@lordkag
Hey I have a huge problem!!! I think I bricked my laptop!!! Here's how it happened... I entered the BIOS only to enable CSM and I set SATA port 2 (ATAPI TSST-DVDRW) speed to "Gen2" which does support from what I've researched... I also Disabled "Enable PCH to aggressively use LPM" for the SATA Configuration section... That's IT!!! I DIDN'T TOUCH ANYTHING ELSE!!! I never even Unlocked the Thermal node & I decided to follow your advice by staying away from any Thermal related settings... Now when I press the Power Button, the LEDs flash on and the DVDRW powers up... Immediately my laptop turns off!!! There's no POST... No Asus Logo... NOTHING!!! I tried removing the CMOS battery for about 5 minutes and also holding down the Power Button for a long time... And nothing worked... Now when I plug in the Power Cord the Battery LED doesn't turn on... How bad is the damage??? Could it be that I just shorted out the power supply? Or something that can be fixed???

UPDATE!!! I HAD COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN ABOUT THE "CTRL + HOME" METHOD... I HAD BACKED UP THE ORIGINAL K55A.BIN ALONG WITH EACH MODDED BIOS FILES ON A USB STICK... AND I SUCCESSFULLY RECOVERED THE BIOS!!!! I WAS FREAKING OUT!!!! I JUST NOW RE-FLASHED AND WAS ABLE TO BOOT MY WIN8 OEM HDD... THAT WAS A CLOSE CALL!!!!

If I were to blame you for not reading ahead, I would be a hypocrite who acts like he never made mistakes. Here is the story: in HWiNFO summary's you would have seen that your DVDRW is only working at 1.5 Gb/s (I always say SATA I, but it is wrong according to this), but since the SATA connector is backward compatible with older revisions, you have no problems with connecting it to a SATA 3.0 port. The reason for this is that your DVDRW will not even reach the 150 MB/s of the SATA 1.0 / SATA I, so why go further?

For disabling "Enable PCH to aggressively use LPM" I assume you wanted to investigate the performance drop. I already pointed where to tweak this: C states, core parking, HPET, power options, ThrottleStop, APM (for HDD). The first 3 options should only be for debugging, not a permanent solution, the last doesn't apply in your case. For the power options I have a script to enable all the hidden settings, but I haven't yet tested on Win8/Win8.1, only on Win7. For ThrottleStop you have the guide which will give more knowledge than you initially needed. If you are still trying to cut corners instead of dwelling in the river of informations, then it is your choice, but I won't stick around to see you ruining the hardware.

You were lucky that this recovery method worked. I feared that it will only work on older Non-UEFI models, thus avoiding to give you false hopes.

@lordkag
I know you're absolutely right about the SATA DVD-RW mistake I made... I looked in to it further after recovering... And yes I'm very lucky that the AMI BIOS Recovery method worked!!! I'm not going to continue messing with settings that I have no business changing... I have researched a bit deeper trying to figure out what is causing my SSD bottleneck... And I believe what's causing it is that NCQ isn't enabled for some reason... Aida64 & HWinfo64 both show that NCQ is supported but NOT enabled...
If you don't mind me asking you a question... After recovering my BIOS I re-flashed the modded BIOS again but returning many areas back to default... The point is, that now I can only select up to 512 MB fixed DVMT Memory... From the Chipset Tab... Before I bricked my BIOS I was able to select up to 1024 MB... Now, if I set the 1024 MB I get a Boot Loop... Can you help me as to the possible cause???

Did it worked before with 1024 MB option? If yes, try reseting to defaults, reset EC. If still problems, flash an original BIOS first and reset+shutdown. Maybe even reflash ME firmware.

The NCQ option should be in either your Magician software or in BIOS. Set to AHCI.

How big is the drop in performance? Would be nice some comparison pictures between expected and result.

@lordkag

Zitat von lordkag im Beitrag #79

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Did it worked before with 1024 MB option? If yes, try reseting to defaults, reset EC. If still problems, flash an original BIOS first and reset+shutdown. Maybe even reflash ME firmware.

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Zitat von lordkag im Beitrag #79

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How big is the drop in performance? Would be nice some comparison pictures between expected and result.

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Download 3540 from here, unrar, open the .inf file and search for "MaximumDeviceMemoryConfiguration". Set all findings to 1024 or your preferred number. Install, but be prepared for a message about driver signature, if the .inf file is included in the security catalog.


It could be that your SSD is not in a good shape or manufacturing slot. Based on this, the values are quite different between users. I don't know if all can be the fault of an external agent/configuration.

