ASRock X670E Steel Legend Motherboard Needs Hundreds of Seconds at First Boot or Clear CMOS to Train Memory

At this point, we don’t know if this is a limitation at AMD’s level or ASRock’s, but someone with access to a retail ASRock X670E Steel Legend motherboard, with all its packaged paraphernalia in place, spotted an interesting sticker covering the board’s four DDR5 DIMM slots. The sticker has some info on the ideal DIMM slot selection for dual-channel memory (4x sub-channels); but what catches our eye is a table which states just how long the motherboard will take to train the memory the first time it’s booted up, or after a clear-CMOS operation (where your BIOS settings are erased).

The table says that a typical setup with two 16 GB-Module (read: two single-rank modules in a 1 DIMM per channel/1DPC configuration), dauert 100 seconds to train (or until first boot). Zwei 32 GB-Module (typically a pair of dual-rank modules in 1DPC configuration) take 200 Sekunden, as do four 16 GB-Module (four single-rank modules in a 2DPC configuration). The least optimal config, four dual-rank modules in a 2DPC configuration, takes a whopping 400 Sekunden (almost 7 minutes) to train. Das ist 100 zu 400 seconds of a black screen, or no display signal, enough to unnerve anyone and assume something is DOA.

Update Sep 2nd: The source behind this story In einem Livestream über AMDs Mobil-CPUs mit HotHardware that this is an ASRock-level issue, and that it’s been "fixed" with the latest BIOS.