TLDR: Return of the I225-V Issues = DO NOT BUY

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What is the I225-V you might ask and why should you care? Well it’s a 2.5 gbps Ethernet controller from Intel that is on a plethora of recent Asus (and other brand) motherboards and has been causing lots of people frustration with their systems (though it does not seem like everyone)

This post fully outlines the original issue, but the summary is that this Intel Ethernet adapter throttles or drops out entirely when put under load. In my experience, I also had WHEA error and eventual BSODs that were very replicate-able.

The PSA update I have is that the newer revisions of this problematic chip are also a problem, so I am unaware of any revision that is problem free and thus I recommend you stay away from all boards with them.

My (Long-Winded) Experience

I currently have 2 B550-E motherboards. I purchased the first from r/hardwareswap back in June and the second from Amazon warehouse a few weeks ago. The one I got from r/hardwareswap is where I saw the issue initially and so I grabbed an identical boand from Amazon to help verify where the issue was.

After a lot of troubleshooting, including over a dozen clean installs of Windows, installing multiple BIOS versions, Ethernet driver versions (both from Asus and Intel directly), and testing multiple CPUs, RAM kits, and obviously motherboards, I determined the Ethernet chip was definitely faulty and reached out to Asus support for an RMA. They had me try a few things, including attempting a firmware update to the NVM in the Ethernet chip itself (I believe the same process as outlined on this intel support page), all to no avail (I could still very easily replicate the issue in a clean windows install), so they issued an RMA and a prepaid label (after a bit of pushing).

I posted here a few days ago about my experience with the RMA process (TLDR: they couldn't replicate the issue). When I got the motherboard back with no fix and feeling very frustrated, I did a lot more digging and discovered that this is a much bigger issue than I thought and is in fact a hardware flaw, as outlined in the linked post in the previous section.

My Proof

The first board (from r/hardwareswap and the one I sent to Asus) has an older revision of the Ethernet chip (code "SLNJY" , which means B2 from the post above) which is already noted as being problematic. However the second board (the one I grabbed one from Amazon warehouse) has a newer revision of the Ethernet chip (proof that it is coded “SLNMH”, which means B3), whch was thought to be problem free, according to the post in the first section, has now demonstrated the exact same issues as I saw on the other board.

I must therefore conclude that this is a flaw in that Intel I225-V chipset and would like to make sure others are aware of this before they spend their hard earned money on any of the affected board (the post above has a large list of the problematic boards, though I do not know if it is an exhaustive list)

Credit to u/ClogToilets for the original PSA and to /u/randyxxx1987 for his archived post over on /r/Intel.