Fastest POSTing 1155 Motherboard (Z77)

[Rvenger]

I have an MSI board and an Asrock board. They both post pretty fast but I think the Asrock would be faster if I didn't have RAID set in the bios. Gigabyte and Asus boards have the slowest POST time.

 

[althaz]

Reviews don't cover it because it's not a feature hardly anyone cares about..

I's probably a first on this forum..

Bottom line: Motherboards with fewest features enabled will POST the fastest.

Good luck with any great number of Z77 owners disabling everything on their board to get an answer for you ...

I doubt there will be a measurable difference between most ..

I found literally hundreds of threads on dozens of tech forums with people asking this question, but just no recent answers .

@Rvenger Thanks a ton dude, that is very helpful info .

 

[infoiltrator]

Impatience is the issue here, so it seems to me to extend to all start up issues.

Any Z77 motherboard should post faster than a socket 775 motherboard?

Loading windows would be an issue best addressed with an SSD.

Anyone know if low cost motherboards (ie fewer features) post faster than more expensive ones? Or is it features used rather than features available that matter?

 

[althaz]

Thank-you to everybody who helped me out here, luckily though Anandtech have come to the rescue and have benchmarked POST times in their Z77 mobo roundup. This is awesome!

 

[LagunaX]

Thank-you to everybody who helped me out here, luckily though Anandtech have come to the rescue and have benchmarked POST times in their Z77 mobo roundup. This is awesome!

So who were the top 3 and in what order?

EDIT: found it

"With a lot more controllers to initialise on board, the ASUS P8Z77-V Pro requires at default 20.47 seconds to reach the windows loading screen. By disabling controllers that aren't used, a time more like the ASRock could be achieved. There is direct correlation between functionality and POST time."

No Biostar z77 in the roundup, huh?

 

[aaksheytalwar]

my asus has a very slow post speed

 

[T_Yamamoto]

ASRock FTW

 

[Lonyo]

Sleep mode = 2 seconds to Windows being usable.

 

[xAlias]

Get the Asrock if you want the fastest booting times. Mine with an SSD boots like to reach desktop in around 12 seconds or so!

 

[SithSolo1]

If your wife can't sleep with it on I assume its the noise because you can just unplug the LEDs. Have you ever thought about just getting quiet fans and then leaving it on all the time?

While I can't fathom how an extra 5 secs to post would drive someone nuts, MSI boards have always been quick to post in the systems I've built.

Edit
Used a stop watch to time both the post and a complete reboot:

Power button to "Starting Windows" appears - 18.63s

Anandtech to Anandtech with reboot(+ windows login) - 57.34s

It is rather slow when you actually time it. PhenomII Dual @ 3.8ghz, MSI micro-ATX, 1st gen Sandforce ssd

 

[HexiumVII]

Got 2 Asrock Z77 Extreme4. They get to win7 usable in under 10 seconds with a Radeon Cat 12.3! This is with default settings also,nothing turned off. Make sure to take out that old optical drive, it seems to hang on detecting those for a long time.

 

[althaz]

If your wife can't sleep with it on I assume its the noise because you can just unplug the LEDs. Have you ever thought about just getting quiet fans and then leaving it on all the time?

This is my backup plan, but my wife I and I both (geekily) quite like the bright blue LEDs . I will make the machine quieter if possible anyway, but losing the lights is not ideal.

There's also the issue of power consumption, power is only going to get more expensive , though this is of lesser concern.

btw, anybody posting feedback on how fast their board completes its POST is awesome and is making this thread very useful for future googlers of "Fastest POSTing motherboard"

 

[Lonyo]

This is my backup plan, but my wife I and I both (geekily) quite like the bright blue LEDs . I will make the machine quieter if possible anyway, but losing the lights is not ideal.

There's also the issue of power consumption, power is only going to get more expensive , though this is of lesser concern.

btw, anybody posting feedback on how fast their board completes its POST is awesome and is making this thread very useful for future googlers of "Fastest POSTing motherboard"

Sleep mode. ~1w power use, 2 seconds to usable screen.
In the event of a power cut, Windows will have saved to HDD and resume from Hibernate instead of sleep.
Disconnect LEDs so they don't flash.
Bam, done.

Both of my desktop computers sit in sleep mode, no problems.

 

[davel]

I just timed my Gigabyte UD5H, and it was 13 seconds, but that is with everything turned on. I have not turned off components to speed it up.

TBH it is fast enough for me, in fact when I built this rig I was shocked at how fast boot up to desktop was. I barely looked away.

 

[blurredvision]

I just timed my Gigabyte UD5H, and it was 13 seconds, but that is with everything turned on. I have not turned off components to speed it up.

TBH it is fast enough for me, in fact when I built this rig I was shocked at how fast boot up to desktop was. I barely looked away.