Try some debugging steps: install 12.8 drivers; Enable write caching on the device (with disable & save, enable & save); Disable Link Power Management from RST and/or power options; Disable "aggressive LPM support" in BIOS -> Advanced -> SATA configuration; disable C-States in BIOS -> Advanced -> CPU PPM; set power plan to performance and tweak it with powercfg.

From command prompt type: powercfg -query > C:\powercfgquery.txt
Also type: powercfg -energy
And: powercfg /? > C:\powercfghelp.txt

Wait 60 seconds and analyze/upload the files powercfgquery.txt, powercfghelp.txt and energy-report.html from the folder where it said it was saved.


I don't know how to write this without sounding rude, but I can't really solve every problem in your computer. I know it is entirely my fault for replying and writing questions, but you must understand not to abuse this. Just imagine what would a technician charge for all this stuff, if he could actually track and solve all your problems. Don't think that I'm expecting any compensation for it, because then I would violate the principles of this forum (and my own as well). But I do expect some real and urgent problems to be solved, not some tweaking and benchmarking stuff, or manufacturing errors. Again, it is not your fault for replying and not my rudeness showing off, but I feel I'm chasing all the specs of dust from your computer. I do want to help, when there is something important at the horizon, but I get bored really quickly when haunting minor stuff. It's just that too many (outside this forum) have abused my free help and continued to ask for more and more (irrelevant) stuff.

@lordkag
Hey!

Here are the Powercfg results... I did find that in the Energy-Report.txt an error detected says PCI Express ASPM isn't working due to a known incompatibility issue... Anyways, let me know what you find in the reports please...

Zitat von lordkag im Beitrag #81

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Download 3540 from here, unrar, open the .inf file and search for "MaximumDeviceMemoryConfiguration". Set all findings to 1024 or your preferred number. Install, but be prepared for a message about driver signature, if the .inf file is included in the security catalog.

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Zitat von lordkag im Beitrag #81

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It could be that your SSD is not in a good shape or manufacturing slot. Based on this, the values are quite different between users. I don't know if all can be the fault of an external agent/configuration.Try some debugging steps: install 12.8 drivers; Enable write caching on the device (with disable & save, enable & save); Disable Link Power Management from RST and/or power options; Disable "aggressive LPM support" in BIOS -> Advanced -> SATA configuration; disable C-States in BIOS -> Advanced -> CPU PPM; set power plan to performance and tweak it with powercfg.

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I apologize for mistaken you with one of those people who, once they found good IT service, they exhaust him/her to death with their problems and questions. Now that we got this straighten, I'll do my best to try and help a fellow in "suffering".

To avoid disabling any security checks, you could search the registry for MaximumDeviceMemoryConfiguration and next time change it there (if it is found), after driver installation.

Powercfg seems to have the same core in Win8/8.1, so using its command should be the same as for Win7. For your pleasure I would recommend the last 7 commands from powercfghelp.txt. Your power profile seems in order, but I would recommend some changes: disable AHCI Link Power Management - HIPM/DIPM; reduce "Minimum processor state" to 5-15%, there is no need to run the CPU at full power all the time; to avoid battery wear by discharging cycles, change low baterry level to 20-30 and critical to 15 - the normal usage should be between 30% and 90%.

The errors and warnings from energy-report are actually a good thing when one looks for performance instead of saving power. The only thing that should be corrected is enabling "Native ASPM" from BIOS -> Advanced -> Platform Misc Configuration and control it through Windows power plan -> PCI Express -> Link State Power Management. For performance should be disabled.

For the SSD: you must find if the problem is in SSD itself or in BIOS aggressive power saving, maybe even bugs. Run the benchmark with some stress on the CPU (like ThrottleStop -> TS Bench -> 4 Threads -> 1024M). Then run the benchmark with the SSD connected as a secondary drive in another reasonable high-end PC, that has no performance issues with SSD. From those 2 tests you should conclude where the problem is.

I assume your SSD is 4K aligned and TRIM enabled. About NCQ, should be enabled with AHCI and determined by better speed with 4KQDxx, according to this and this. If it isn't, you could search in RST console, Magician, BIOS, since it is a hardware feature. You can also check in CrystalDiskInfo for the features supported by SSD.

To improve the benchmarks: enable caching policies from Device Manager; disable Aggressive LPM Support in BIOS -> Advanced -> SATA; check that SATA device type = SSD and SATA speed = GEN3 for the port connecting the SSD in BIOS -> Advanced -> SATA; leave C-States enabled for now, will deal with them more cleverly.

