Asrock Z68 Extreme 4 Gen 3

[MichaelAS]

Hi
Just built my first set up , for normal day to day use (as you can see below)
my current boot time is 20 seconds or so which is quite slow
the problem seems to be that BIOS looks like it is scanning for SATA drives as on boot you can see it listing all the current drives. Is it possible to stop this process ?
Already cleared CMOS with no changes happening
ps what is your opinion on the PC?

Asrock Z68 Extreme 4 Gen 3 |BIOS:2.30| Intel Core i7 2600K @3.40GHz @4.00GHz|8GB (2x4) Corsair Vengeance DDR3|Onboard Intel HD 3000 1GB|OCZ Agility SATA III 60GB SSD |Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 1TB HD |650W OCUK modular PSU | Windows 8 64Bit

[MichaelAS]

any help?

[synack]

any help?

LOL patience padawan!

Are you using the marvell SATA ports? The manual says specfically use the Intel SATA as the marvell will introduce a boot delay.

Syn

[MichaelAS]

hi

thanks sorry just tweaking my new build and this is quite annoying :)

nope am using the gray ports (Number 1), which i believe are the Intel ports and i think i have disabled the Marvell ports for boot

[parsec]

The Marvell and Intel SATA III ports are both gray on your board. The ones at the top of the stack of ports, with the board mounted in the case, are the Marvell ports. The Intel SATA III ports are the gray ones next to the black ports.

Can you stop the BIOS from scanning for drives? Sure, unplug the drives. That is a normal function of any BIOS and cannot be stopped. You only seem to have two drives anyway.

When a PC starts, the first process is POST, Power On Self Test. That is really not a part of the OS boot. OS boot starts when the "Starting Windows" screen is displayed.

Question time, for missing information:

SATA mode used for OS installation? Current SATA driver used? I assume your Agility 3 is the boot drive?

Opinion on your PC? Are you OC'd to 4GHz constantly, or are CPU power saving options enabled? Power saving options will slow down boot a bit.

Your Agility 3 is a decent SSD, not a high end model, but much faster than a HDD.

[profJim]

A 60GB ssd boot drive isn't optimal unless you don't install many programs.
I recently replaced my 60GB ssd after two years because my ssd free space was less than 10GB and performance would lag at times.
Check out Asynchronous vs. Synchronous NAND Flash SSD Performance for information that shows that ssd performance with asynchronous Nand deteriorates significantly when the drive is partially filled.
For best performance now and in the future, I recommend a 128GB or larger ssd that uses toggle Nand or synchronous Nand.
My new Samsung 830 128GB ssd is excellent.
Current price on my side of the pond is about $80.

[MichaelAS]

The Marvell and Intel SATA III ports are both gray on your board. The ones at the top of the stack of ports, with the board mounted in the case, are the Marvell ports. The Intel SATA III ports are the gray ones next to the black ports.

Can you stop the BIOS from scanning for drives? Sure, unplug the drives. That is a normal function of any BIOS and cannot be stopped. You only seem to have two drives anyway.

When a PC starts, the first process is POST, Power On Self Test. That is really not a part of the OS boot. OS boot starts when the "Starting Windows" screen is displayed.

Question time, for missing information:

SATA mode used for OS installation? Current SATA driver used? I assume your Agility 3 is the boot drive?

Opinion on your PC? Are you OC'd to 4GHz constantly, or are CPU power saving options enabled? Power saving options will slow down boot a bit.

Your Agility 3 is a decent SSD, not a high end model, but much faster than a HDD.

Hi
thanks for taking the time out to reply, im new here and to custom builds :)
thanks for the extra info, the SATA Mode is currently set to ACHI and yes the agility is my boot drive
sorry but im not quite sure what you mean SATA driver? do you mean for the drives or for the SATA controllers and can that be found in device manager?

no ive disabled speedstep and other power saving modes to increase speed although its only at 4GHz at the moment until i upgrade heatsinks

[parsec]

I meant the driver program for the SATA controller that can be found in Device Manager. If you are using AHCI mode, then you're fine for the most part. You may have the standard Windows msahci driver. The Intel IRST driver, which is usually labelled the RAID driver, is also an AHCI driver and works fine in AHCI mode. It might give you better performance.

How are you measuring "boot time", from the time you press the power button until the desktop is displayed? That includes the POST time of the board, which varies greatly depending on the board. You'd hate my SaberTooth X58 board, it takes ~30 seconds just to POST.

Although you have a SSD as your boot drive, your HDD takes time to start up, which is at least partially being waited to complete. Your board has a Marvell 9120 SATA chipset, and if that is enabled in the UEFI, it looks for attached drives, even if none are there, which takes ~5 - 7 seconds. Disable it if you don't use it.

[synack]

You'd hate my SaberTooth X58 board, it takes ~30 seconds just to POST.

OOOUCH!! I would hate it tooooo.

I get 10 seconds from power on to GUI login screen (with 2 second pause given to the boot loader selection screen)
Love my z77 oc formula :)

[profJim]

Check Windows boot speed: BootRacer - Download