ASUS ROG Laptops are Broken by Design: A Forensic Deep Dive

ASUS ROG laptops ship with a PCI-SIG specification violation hardcoded into the UEFI firmware. This is not a Windows bug and not a driver bug.

Confirmed Affected Models

• 2022 Strix Scar 15
• 2025 Strix Scar 16
• Potentially many more ROG models sharing the same firmware codebase.

The Violation:

PCI-SIG ECN Page 17 states:

"Identical values must be programmed in both Ports."

However, the ASUS UEFI programs the L1.2 Timing Thresholds incorrectly on every boot:

CPU Root Port: LTR_L1.2_THRESHOLD = 765us NVIDIA GPU: LTR_L1.2_THRESHOLD = 0ns 

The Consequence:

The GPU and CPU disagree on sleep exit timing, causing the PCIe link to desynchronize during power transitions.

Symptoms:

• WHEA 0x124 crashes
• Black screens
• System hangs
• Driver instability (Symptoms vary from platform to platform)

Status:

This issue was reported to ASUS Engineering 24 days ago with full register dumps and forensic analysis. The mismatch persists in the latest firmware.

I am releasing the full forensic report below so that other users and engineers can verify the register values themselves.

Published for interoperability analysis under 17 U.S.C. 1201(f).