ASRock Bios Update Brings 9600X Back from the Dead!? GET HYTE!!

There's still a lot of posts online, a lot of folks struggling. Is your CPU going to explode? This is kind of the part two continuation of that. ASRock has just published a new BIOS. ASRock says, and AMD, it's like there's a new Agiza and they're going to fix a particular issue, a particular issue that this 9600X CPU is experiencing. Now, it's not discolored and it hasn't exploded, but it doesn't post sometimes in some ASRock motherboards. I've got the Taichi and the Taichi Lite and the X870 Phantom Gaming Nova and the X870 LiveMixer Wi-Fi, the X879E releases from ASRock that we've covered um are updated boards. They're newer versions, but I've also got the launch day X870E. So, we're going to do a build. We're going to do a long-term gaming focused build as part of our ongoing CPU investigation, but I've already been testing this particular 9600X CPU that doesn't post sometimes, and I'm getting some pretty encouraging results. So, uh, let me let me start at the beginning and explain how we got here because this gaming machine is going to sit in the back and just game and try to explode the CPU. So, I'm also going to use the Taichi white graphics card, the 970 XT for this particular build. I might swap the GPU in and out as time goes on and we're doing builds, but you know, why not? Also, Keyron is trying to tempt me away from the Model M. So, they sent me a Keyron Q6 Ultra 8K. So, I don't know. We're going to do a build, but we need to talk about the BIOS update in the Giza and what it means for the ongoing test that I've got going on. So, let's chat. All right. So, first, ASRock has picked up a bit of a reputation that CPUs, especially X3 CPUs, fail catastrophically. Smokes and fires, singemarks type failures. That's what I've been investigating for months with this mess behind me. I did another video on that and [sighs] I've been an abject failure at reproducing that problem. And these systems have been turning on and off, running continuously. I picked up some of this hardware from you, the audience. boards that have experienced catastrophic CPU failure. And in one case, the socket was so badly damaged, I had to get a specialist to replace the socket. And that board has not yet killed again. This type of problem is not really limited to ASRock either. In the past few months, other board brands have had similar failures, but maybe it is elevated on the ASRock brand. Now, unlike the 13th and 14th generation Intel CPU degradation issue where I believe about half of the CPUs are potentially impacted, the numbers for AMD seem to be between 1 and 10 and one in 100 CPUs and probably a lot closer to that one and 100 number that are negatively impacted for this kind of catastrophic failure. There's been a weird secondary effect. Some CPUs just won't post but work fine in other non-ASRock boards. And I'm able to sort of replicate that with our 9600X here. it is very temperamental about posting, especially with really fast memory. And since as I started updating the BIOS, it's uh gotten worse. It's a little bit more problematic. What does it look like? Well, you get a yellow LED or it's stuck during memory testing if you have a motherboard that has like a post readout and sometimes it'll boot and sometimes you have to take the memory out. The crazy thing is that a lot of the time, even clearing the CMOS, it still doesn't post. But if you just put one stick of memory in it, it will post and come back and then you can add the second one and it's fine for a while and then it just it does it again. It could get hung in a Windows update. It could get, you know, a hard lock and then you reset it. Sometimes you just sit down and it's just a black screen. So February 2026, there's a BIOS update from ASRock that adds a Giza 1.3.0.0A with other changes that are meant to address this specific non-post issue. and I happen to have a CPU that seems to most of the time exhibit that at least with the newer BIOSes before February. So, we're going to do a build. We're going to put it to a test and that is what is going to sit in this corner just quietly suffering from now until the end of time. And if this is something you want to follow, you can follow along on the forums. But whenever we got something new or interesting to report, well, it comes out in a video like this. [sighs and gasps] What a mess. If you're not read in on the whole CPU dying situation, be sure to check out that older video here. But the short version is that it seems like a really small percentage of CPUs are affected. So, it's probably nothing to panic about, but it is nice to see these updates. About every month, I pop the CPUs out and see if I get a little bit of discoloration or like what's going on on the bottom of the CPU. And keep in mind, these are not overclocked. And sometimes I do get a little bit of discoloration, but most of the time you can wipe it off, but where the discoloration is varies quite a bit. It's sometimes in this area, sometimes it's on the edge as we see on this CPU. Um, sometimes it's elsewhere, but you know, generally I mean the X3D CPUs don't really I mean this is not an obscene amount of wattage through this socket. So, so we're going to need the rest of the build, right? Height sent me the X50 a