My system started behaving extremely slowly immediately after updating the BIOS on my ASRock B550M Steel Legend to version 3.90 and enabling Secure Boot. It boots into Windows 11, but everything is sluggish: games and Adobe applications run poorly, Windows Explorer and Chrome lag, and games sometimes drop to single-digit FPS. Both monitors occasionally go black for a few seconds before returning, and some games launch to a solid green screen.
My hardware is an ASRock B550M Steel Legend, Ryzen 7 5800X, EVGA RTX 3080 12GB, 32GB DDR4-3200 Corsair memory, and a Thermaltake Toughpower GF3 1000W power supply. Windows and the Nvidia drivers are fully updated.
I tried changing CSM and Secure Boot, re-enabling XMP, enabling Above 4G Decoding and Resizable BAR, rolling the BIOS back to version 3.40, reflashing version 3.90, clearing CMOS, reseating the graphics card and power cables, using DDU for a clean driver installation, and running DISM repairs. Reliability Monitor reported LiveKernelEvent 141 and 117 errors.
During an OCCT GPU test, both displays went black and the computer eventually restarted. CPU and GPU clocks looked normal in Task Manager, and Device Manager reported no problems. What could cause this after a BIOS update?
3 Answers
Forcing the main PCIe slot to Gen 3 fixed the problem. It had been set to Auto, apparently because the BIOS update reset that option. After changing it, the severe slowdown, black screens, green game launches, and OCCT crash all disappeared.
A BIOS reset can also change CPU settings, so checking the processor's actual clock speed would be worthwhile. A CPU stuck near its minimum multiplier can make the whole desktop feel unusable. However, the display dropouts and green screens make PCIe or GPU stability the stronger lead here.
The symptoms initially look like a graphics card or PCIe stability problem: LiveKernelEvent 141 and 117, green screens, both monitors dropping out, and a crash during a GPU stress test are all consistent with the GPU losing communication. Check that the card is powered by two separate PCIe cables from the power supply. Also try manually setting the motherboard's PCIe slot to Gen 3 instead of Auto or Gen 4. If that fixes everything, the BIOS update likely changed the link negotiation behavior rather than permanently damaging the hardware.
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