On Tue, 18 Dec 2018 07:22:47 -0500, Bill wrote:

Char Jackson wrote:
Then another 30-40
attempts with the replacement board.


You've reminded me why I stay away from the bleeding edge, use
quality parts, etc.

I didn't think I was that close to any edge. The Z390 chipset is
basically last year's H370 chipset, so nothing radical there, and the
CPU is fairly high up the Intel food chain, but I intentionally waited
for the 9000-series to come out so that I'd be back one series. As for
ASRock and what seems to be a silly default voltage setting, I can't say
what happened there. You'd think this would affect a whole lot of
people, not just me.

And still I've had a few "difficulties".
IMO, Having to mount a CPU just to flash the MB seems like an
awful lot to ask... I would expect a discount, maybe. Good luck!

At least I was aware of the AMD situation, so I was aware of the easy
way to avoid the whole thing. All you have to do is shop for "Ryzen 2000
Series Ready", which weeds out the boards that would have to be flashed
with a loaner CPU. I almost went that way, with a Ryzen 2700X and X470
board, but at the last minute I came back to Intel for this build.