little while back. This is actually a pretty fun case. And ASRock is getting into the AIO game. That'll [snorts] help with the CPUs, right? So, we're going to do a build with Phantom Gaming 360 LCD and a uh red and green X50 build. Like, I don't I've been running these motherboards on a test bench. Maybe that makes the difference between a test bench and a case. No, not at all. But why not? I got the case. Let's just do a build. And that Tai Chi white is really going to pop against the cherry red. You wait and see. Yeah, it's going to be bananas, isn't it? You know, the fun thing about Nvidia focusing on what they're focusing on is that more people will get to experience the joy of the 970 XT, which is actually a legit pretty awesome GPU. Wow, this is actually glass, not plastic. Neat. So, I got two options for mounting my 360 on the side or in the front. I think I'm going to put the uh the height fans. I got a set of fans to go with this, too, in the front. And the fans that come with this on the side. Now, I just got to pick a motherboard and do the build. And let's do that. Let's do that part so we can benchmark it. You see, I'm not just going to test the 9600X. We're also going to put a 9800 X 3D in here and see how that goes. Boom. Look at that. This is our final build. This was actually more fun build than I expected it to be. Uh, Hyatt has actually done a really good case here with build quality. dual type A, type C. Get the combo headphone, microphone jack. The power button is surprisingly mechanical. They didn't just cheap out and mount a PCB here with a surface mount barely clicker. It actually has a nice mechanical click feel. The panels slide in. It's got a pretty nice mounting system. It will never pop off. So, like you can really just shove your cables in there. This side's perforated. It's available with a glass panel and a perforated panel. Uh, this is also the first case that I've I've I've used in a build in a long time that I think would be perfectly okay on carpet. It's got plenty of ground clearance on the bottom. There's a magnetic dust filter. I've configured it with fans in the bottom and the front to be able to draw a lot of air in. I'm probably going to turn down the fans on the Phantom Caming, you know, cooling 360. It is actually kind of funny though because, you know, if the ASRock BIOS doesn't fix it, the ridiculously overkill 360m cooler with an LCD, which I've loaded up with memes, definitely will. And I think that's what ASRock is leaning into. ASRock is leaning into this new era of unpre, you know, just unprecedented tumultuous times. They've added an LCD to their 970 XT. Like, this is a high-end thing. Uh, for comparison, I was doing against the Ventus 5070 Ti. This card is like $300 more expensive, over $300 more expensive at the time that I'm doing this video versus the 970 XT. And well, you know, well, we got to take a look at the benchmarks, but this build sitting in a corner. Yeah, I've rotated through a couple different motherboards, too, at this point. Uh, we're on the Steel Legend now, but I was also doing X870E Tai Chi, got the Nova. There's BIOS updates for several boards from ASRock. So, yeah, it's uh it's fun. But yeah, you could put memes on the LCD, on the GPU as well. Why? What's not to love? All right, let's take a look at those benchmarks. Okay, [snorts] this machine is going to live in a corner of our office for a long time doing testing. And the question on my mind was like, okay, I need some baseline performance numbers. I want to know how it's going to work. I want to I want to know what's going on with this. And it's also really interesting because I have a 9600X CPU that would not post in this system prior to this update. So, let's just get a baseline. Let's look at the 970 XT versus the 5070 Ti. Because, you know, even if you're not interested in the BIOS update, it's like, oh, let's look at the value thing. The Taichi White versus the 5070Ti, because right now the price difference, the 5070Ti is about $300 more, a little over $300 more than the 970 XT as Taichi White. So, what sort of performance can we get? Cyberpunk. Here we go. Ultra 1080p. Okay, the 5070Ti is pulling a little ahead. Spend more, get more. I don't know that I'm seeing $300 of difference here at 1080p. What about stepping it up to 1440p? Performance is very similar. Maybe the 1% lows are worse on the Taichi 4K. This is very, very similar performance between the two. And look at that. The Taichi's pulling ahead. What if we go ultra with quality upscaling? 1080p. Very similar performance between the two of these. Again, 1% lows is a little on the, you know, ASRock 9070 XT. You know, it's a little weaker, but is it $300 weaker? 1440p 154 versus 147 with identical 1% lows. And the 1% lows pull ahead on the 970 XT. So, seems like AMD's architecture handles the higher resolution just a little a little bit better. If we switch over to ray tracing, ultra ray tracing, well, 94 versus 84, Nvidia is doing better here. 1440p, the trend continues, although the gap closes up pretty nicely. And then at 1440p, it's still there, but this is not really playable. 