I recently built a new PC with help from a friend and wanted to check whether its startup time is reasonable. The system has a Ryzen 7 7800X3D, GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, 32GB of Corsair Vengeance DDR5-6000 memory, an MSI B850M GAMING PLUS WIFI6E motherboard, and a 1TB Kingston NVMe SSD.
From pressing the power button to reaching Windows, it usually takes around 40 seconds. The screen stays black for a while, then the MSI logo appears for a few seconds before Windows loads. It works normally once it starts, but I have heard that similar systems can boot in 5–10 seconds. Is this expected, or are there BIOS or Windows settings I should check?
4 Answers
AM5 systems can spend quite a while performing DDR5 memory training before showing the motherboard logo. That is likely what the black screen is, and it can add 20–30 seconds on some builds. Forty seconds from pressing the button to the Windows login screen is a little slow, but not alarming. In the BIOS, look for Memory Context Restore and enable it; this lets the board reuse stable memory settings instead of fully retraining the RAM on every boot. A BIOS update may also improve memory-training behavior.
Other connected hardware can occasionally delay startup, particularly external drives or USB devices. Try booting once with nonessential USB devices and external storage disconnected. If the time is still about the same, focus on BIOS memory-training settings rather than the SSD or graphics card.
DDR5 training is the most likely explanation, especially with a new AM5 build. Let Windows finish installing updates and settle for a few days, but the long black screen specifically points more toward firmware and memory initialization than ordinary startup programs. If it remains slow, update the motherboard BIOS and check for settings related to memory training or preserved timings.
Check how much of that 40 seconds happens before Windows starts. Task Manager shows the BIOS time under the Startup section, which helps separate motherboard initialization from Windows loading. Also make sure Windows Fast Startup is enabled and review Startup Apps, although a clean new installation probably does not have much unnecessary software yet.
Memory Context Restore stores the memory-training results so the motherboard can start faster on later boots. If the system becomes unstable after enabling it, turn it back off or update the BIOS first.