In an official statement by ASRock earlier today, the company announced that it would allow anyone who has issues peeling the DDR5 memory installation sticker off their AM5 motherboard to return it for a newer version if necessary. Some users report that the sticker can leave significant adhesive traces behind, potentially blocking some of the DDR5 contacts in the DIMM slots.
This story started a few days ago when some ASRock X670E users reported that ASRock's DDR5 memory installation sticker guide - stamped right on top of the DIMM slots, was a bit too sticky to remove. The issue leaves users with the potential risk of non-working memory DIMMs.
Fortunately, we haven't found any users reporting any damage occurring with this problem. All reported users have either replaced their motherboards or figured out a way to remove the adhesive manually. Either way, it is a problem ASRock needs to address.
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Thankfully, these stickers are going away, according to ASRock. These stickers are only present on the first shipment of ASRock's AM5 motherboards due to abnormally long boot times. With the first wave of BIOS revisions, the first boot could take several minutes, depending on the memory capacity.
But thanks to new BIOS updates, these initial lengthy bootup times are now gone. As a result, ASRock will no longer be applying these stickers onto their DDR5 AM5 motherboards.
But beware, there's still a chance some of ASRock's initial batches of AM5 motherboards featuring the super sticky sticker could still be on sale. So this could be a problem for a few more weeks until all the initial batches have been sold.
If you find yourself with this issue, you can instantly contact the retailer you bought your board from and request an exchange, or you can try ripping off the sticker yourself and hope all the adhesive comes off. Alternatively, you can manually remove any remaining adhesive if the peel fails.
Generally, applying a gentle heat source to the adhesive should make complete removal relatively easy, so there are still ways to get around this problem if you don't want to wait for an exchange.
