Crosshair X870E Hero Post code 22 after cold boot.

[wayneharper1973]

Hello Everyone,

I currently have an issue with my new PC build and I was wondering if anyone here could help.

The issue is as follows:-

When I boot the PC from a cold start (either a boot from complete power-off or directly from a shutdown), the motherboard (Crosshair X870E) will post with an AA q-code and start to boot into windows. Part way into the windows boot cycle, the pc will freeze with the q-code 22.

A reset of the PC (via the reset button on the case) will then lead to a successful boot and there are no issues when using the PC after a successful boot.

This issue was also apparent, when I first installed windows on to the PC. When installing it, a freeze occurred when selecting the install location for windows (can't quite remember whether it was on the formatting part or the searching for drives), again with a q-code of 22. A subsequent reset, and the install completed without further issues.

The full list of hardware is as follows:
Motherboard:     Crosshair X870E (BIOS 1504)
CPU:                    Ryzen 9950X
RAM:                   Corsair Vengance DDR5 192GB (Note: It was only 96GB when issue started and chips are in qvl                               list 2 x CMK96GX5M2B6400C32)
GPU:                    nVidia RTX 4090 FE
Storage:            
                           1TB BIWIN X570 PRO 1TB (System)
                           4TB BIWIN X570 PRO 4TB (Storage)
                           2TB BIWIN X570 PRO 2TB (Storage)
                           2TB Lexar SSD NM790 2TB (Storage)
                          2TB Crucial CT2000MX500SSD1 (Storage)
                          4TB Sabrent (Storage).
OS:                   Windows 11 Pro
Case:               Fractal Meshify XL2

I have also carried out the following to see if I could isolate the issue (with no success):

1) Stripped out all components so just RAM and a 1TB PCIe 4.0 Drive was installed and installed Windows 10.
     The fresh install of windows 10 exhibited exactly the same issues as windows 11 (including the install issue       where it would freeze on the install location screen.

2) Tried various different memory configurations, including chips from another manufacturer (all on QVL List),          the same behaviour  was exhibited in all situations.

3) Have tried amening various different BIOS settings, none resulted in fixing the issue.

Apologies for the long post, and thanks if you get this far. If anyone has any ideas of what the issue is, I would really appreciate any advice or ideas of what it could be.

Cheers

#Crosshair X870E Hero

[wayneharper1973]

Logged a call with ASUS support and got the following response:

"We are sorry that this appears to be the case with you. Since we do not offer direct service processing, we would recommend that you report your motherboard to your dealer. They will then take over the further processing for you.  I understand this is inconvenient, as part of the sale process the reseller/retailer accepted that they would control all returns/replacement on behalf of ASUS for the duration of the warranty."

The board was bought from amazon and it is outside the return window - so they will not accept it.

So the rather expensive lessons learned here are:
a) Never buy an Asus product.

b) Never buy from Amazon.