29 versus 26 fps. Don't really like that. What if we did ultra ray tracing with quality upscaling? And then, you know, 4K at 74 versus 52. The AMD is doing better here than Nvidia. Nvidia wants you to lean on frame generation. Frame generation can help a lot. 224, but your 1% lows can still be, you know, down in like 87 land for 4K. Again, 90 versus 135 can be better. AMD does have their own, you know, frame gen stuff, but DLSS technologically is ahead of what AMD has, but not significantly. And again, is it worth the price delta? Uh, I think I think ASRock with the little LCD screen and all the all the accutra on with the with the the fanciest version of the 970 XT that we've seen yet. I think ASRock is making hey uh you know while the sun is shining and it shows here just in kind of my baseline benchmarks. We got benchmarks for Monster Hunter Wilds at 1080p, 1440p and 4K and the ASRock Taichi wide is is doing pretty well. It's not doesn't win every single time. Uh, but it does pretty well with both ray tracing and not ray tracing at 1080p and 1440p. And it's pretty playable at at at 4K in Monster Hunter Wilds. And then an old game like Shadow of the Tomb Raider just kind of gives you a baseline. 339 versus 319. You know, Nvidia is pulling ahead here, but at 4K, it's a lot closer. And the 970 XT being able to play at 126. Even we do rate tracing. These are both very playable sets of numbers with Nvidia coming out ahead, but at 4K, you know, it's 85 versus 81 in favor of Nvidia. This is pretty good. Now, in our hype PC, we also have the CPU variability. This 9600X would not post previously. So, CPU versus CPU. And I also threw in the 5090 because, you know, why not? It's like, oh, what happens if you spend 3,000? No, don't do that. Uh, Borderlands 4 differences between the the CPU. This is actually much less of a CPU difference than I thought. 76 versus 77. Like Borderlands 3 X3D. This is very, very odd. 1440p and 4K. Borderlands is weird. Like I can do some system configuration stuff and make the 9800 X3 actually behave better. Uh, but that is maybe a a video for a different day. DSX Mankind Divided 135 versus 134 at 1080p 1440p 4K pretty much the same performance. Monster Hunter Wilds. Okay, now our 9850X3D is starting to show it stuff. And at 1080p 138 versus 103, 120 versus 101, 2160p, 83 versus 81. So, in my gaming benchmarks and like using the system, I'm not spotting a problem with the 9600X that previously would not post, but now posts. So, yay, BIOS updates and uh AMD Agiza updates, 1440p and 4K performance are right where I would expect them to be. Shadow of the Tomb Raider just to get a baseline. You know, the 9850X 3D at 1080p is really showing that it's quite capable with the 9070 XT Taichi White 1440p 4K. Everything basically comes in line at 4K with the with the Taichi White. So, yeah, this is great. This is great benchmarks, great baseline, great to have something that's going to live in a corner. Remember from the other video that we set up, this thing, you know, would turn itself on, turn itself off, turn itself on, turn itself off. Now it's going to turn itself on, boot into a game, play the game for a little while, and then turn itself off, and then it'll turn itself back on. Boot, play a game, do that, and we'll see if the CPU emulates. I have not 100% decided if I'm going to do the 9850 X3D or the 9600X that was problematic. I'm leaning toward using the 9850 X3D, but I mean, I could use that CPU for other stuff in the office, and the 9600X was previously problematic. So, which do you think, 9850 X3D or 9600X? like which would be the more useful long-term off on off on does it die test. But it's very encouraging to see that this works as well as it does. So there you go. There's our hype build. Red and green cuz I you know it's fine. Cherry C. Who know who who doesn't love cherry red? Should have got the cherry red fans. They were actually out of those. Height has some legendary designs. I got to give them props for clever designs with uh good cooling and and a good design. So, let's keep an eye on this. So far, so good. I'm really I'm tickled pink that the 9600X is working as well as it is on this build. That is a good sign. That is a good sign for all of you that maybe we're having post issues. So, get your BIOS updated. That is good to see for for AM5 stability of the ecosystem and all that. And if you have problems or something is not right, I want to hear from you in the level one forums. That's why we have a community. Anyway, this thing is going to be relegated to the torture corner. I got to go set it up over there. All right, I'm level one. If you have any questions or uh anything seems a miss, let me know. Uh you know, we can do some tests on this, whatever. I Let's have some fun. All right, I'm signing out. I'll see you in the level one forums.

Wendell is back at it again, now with a new Bios Update! Check out the old forum post here: https://forum.level1techs.com/t/attempting-to-troubleshoot-the-asrock-motherboards-of-death/241539 You can find us... Twitter - https://twitter.com/level1techs Twitch - https://twitch.tv/teampgp Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/level1 For all our social links, websites, and more, check out our link tree! https://linktr.ee/level1techs Thank you for watching! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *IMPORTANT* Any email lacking “level1techs.com” should be ignored and immediately reported to Queries@level1techs.com.