Fixing PCIe handshake freezes on ASUS ROG STRIX Z890-A
Whenever the game hit a loading screen, the whole system would just hang for about 10 seconds, which is terrifying when you're mid-session. The PCIe 5.0 link on the ROG STRIX Z890-A has a 12-25ms handshake delay in 'Auto' mode with some high-end cards, which often triggers a driver timeout. I tried disabling Fast Boot in Windows, but that didn't help at all—it just made my PC take longer to start, which was just frustrating. I eventually flashed the latest BIOS and forced the PCIe slot to Gen5 instead of 'Auto'. In Device Manager, the link speed stayed rock solid at 32 GT/s, and the freezes vanished. I actually noticed some M.2 drives disappeared after the change, but updating the chipset drivers brought them back. VRM temps are sitting at 45℃ - 52℃, and memory temps are stable at 58℃ - 63℃. No more data interruptions during stress tests.
