NVMe boot time
NVMe boot time
To improve your startup speed, adjust a few extra configurations. Ensure the boot mode is set exclusively to UEFI, and turn off CSM and Legacy support. Reduce or turn off the startup delay if available on your motherboard, so you bypass the UEFI splash screen prompts. Turn off unused modules like additional Ethernet ports, WiFi, Bluetooth, extra SATA controllers, or extra audio controllers. Disable the UEFI network stack if you prefer not to download firmware over the internet and instead use a USB drive. Turn off PXE network boot and any ROM-based options. Activate fast boot features for memory for quicker memory initialization. These tweaks can enhance boot performance, though results vary by motherboard model. For instance, on my ASUS board, enabling "MRC Fast Boot" and "MCH Full Check" cut my POST time from roughly 45 seconds to around 7 seconds.
Thanks! I tried to adjust some of them, but by the way of a bit of background - I have two desktops: 1) ASUS GL12CP (i7-8700, 1x16GB hynix 2666 MHz, Crucial MX500 SATA M.2 SSD) and 2) a new build with MSI Z490 Pro A with i7-10700, 8GBx2 3200MHz in dual channels, Crucial NVMe P5 SSD. I think in theory the new build should boot faster with faster RAM and NVMe SSD, plus it is a clean window installation and should not have much craps than in the old, and yet the boot time for the former was 2.5 seconds vs the latter at 5 seconds...
Computers can be weird. The computers in my school POST faster than my rig, and they're like 12+ years old. It comes down to how the UEFI firmware is implemented by the manufacturer, and what hardware is being used. Generally, the more hardware, or the more complicated the hardware, the longer it takes to initialize it all by the firmware. The way the manufacturer has implemented the firmware also matters, for example, servers take really long to POST because the firmware takes extra steps to test and initialize the hardware and diagnose it more thoroughly than a standard desktop system. Unfortunately there is not much that you can do about it other than make sure that your firmware is up to date and do those optimizations. In some cases, you might be able to flash an open source firmware called "coreboot" which has the potential to decrease POST times among other advantages, but it is not recommended at the moment and is likely not even available for your motherboard.