Create a new power plan named "Need for Speed" or whatever you like, make it active. Run the batch attached and read here how to tweak the new options from this power plan. I would recommend this example, as this guy really knows this stuff. Some others to check, but I haven't really read them carefully, are here, here and here. Also read this and this.

Don't apply all that to the letter. From my point of view, you only need AHCI, TRIM, 4k alignment, disable LPM and ASPM, enable write cache, keep C-States and tweak the threshold instead, set Minimum processor state to 5-10% and tweak the power plan as advised. Maybe touching core parking, but I would not use it. Set a new power plan with all this tweaks and use it only when really needed, otherwise stay with original performance for the rest.

The ME package you have downloaded is mostly useful for the tools it offers. The ME preproduction is, to my knowledge, a version with some unlocked features/clocks for testing/debugging purposes. But I think I already said this before, that you don't need any ME unlocking, because you will not benefit from any overclocking and it is pretty dangerous to try one, since you will need either a pin mode or a programmer.

Again, apologize for coming so rough, but I thought this was another of the minor complaints like WinSAT and GOP version, which are bugs from OEM. Even this SSD bug I think it originates from ASUS or Samsung and can only be solved by them. And since I do a little (more) OCD myself, I'll ride along.

@lordkag

Zitat von lordkag im Beitrag #83

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Create a new power plan named "Need for Speed" or whatever you like, make it active. Run the batch attached and read here how to tweak the new options from this power plan. I would recommend this example, as this guy really knows this stuff. Some others to check, but I haven't really read them carefully, are here, here and here. Also read this and this.

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Zitat von lordkag im Beitrag #83

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For the SSD: you must find if the problem is in SSD itself or in BIOS aggressive power saving, maybe even bugs. Run the benchmark with some stress on the CPU (like ThrottleStop -> TS Bench -> 4 Threads -> 1024M). Then run the benchmark with the SSD connected as a secondary drive in another reasonable high-end PC, that has no performance issues with SSD. From those 2 tests you should conclude where the problem is.

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Zitat von lordkag im Beitrag #83

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I assume your SSD is 4K aligned and TRIM enabled. About NCQ, should be enabled with AHCI and determined by better speed with 4KQDxx, according to this and this. If it isn't, you could search in RST console, Magician, BIOS, since it is a hardware feature. You can also check in CrystalDiskInfo for the features supported by SSD.

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Zitat von lordkag im Beitrag #83

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Powercfg seems to have the same core in Win8/8.1, so using its command should be the same as for Win7. For your pleasure I would recommend the last 7 commands from powercfghelp.txt. Your power profile seems in order, but I would recommend some changes: disable AHCI Link Power Management - HIPM/DIPM; reduce "Minimum processor state" to 5-15%, there is no need to run the CPU at full power all the time; to avoid battery wear by discharging cycles, change low baterry level to 20-30 and critical to 15 - the normal usage should be between 30% and 90%.

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Zitat von lordkag im Beitrag #83

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The errors and warnings from energy-report are actually a good thing when one looks for performance instead of saving power. The only thing that should be corrected is enabling "Native ASPM" from BIOS -> Advanced -> Platform Misc Configuration and control it through Windows power plan -> PCI Express -> Link State Power Management. For performance should be disabled.

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Zitat von lordkag im Beitrag #83

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The ME package you have downloaded is mostly useful for the tools it offers. The ME preproduction is, to my knowledge, a version with some unlocked features/clocks for testing/debugging purposes. But I think I already said this before, that you don't need any ME unlocking, because you will not benefit from any overclocking and it is pretty dangerous to try one, since you will need either a pin mode or a programmer.

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Zitat von lordkag im Beitrag #83

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Again, apologize for coming so rough, but I thought this was another of the minor complaints like WinSAT and GOP version, which are bugs from OEM. Even this SSD bug I think it originates from ASUS or Samsung and can only be solved by them. And since I do a little (more) OCD myself, I'll ride along.

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I see you disabled core parking. Is the performance hit that big when you set it to 50% in "Processor performance core parking min cores"?

You got "Processor performance decrease threshold" backwards. You should set it at a lower value, like 10%-30%, because bellow this load the processor gets into lower state. When you input 85% you practically tell it to lower his performance when it is bellow 85% usage, which is more than often.

Processor Idle Demote Threshold = (100 - Performance Increase Threshold) = 70%. Have you even read the links (important = one, two) that I offered?

Processor Idle Promote Threshold = (100 - Performance Decrease Threshold) = 90%. Again...

Minimum processor state = 5%.

