Asus Maximus Extreme & Hero Error 55.

[Luis00014]

So, to start off this is not my first time building my own pc, I have also helped a friend with 2 of his builds and together with the 5 builds I have done for myself before buying the Asus Z790 mobos I have never had these many problems.

One more thing, I have a degree in computer and electronics engineering, and like I wrote before, never have I seen so many problems with mobos.

I bought first an Asus Z790 Maximus extreme mobo back in December but it was having problems dissipating heat from the CPU, a brand new i9 13900k, and also gave me the error code 55. I was able to get it to windows 10 with 1 and 2 sticks on the DIMM B2 & B1 slots. Tried all other combos and got error 55.

I bought 2 different sets of DDR5 ram, which later an Asus rep told me were not compatible but nvm mind that because I bought two brand new sets of 2 x 32 DDR5 ram that were in the Asus list and those also have given me the same errors. In my experience as far as you use Ram that overall is supported by the mobo, such as being DDR4 or DDR5, and as long as the max speed of the ram does not exceed the max the mobo was built for I have never had an issue with buying ram that is "not in the Asus list."

BTW, I made sure all ram I bought, even the sets that are not in the Asus compatibility list, were Intel XMP ready, they were DDR5 and no more than 6400 even though these mobos are supposedly able to run with much faster ram. (7000 I think, can't recall off my head)

I have built in the past other Asus mobos such as using the Asus X99-A and ROG Maximus XI Extreme among others and as I wrote before never have I seen so many problems before with mobos.

Anyway, after being on for about 5 minutes or so the pc would go to the "Blue Screen of Death" and crash because of the temp.

I tried two different coolers, including a brand new one and both were working, as I could put my hand on the hoses and they were working and cool and even the case was cool, but the cpu kept overheating. I returned that MOBO and bought another one which arrived broken. The plastic that covers the digital display for error codes was broken. Mind these are brand new mobos and I don't know since when but every new Asus mobo I got was not inside an anti-static bag like they used to be, but anyway.

Even though the mobo was broken I installed the cpu with new cooler, & the ram to see if it would return the same errors and it did. I returned that mobo as well, both bought through Amazon. Although the cpu did not overheat I kept getting the error 55 and since it arrived broken I sent it back. I returned the cpu as well and bought a brand new one because it is possible for the cpu to also give these memory errors, but this time I decided to try to buy an Asus Z790 hero which is the last one I bought but this one also keeps giving me the error 55 code.

The things I tried with all mobos:

Cleared CMOs, flashed/updaintg the Bios and took out the battery for over 5 minutes to make sure. Also tried resetting BIOS to manufacturing settings.

Tried 2 different coolers, including a brand new Corsair H150i Elite LCD and both work, on the first mobo as well as the following which i tried on the other two mobos.

Resetting the cpu. Checking the pins in the cpu slot in the mobos with a magnifying glass and taking pics with my cell phone so i could zoom in checking all pins. If i just saw one pin just a bit bent I fixed it.
Repasted the cpu even with the Kryonaut extreme thermal grizzly paste and made sure i didn't put too much torque or not enough when placing the cooler on the cpu.

I tried 4 different sets of ram, yes 2 were supposedly not compatible but we all know this isn't necessarily true. But again, I returned the original ram that were supposedly not compatible and bought 2 more sets of 2x 32 DDR5 ram, I always buy two sets of Ram in case of problems with one set, that are compatible and in the Asus list but those also have given me the error 55. The last two sets of 2X32 DDR5-6400 Ram I bought are on the Asus compatible list: F5-6400J3239G32GX2-TZ5RS

I used two different cpus i9 13900k but it seems to be the mobos that are the problem.

I tried setting XMP to off and to XmpI and XMPII.
i disabled MRC "fast boot" and also tried it with fast boot on.
Set DRAM VDD & VDDQ voltage to 1.30000 as well as the standard 1.40000
Set Dram to 6400, and to 6200 . The max for the ram being 6400.
Set PMIC voltages to "by per PMIC"

I tried taking off the graphics card, an RTX Geforce 4090, as well as taking off peripherals, but always left cooler and ram and tried different combinations of puting ram in the various slots. Tried using 1 stick of Ram, 2, sticks, and even 3 and 4 just to check. Like i wrote before I tried this with in total 4 sets of 2X 32 DDR5-6400 ram Intel XMP ready. i know when puting two sticks of ram they are supposed to go int the correct slots such as using 1 stick in A2, 2 sticks in B2 and A2, etc. But i also tried other combinations.

In the Asus Z790 Hero mobo the only slot where the ram would be recognized was on the B2 dimm slot. On the B1 Dimm slot the system would loop in the error list and would never stop until I turned it off. The A2 and A1 Dimm slots gave both error 55.