I have the same motherboard, CPU and SSD as you, so I figured I'd time my bootup. This is only one run. I started the stopwatch as soon as I pressed the power switch.

From powering on to seeing the Windows loading graphic, right at 16 seconds when accounting for a quarter of a second of slow reflexes. I hit the lap button and then paused as soon as I had a mouse cursor on the desktop. That was 8.5 seconds.

POST - 16 seconds
Windows load - 8.5 seconds
Overall to desktop - 24.5 seconds

Probably takes the NIC to initialize another 1-2 seconds after hitting the desktop.

 

[Vegemeister]

Why is this a problem? You should be using S3 suspend. Shuts off all the fans and takes power consumption down to a couple watts. Then when you whack the space bar, it comes up in three seconds with whatever applications you were using in the exact same states they were in before.

The only reason to reboot your machine is if an update requires it.

 

[althaz]

Over in the Asrock Z77 Extreme 4 owners thread HexiumVII seems to have indicated his board (with no optical drives connected) POSTs so quickly his monitor isn't even awake before it finishes.

@Vegemeister: What exactly is S3 suspend? When I sleep my current PC it remains as loud (not that loud though) as ever and all of the LEDs (some of them on the fans) are still lit up. Also, I don't really want my PC to go back to how it was, I prefer to start up from scratch every now and again. If there was a way to write a script that would restart my PC and go into an S3 suspend (which might as well be off from what you are saying) that would actually be awesome. Otherwise I'm just buying the Asrock Z77 board .

@People posting their POST times in this thread: I wish I'd been able to find a thread like this on google, clearly these were the forums people needed to ask the question

 

[Vegemeister]

@Vegemeister: What exactly is S3 suspend?

S3 suspend.

When I sleep my current PC it remains as loud (not that loud though) as ever and all of the LEDs (some of them on the fans) are still lit up.

It sounds like you are using S1 suspend. Try to change it in your BIOS settings.

Also, I don't really want my PC to go back to how it was, I prefer to start up from scratch every now and again. If there was a way to write a script that would restart my PC and go into an S3 suspend (which might as well be off from what you are saying) that would actually be awesome. Otherwise I'm just buying the Asrock Z77 board .

If you feel like starting from scratch, reboot. But this shouldn't really be necessary very often. If it is, there is something wrong with your computer. Stop using Windows XP and/or get more than 2 GiB of ram.

 

[heymrdj]

OS's are being designed more and more for long sleeps with few reboots. When you're just rebooting Win 7 all the time all your doing is cluttering with more restore points and increasing the chances of software that wasn't written well to get smashed on shutdown, to give you problems on bootup. Embrace deep sleep on the system (S3). In your motherboard BIOS (or UEFI) you'll find sleep settings. When windows sends the sleep command the motherboard will use the selected setting. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_mode If everything is loud still I'm pretty sure that means you're only going into S1.

Personally I would never give up features on a mainboard just for faster post times. Seems extremely silly to sacrifice perfectly good embraceable technology to save 5 seconds...I'll go get a glass of water or do something healthy.

 

[davel]

I have the same motherboard, CPU and SSD as you, so I figured I'd time my bootup. This is only one run. I started the stopwatch as soon as I pressed the power switch.

From powering on to seeing the Windows loading graphic, right at 16 seconds when accounting for a quarter of a second of slow reflexes. I hit the lap button and then paused as soon as I had a mouse cursor on the desktop. That was 8.5 seconds.

POST - 16 seconds
Windows load - 8.5 seconds
Overall to desktop - 24.5 seconds

Probably takes the NIC to initialize another 1-2 seconds after hitting the desktop.

Yeah I only timed it from Post to seeing the windows loading screen, did not time it to desktop. I think it was another 10-12 seconds to get to desktop but that is just guessing.

Either way much faster then previous build in just Post and OS alone. I really cannot complain.

 

[althaz]

For those interested Anandtech are now including not only POST times of motherboards at default settings, but also POST times with stripped-down settings to give an idea of the fastest possible POST.

 

[HexiumVII]

I've found that optical drives add a lot of time to boot. Esp if you have a disc inside. My fix is external drive that's off until i use it! (like once a month).

 

[althaz]

I have noticed a lot of people saying this, I may take the same course as I only use the optical drive every other month or so.

Also, somebody over at Toms Hardware posted me a link to this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHIsiBwdju8 <= In it a PC boots into windows from full off in 11 seconds thanks to a BIOS feature on Intel motherboards called "Fast Boot". Hopefully this feature also exists on their current boards .

 

[wwanno]

All I can tell you is: "don't choose an asrock z68 fatal1ty professional, it's SLOOOOOOOOOOW", and I don't know why (if anybody knows, please explain me what to do, I read a lot of people saying Asrock are fast, maybe I have to change something in bios.).

 

[UKmonkey]

Does anyone have times for any recent Intel boards?