870 tomahawk. Windows on 990 PRO

Did you peel off the stickers from both top and bottom thermal pads, and have you checked the temps while doing read benchmarking?

Mostly I'm concerned about the lack of contact with the heatsink, without a heatsink the temps should shoot up to 100C easily.

 

[MechDragon]

Did you peel off the stickers from both top and bottom thermal pads, and have you checked the temps while doing read benchmarking?

Mostly I'm concerned about the lack of contact with the heatsink, without a heatsink the temps should shoot up to 100C easily.

I have Tomahawk X870 and 990 Pro 4TB in the first slot. The bottom thermal pad, of course, doesn't make contact with the SSD. The top thermal pad only has contact with the memory. In benchmarks, temperatures reached around 65°C for the memory and 84°C for the controller. In games, the temperatures are lower, the memory is at about 55-60°C and the controller at 60-70°C. However, these values are likely influenced by the heat from surrounding components.

To reduce the controller temperature, I added a cheap 0.5mm thermal pad above the controller. Now, in benchmarks, the controller temperature reaches around 72°C, and in games, it stays between 50-60°C.