Processor Performance Core Parking Overutilization Threshold = > 50% if you want faster exit from parking

Processor performance core parking increase threshold = 30-50%

Processor performance core parking decrease policy = Single

Processor performance core parking increase policy = All

Processor performance core parking increase threshold =30-60%

For system: EVO and Pro support Rapid Mode; hard drives failure and better read reviews of chosen one; get Maxwell instead (link1, link2, better HW decoder and encoder).

64K cluster is only useful for large files, meaning storage/backup SSD. Not your case. QD is linked with NCQ and it gives you more pipelines, but you won't see them filled in real life. Please read more! The real life value should be looked between 4K and 4KQD32. If if you are that crazy about some benchmark values over real life values, then just compare the power plans with powercfg or stick with the limited plan! Like I said, you are entitled to do whatever you like with your hardware, but don't drive other to your wild chase. Just remember that each has its own.

I already gave you a link on how to set the MSI interrupt for each PCI device. The same goes for all 3 remaining device, without the USB 2.0 ones. The MEI drivers should be installed from Device Manager and you can use any 9.x or 10.x small set that Fernando has posted in the MEI thread. Avoid installing the full blown package, because it is not meant for your chipset anymore, also test before 10.x for compatibility issues.

For the USB 3.0 issue. My first impression is that there is nothing you can do, being OS - 70%, Intel - 20%, Asus - 10% likely fault. Intel should have release proper drivers instead of letting MS taking "care". Read here, read this (especially 4.4, and this time I really mean it, read it without coming back with questions that should have been answered). Read this for OS possible fault. Read here and here for different hardware - similar problem. Even with another OS there is a problem. Even Win7 had problems and they offered some assistance.

The bottom line is, if you have/had already searched for similar problems, you would have noticed that the ball is in Intel + MS court. All you can do is follow some basics steps of troubleshooting:
- disable hybrid sleep
- disable allow wake timers
- disable USB selective suspend setting
- disable power management of USB devices from Device Manager
- uninstall controller/hub under Universal Serial Bus controllers, but also the problematic devices. Rescan for reinstalling them.
- analyze eventviewer for USB reports
- uninstall Asus apps
- BIOS -> Optimized Defaults / F10 -- this one should be tested on its own with multiple benchmarks, as it might improve things
- BIOS -> Advanced -> USB Configuration -> Legacy USB Support = Auto
- BIOS -> Advanced -> USB Configuration -> XHCI Pre-Boot Mode = Enabled
- BIOS -> Chipset -> PCH-IO Config. -> USB Configuration -> XHCI Pre-Boot Mode = Enabled

There really isn't any point for me to investigate this any further, as it is clear that you should press Intel (in the first place) and Microsoft (not their first "hit") to get their drivers working.

@lordkag

Zitat von lordkag im Beitrag #85

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...Have you even read the links (important = one, two) that I offered?

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Zitat von lordkag im Beitrag #85

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64K cluster is only useful for large files, meaning storage/backup SSD. Not your case. QD is linked with NCQ and it gives you more pipelines, but you won't see them filled in real life. Please read more! The real life value should be looked between 4K and 4KQD32. If if you are that crazy about some benchmark values over real life values, then just compare the power plans with powercfg or stick with the limited plan! Like I said, you are entitled to do whatever you like with your hardware, but don't drive other to your wild chase. Just remember that each has its own.

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Zitat von lordkag im Beitrag #85

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For the USB 3.0 issue. My first impression is that there is nothing you can do, being OS - 70%, Intel - 20%, Asus - 10% likely fault. Intel should have release proper drivers instead of letting MS taking "care". Read here, read this (especially 4.4, and this time I really mean it, read it without coming back with questions that should have been answered). Read this for OS possible fault. Read here and here for different hardware - similar problem. Even with another OS there is a problem. Even Win7 had problems and they offered some assistance.

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Zitat von lordkag im Beitrag #85

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I already gave you a link on how to set the MSI interrupt for each PCI device. The same goes for all 3 remaining device, without the USB 2.0 ones. The MEI drivers should be installed from Device Manager and you can use any 9.x or 10.x small set that Fernando has posted in the MEI thread. Avoid installing the full blown package, because it is not meant for your chipset anymore, also test before 10.x for compatibility issues.

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Zitat von @JSebastian im Beitrag #86

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I have checked endless amounts of laptops and desktops... Ranging from low-end up to high-end... UEFI Based and ACPI Based... All brands, sizes and colors...