I tried setting the new ME, always ME download first, and bios files found in the Asus website. BTW, the pc came with newer ME files and tried both the old ME files and the new one with the Bios files found in the mobo/the original manufactured settings and the one in the Asus website.

Anyway, i checked online and a lot, and I mean a lot of people are reporting these very same problems. never before have i seen so many people reporting these error 55/memory problem errors with a mobo.

I am not sure how many users in the forum have had the problems I have encountered with these mobos, but I wanted to see if anyone has been able to solve this issue.

BTW, one last thing, I know that Asus had a big problem with the z690 mobos because in several mobos they actually had installed a capacitor with the polarity reversed which caused several Z690 mobos to overheat and eventually even burned the capacitor and part of the circuit board. I checked the same capacitor on the Z790 mobos and they were all installed with the right polarity.

Yes, I do know that the problem with the capacitor that the Z690 mobos had has nothing to do with the memory problem i have with the Z790 mobos but I just checked as well just in case.
If i had the schematics to how the other electronics components are supposed to be installed I would have checked everything else as well.

i am starting to suspect something similar to what happened with the Z690 mobos is happening with many of the Z790 mobos, but of course it is not the capacitor that burned the z690 mobos.

What could be causing this, and imo is also the most likely reason this is happening, is the pressure plate for the CPU in the mobo are bent/warped OR the circuit boards for a batch or more of these mobos are bent/warped. It is possible several Z790 mobos got the pressure plate bent/warped, or the curcuit boards themselves are bent/warped, and this is causing the pins not to sit correctly on the cpu.

Has anyone tried using an anti-bending pressure plate such as the Thermalright Intel 12th/13th Generation LGA1700 Anti-Bending Buckle, Curved Pressure Plate? I know using one of these would void the warranty but this could very well be the problem.

if anyone has been able to solve these problems please let me know and let me know what you did. Thanks.

[JohnAb]

axiumone wrote:
Well, this is really not great to see that this issue persisted to z790. I've been struggling with error 55 on my z690 formula for a year now. Also using a 2x32 kit. Mine is the corsair dominator 5200 kit that is on the QVL list. No amount of setting tweaking with voltages helped. This has been the most frustrating motherboard I've ever had.

No help from asus or from corsair. They're both finger pointing. Memory passes days of memtest pro. So the issue is no the memory, the issue is either asus hardware or bios.

You have my sympathy, must be very frustrating. I'd expect the upper tier boards to have better stability. Just out of interest, have you been in touch with customer support and if so, what happened? I have the Hero and I don't want to seem annoying, but I can honestly say that for me it's been great. Only one blue screen since I got it and I think that was drivers related. Mind you, I am using slower memory at only 5200 and I don't overclock the CPU. Also, because it's a 12900K in my machine, perhaps there has been more time to sort out bugs. Overall, though, plenty fast enough for my humble requirements at defaults.

[Luis00014]

Yes i have tried to flash bios version 0703 both manually and through the bios tool ez flash and I always update the ME files first. When using the bios tool I get a message that "it is not a proper bios file." I made sure the usb was in Fat32 format.

When trying to do it manually, i use the proper bios usb slot, I only get a steady blue light that never turns off. I tried leaving it for over 1 hour and the light stayed steady. Luckily it didn't mess the bios. i was afraid when i tried to flash the previous version of bios it would break the mobo, because of how long it was taking and it stayed with a steady blue light instead of blinking, but it didn't.

Anyway, the message of "it is not a proper bios file" is the same error message I get trying the bios version 0801. I can only downgrade to the 0810 bios version. Tried to downgrade from both the 0813 and 0810 bios and both don't allow me to use an earlier stable bios update.

[Luis00014]

axiumone wrote:
Well, this is really not great to see that this issue persisted to z790. I've been struggling with error 55 on my z690 formula for a year now. Also using a 2x32 kit. Mine is the corsair dominator 5200 kit that is on the QVL list. No amount of setting tweaking with voltages helped. This has been the most frustrating motherboard I've ever had.

No help from asus or from corsair. They're both finger pointing. Memory passes days of memtest pro. So the issue is no the memory, the issue is either asus hardware or bios.

The problem could also be the i9 13900 cpus. Or several batches of the Z690 and Z790 have the cpu pressure plate slightly warped/bent, or the circuit board of the mobo could be slightly warped/bent and this is why there are dimm slots not being recognized as the cpu pins don't seat on the cpu contacts as they should due to the bent/warped product.

Last night i found some people on other websites reporting that using either a grizzly or thermalright 12/13 gen pressure plate stops the memory issues and get the mobos and cpus to work. I am not sure if I can give links to those forums. If we can let me know and I will post them.

