Gigabyte X870E Xtreme AI Top Inconsistently Missing 2nd Chipset & EC

[Slickrick]

My motherboard, Gigabyte X870E Xtreme AI Top, has two chipsets and an embedded controller for its various fans / sensors. Unfortunately, only the first chipset, ITE IT8696E, is showing. The 2nd chipset (ITE IT87952E) and the embedded controller are not being detected. When I first built this PC and when I reinstalled windows a few weeks ago, they did show up a few times.
I have a screenshot of it:

but I no longer see the 2nd chipset and the EC in the above screenshot. I've attached my debug file (compressed).

Also, I did see a post that looked similar, Gigabyte Aorus X870E Xtreme Ai Top chipset temperatures missing. In that post, I see Martin mentioned that this has already been discussed in the forum, but I can't seem to find the original discussion. I did try disabling the "Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" in device manager for the USB eXtensible Host Controllers, but I don't see anything specifically named USB xHCI controller.


I've installed the latest chipset from AMD as well as the latest from Gigabyte. I'm on the latest BIOS version as well.

 

[Martin]

Are you perhaps running some other hardware monitoring or fan or RGB control software? Loss of those sensors can happen if such software performs an improper access to hardware.
Try to fully power off the system and reboot.

 

[Slickrick]

I prevented all possible startup apps, which did successfully show the missing Chip & EC in HWInfo. I then began re-adding my startup apps, 1 by 1. I've confirmed that SignalRGB is causing a conflict. Even with all the settings in SignalRGB turned off (Enable Onboard Devices, Automatically close conflicting programs, all partner permissions off, Enable Fan Control, Enable Motherboard Fan Control). I'll try to figure out if there's something I'm missing, but that's an issue with SignalRGB, not HWInfo.

Thanks for the help!
In case you're interested, here's the HWInfo debug file from starting up SignalRGB and then starting up HWInfo.

 

[Martin]

Please report this to SignalRGB.

 

[Slickrick]

Please report this to SignalRGB.

Will do! Thanks again for leading me to the root cause. This also helped me figure out separate issue with FanControl software too.

 

[Cave Waverider]

We've experienced a very similar issue on two PCs the past couple of days. I don't think it's related to HWInfo directly, but perhaps someone has any insight on what could be happening here, especially since Gigabyte Mainboards with ITE IT87952E missing have been mentioned by others in this thread (although we don't have SignalRGB that others mentioned to disable as the solution installed on our systems) so the issue could be related.

Our two, very similarly configured systems (except mainboard, CPU and SSDs) have been running fine for months until yesterday, when various monitoring software, including HWinfo64 and Fan Control started to not recognize the ITE IT87952E anymore. There is no Gigabyte software installed on either system, the monitoring software we have installed on boths systems is HWInfo, Fan Control, Corsair iCue, Lian-Li L-Connect 3. HWInfo, Fan Control, L-Connect 3 v1.7.2, the latest version of MSI Afterburner with RTSS usually run on startup (L-Connect 3 just starts quickly to allow fan control from the mainboard and then exits automatically). iCue isn't usually running and has all sensor monitoring disabled, it's started manually to update RAM firmware and change the lighting on the RAM (we also uninstalled iCue but it didn't help).

It happened yesterday on the first PC, with Gigabyte X870E Aorus Pro Ice mainboard (with the latest F4 BIOS) and Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU. Clearing CMOS or Re-flashing the BIOS didn't help, nor did reinstalling all the latest drivers, including Chipset ones. We disabled all startup programs (including all of the aforementioned monitoring programs) and it didn't help either. I updated HWInfo to 8.24-5700 from an older version and then also the latest beta version, but it didn't help (back to 8.24-5700 now).
The only thing I could do is clone the OS Drive from our second system and that fixed the issue (for now).

This morning it happened on our second PC as well, this has the Gigabyte X670E Aorus Pro X mainboard (with the latest F33 BIOS) and Ryzen 9 9950X3D CPU. On this system as the problem occured, HWinfo64 also popped up a warning that a "Gigabyte EC" was detected which wasn't there before (now this could have also happened on the other system when the problem occured, but there was no popup warning on HWInfo startup so I didn't notice). However this new "Gigaybte EC Gigabyte X670E Aorus Pro X" category doesn't have any sensors or anything listed in it's category, whether I leave the EC enabled or not, it's just empty.
Also on this system the main ITE IT8689E chip has gone missing randomly twice after a cold boot on this PC now, which is especially problematic as it's monitoring Coolant Temperature, pump and fan speeds, but it was detected again after restarting Windows (the ITE IT87952E has not, however).
When the problem occurs, all the speed and temperature sensors work normally in the mainboard's BIOS.

HWinfo64 isn't the only program affected by this, Fan Control is another one that can't see the sensors from these chips when the problem occurs, also when I don't have any of these programs set on startup but only launch one of them manually. Windows Event Viewer doesn't show any errors either.

We didn't update any software lately (the latest Windows Updates seem to have been installed on April 8 2025 - "2025-04 Cumulative Update for Windows 11 Version 23H2 for x64-based Systems (KB5055528)" and "2025-04 .NET 8.0.15 Security Update for x64 Client (KB5056686)", according to Windows Update History and a "Security Intelligence Update for Microsoft Defender Antivirus - KB2267602 (Version 1.427.184.0) - Current Channel (Broad)" that got installed today), the only thing we changed two days ago was to install new GeForce RTX 5090 video cards (Palit GameRock on the first system, Gigabyte Aorus xTreme Waterforce WB on the second).
Both Systems are on Windows 11 Pro 23H2 OS Build 22631.5189 (latest release channel, fully updated), Windows 11's native RGB/Lighting control is disabled. BIOS of both mainboards are the latest release BIOSes and All drivers including chipset are up to date.