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@CPL0

Zitat von CPL0 im Beitrag #87

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Don't know if this helps because I am not really sure what you are asking but this is for my MSI GE60 laptop with W8.1

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Since the power plan was created by a software that has services running in the background, it makes sense to guard its settings. I'm not saying that I actually planned to counter this from the beginning, but this was my thought: create a new power plan for tinkering (i.e. for performance and heavy work) and let the default power plans in their state, to easily switch between them. I would say to start from performance plan as template; if you start with balanced, make sure to add all the tweaks from performance and the ones I pointed, otherwise you would sacrifice overall performance for a few benchmarking points. Start Resource Monitor, go to Disk tab and watch to the right for queue length. Start some transferring test (normal usage, NOT benchmark!!!) with folder containing small&numerous files and others with single&large files. Observe the queue length for a period of a minute, until it updates the graph. In my test with Win7 and HDD, I get a queue up to 10 in real life, while 50+ in benchmarks. So this is why I keep nagging with real life test: look at the numbers between 4K and 4kQD32 (probably 4KQD10) as valuable results, next to sequential values. As a side note, you probably tortured the SSD for no reason with the full format you did in the beginning. A secure erase might get you with a fresh start. If you look at these results, next to UBM score you have the average values, which you have surpassed in a low to mid-end laptop! The only thing you need to worry now is the life span, which is analyzed here and the updates.

Based on your experience, I would say to think twice about installing Asus bloatware and only install Win8.1 driver/apps, because the kernel was updated in this new OS. Save these links, check them from time to time for Win8.1 updates, test the offered software with care and remember to uninstall it as a first step in every troubleshooting scenario: tools, winflash (better stay safe with K55A page), ATKACPI, chipset, audio, VGA, Lan, card reader, touchpad smart gesture, touchpad, wireless display, KBFilter1 and KBFilter2, wifi, wlan, bluetooth, IRST, MEI, USB3; bloatware - InstantON, USB charger plus, wireless radio control, splendid video, lite frame3, virtual camera, scene switch, live update, power4gear, Win7 bloatware - wireless console, instant connect, mybitcast, facelogon, fastboot.

Again with USB 3.0 = I saw your post here. It is possible that the Asmedia chip is not connected. So get a firmware from here and run d.bat, also test the drivers here or from the above Asus USB3 link.

MS issued an update here, so update the drivers, even though it will not fix anything for you. Just press them harder, offer to be a beta tester for a solution (even with NDA, if necessary), provide test results as detailed here, something from here, maybe this.

Read Asus statement on ACPI, but in depth here, here, here. So it is expected to have an ACPI tree node, which is also simply pointed here. This is even more expected for Asus, which offers its own ACPI driver in ATKACPI, which you should at least download&test from the link I posted. You should also test as I advised, with optimized defaults / F10 in BIOS, since it changes "BIOS ACPI Auto Configuration" to disable (and a lot more possibly "good' changes).

Finally, devices jumping in the Device Tree is clearly MS fault, even though Intel could have some hardware interference, as proven with Haswell USB3 bug. If you go to Device Manager - System Devices - PCI bus, you would see that the ACPI is present there. Further more, check "show hidden devices" and check "devices by connection". You would probably see ACPI as the base of PCI devices, which I also have. In your case, it is either Asus pushing the ACPI stack in a non-transparent way (nothing to worry, in fact it is better than let MS fix it till is dead), or MS finally showing more data.

On what name should I release the bill? (if you don't mind a bit of humor)

@lordkag

Zitat von lordkag im Beitrag #89

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On what name should I release the bill? (if you don't mind a bit of humor)

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Zitat von lordkag im Beitrag #89

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Since the power plan was created by a software that has services running in the background, it makes sense to guard its settings. I'm not saying that I actually planned to counter this from the beginning, but this was my thought: create a new power plan for tinkering (i.e. for performance and heavy work) and let the default power plans in their state, to easily switch between them. I would say to start from performance plan as template; if you start with balanced, make sure to add all the tweaks from performance and the ones I pointed, otherwise you would sacrifice overall performance for a few benchmarking points. Start Resource Monitor, go to Disk tab and watch to the right for queue length. Start some transferring test (normal usage, NOT benchmark!!!) with folder containing small&numerous files and others with single&large files. Observe the queue length for a period of a minute, until it updates the graph. In my test with Win7 and HDD, I get a queue up to 10 in real life, while 50+ in benchmarks. So this is why I keep nagging with real life test: look at the numbers between 4K and 4kQD32 (probably 4KQD10) as valuable results, next to sequential values. As a side note, you probably tortured the SSD for no reason with the full format you did in the beginning. A secure erase might get you with a fresh start. If you look at these results, next to UBM score you have the average values, which you have surpassed in a low to mid-end laptop! The only thing you need to worry now is the life span, which is analyzed here and the updates.

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