BTW, changing the pressure plate can void the warranty of the mobo thou. 😕

In this forum we have had at least one member report that he/she had an i9 12900k? working perfectly with an z690/z790 mobo but when he upgraded to the i9 13900 he/she got the memory problem/ cpu not recognizing dimm slots so many of us are having. So not everyone will be able to solve this problem the same way.

[JohnAb]

Luis00014 wrote:
The problem could also be the i9 13900 cpus. Or several batches of the Z690 and Z790 have the cpu pressure plate slightly warped/bent, or the circuit board of the mobo could be slightly warped/bent and this is why there are dimm slots not being recognized as the cpu pins don't seat on the cpu contacts as they should due to the bent/warped product.

Last night i found some people on other websites reporting that using either a grizzly or thermalright 12/13 gen pressure plate stops the memory issues and get the mobos and cpus to work. I am not sure if I can give links to those forums. If we can let me know and I will post them.

BTW, changing the pressure plate can void the warranty of the mobo thou. 😕

In this forum we have had at least one member report that he/she had an i9 12900k? working perfectly with an z690/z790 mobo but when he upgraded to the i9 13900 he/she got the memory problem/ cpu not recognizing dimm slots so many of us are having. So not everyone will be able to solve this problem the same way.

I get the sense that you might be right - although I don't have a 13900 and so focus less on that CPU, there do seem to be a lot of memory issues reported with that CPU on both 690 and 790 motherboards. I don't think it's my imagination.

[Luis00014]

So, I am returning the mobo to Walmart, but i decided to try to buy the Asus Maximus hero from Newegg, which right now it's on sale and are new. The mobos I have tried so far i bought from Amazon and Walmart, so decided to try one more time and this time with Newegg.

The mobo is supposed to arrive on Feb 23. Whenever i get it I will post if I will have better luck or if the same problem persists. By the time it gets here I will also have the cpu pressure plate just in case the problem persists in this new mobo.

Thanks everyone for all the advice and responses.

[axiumone]

You can see the thread with my journey here - https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?130906-z690-Formula-Detect-memory

Asus support has not been helpful, they basically just refer to RMA almost immediately. This is my 2nd board already and I don't think this issue is something that can be fixed with an RMA, at least not if the physical board revision has never been updated.

[JohnAb]

Oh, I was just about to suggest higher voltages - can see that you did all of that already 😞

[axiumone]

I don't think that's the issue. With my z690 formula, I've used a 12900kf and a 13900ks, both with the stock clam mechanism and with the contact frame. Every combination has memory detect 55 errors.

[Luis00014]

axiumone wrote:
I don't think that's the issue. With my z690 formula, I've used a 12900kf and a 13900ks, both with the stock clam mechanism and with the contact frame. Every combination has memory detect 55 errors.

The weird part for me is that even if I put all 4 sticks of ram the leds in the ram light up, but it's possible that 3 of the dimm slots are not getting enough voltage for some reason. BIOS actually sees the ram since when I installed all 4 sticks BIOs said that I had 128+ gigs of ram. in any combination of ram the led/rgb lights are on on the ram.

But anyway, not sure if this is happening to all z690 mobos, but so far I have found that having an i9 12900k with an Asus strix z690f this is what someone found when trying different cpus and tried some other changes.

Notice he/she says when replacing the 13900k with a 12900k he/she had no issues.

"I replaced the CPU, and exact same issue. This is what I tried:

z690-F strix + 13900k - 55 memory issue
Replacement strix z690-F + 13900k - works, but not stable (BSDO, MemTest86 errors), then permanent 55 memory issue
Replacement strix z790-E + 13900k - 55 memory issue
Replacement memory - (from crucial 4800 to G.SKILL) - 55 memory issue
Replace 13900k with 12900k - no issue
Replace 13900k with new 13900k - 55 memory issue


At this point I can send it to Asus, or return board and switch to a new mainboard brand. What else could it be? GPU? Power Adapter? Grounding?
https://www.overclock.net/threads/asus-strix-x790-e-13900k-build-memory-error-55-on-a2.1801597/

[JohnAb]

axiumone - fair enough - it was just me expressing my 'sense' of the situation, but I just seem to see so many people with memory problems. No idea if there is a 'magic' answer, but I do feel so sorry for people with those sorts of issues. Very annoying and I'd be distraught if that was me. Maybe it's the motherboards, chipsets, DDR5, CPUs etc. but so many memory issues leads me to think that something odd is going on.

Luis00014 - have you also tried the EZ flash BIOS update method as well? There have been other posts reporting not being able to downgrade from 0813 (or maybe it was 0812) but anyway, you're not the only one. Then somebody said they did it, which would indicate that the BIOS is not locked for downgrades. So it's odd. I can't remember if they were on the same motherboard as you or not, but maybe have a look at the other threads if you haven't seen that - I realise you probably have.