Does anybody have an idea or insight what could be causing this or what I could try (except reinstalling windows or re-cloning the OS drive from the first system which would likely solve the issue...but I think that may only be a temporary bandaid so I'll refrain from doing so for a bit to see if the issue re-occurs on the first system, too)?

Thanks in advance!

PS.: I've attached the .DBG file from the second system where the issue is still present.

 

[Martin]

Accessing sensors on systems with dual SIO chips (IT87952E as the second one) requires special precautions. If a software doesn't do it right, the result is as you described - loss of IT87952E or even the primary chip (IT8689E), and this can also lead to system instability.
You mentioned that you have several other tools installed like Fan Control, iCUE and L-Connect. They all will attempt to access the SIO sensors and I doubt that they all follow the precautions. And even if you disabled them, they might still have services running in background attempting to access sensors.

 

[Cave Waverider]

Accessing sensors on systems with dual SIO chips (IT87952E as the second one) requires special precautions. If a software doesn't do it right, the result is as you described - loss of IT87952E or even the primary chip (IT8689E), and this can also lead to system instability.
You mentioned that you have several other tools installed like Fan Control, iCUE and L-Connect. They all will attempt to access the SIO sensors and I doubt that they all follow the precautions. And even if you disabled them, they might still have services running in background attempting to access sensors.

Thank you very much for the reply, Martin. That could very well be the case. I wish the wonderful HWInfo64 could do everything the crappy software does (or that the crappy software wouldn't include monitoring functions except for it's own hardware, at least).

It's just odd that I haven't ever had any issues with this combination of software on any of our systems before (the second system I've had since fall of last year, for example, and we've been using dual SIO chip systems before as well). Can it be coincidence that they would both develop the issue so closely together? It's also weird that cloning the OS SSD from the working system fixed it on the problematic system, but the next day the previously working system from which I cloned the boot SSD showed the same problem.

I have just disabled all the startup programs again and set all related services to not start automatically and disabled them and it didn't help either, unless I missed something.

I'll try to uninstall all the monitoring software one by one and restart after each and see if any of it helps.

 

[Martin]

I agree that such behavior is odd and don't know what could be causing it.
The symptoms you describe clearly indicate a fault accessing the LPC/SIO chips. In fact, software is hard to blame here because the problem is a hardware erratum when those LPC/SIO chips are used in dual-configuration. But software needs to know about this and perform specific workarounds to avoid it.
Maybe the latest Windows update caused it with a delay? Or some other software...

 

[Cave Waverider]

I agree that such behavior is odd and don't know what could be causing it.
The symptoms you describe clearly indicate a fault accessing the LPC/SIO chips. In fact, software is hard to blame here because the problem is a hardware erratum when those LPC/SIO chips are used in dual-configuration. But software needs to know about this and perform specific workarounds to avoid it.
Maybe the latest Windows update caused it with a delay? Or some other software...

Oh my, thank you for the mentioning of "other software". I had forgotten that we had indeed installed the latest 3DMark Benchmark on both PCs to test if our new video cards were working properly. 3DMark has a "Future Mark System Info" it installs to read the system specs and apparently that's what was causing the conflict, even when 3DMark isn't active (I couldn't find a service for it either). I uninstalled it and rebooted the PC and now both HWInfo and Fan Control display both chips and the sensors etc. attached to them again.

It's still a bit odd that on the first PC everything is still fine even though 3DMark and it's System Info tool is still installed as it uses a cloned drive from the second one.

Sorry for taking up so much of your time, Martin, but at least these posts might give someone else that stumbles upon this problem some insight on what could be wrong.

Thank you very much for creating this wonderful software!

Update 1: It looks like the issue came back and the whole 3DMark uninstallation fixing was just coincidence. It might really be the recent Cumulative Windows Update, but it can't be uninstalled so I can't test it.

Update 2: There seems to be a compatibility issue with RTX 5090 of sorts...Whenever I pop the old RTX 4090 card back in, all tools can read both chips, but once I put an RTX 5090 in, the readout of the second chip in HWInfo64 and Fan Control and it's sensors disappear. I tried swapping the cards a couple of times now, same result. Also, I reinstalled Windows fresh and it kept behaving the same. GeForce drivers are the same for both cards. That happens on both PCs (and two different RTX 5090 cards). This doesn't seem to be making any sense to me. How could a video card cause compatibility issues with the readouts of the secondary LPC/SIO chips?

 

[somebodycool]

I also have this issue on an asrock x870e nova wifi motherboard.

It is a very strange bug. For me, the 1st chipset temp is missing.

It will not work for many days. And then bam, it will start to show both temps and then it goes away after many weeks. Today, it showed me both of my temps and then while the system was still on and seemingly nothing else changed, the temp disappeared and it was greyed out on the hwinfo monitor screen. I have both temps to display on my task manager, so I knew it was gone since it was only showing me one temp.

 

[Martin]

Connect some USB device into the respective USB controller which should keep it active, or prevent it from powering off in Device Manager.