Intermittent failure to boot with green Q-LED on (ROG STRIX Z690-F GAMING)

[3Shirts]

Hello all. I have a strange intermittent problem

My PC specs:

ASUS ROG Strix Z690-F Gaming WiFi Motherboard
Intel i7 12700k | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 [KFA2 ]
2x16GB CORSAIR VENGEANCE RGB DDR5 RAM 6000MHz CL30
2x16GB Kingston DDR5-5600MHZ CL40 FURY BEAST
Corsair CP-9020187-UK 750 W RM750x ATX Power Supply
WD_BLACK SN850 1TB NVMe Internal Gaming SSD

BIOS Version: 2802

Problem:
SOMETIMES. After a boot I am greeted with UEFI - Enter BIOS screen without way to enter it. It just freezes. Green Q-LED light stays on. I believe this is a problem of not finding the boot device but it happens intermittently and I don't know why I can't get into the BIOS when it happens. Surely you can do that even with no boot device?!

Often it happens when rebooting from a fully functioning session so I don't know why it's "losing" the boot device. The frequency of the issue varies from 2-10 boots and once it happens, it can be many reboots or just a lot of time until it works again with no rhymoe or reason as to why it does. Full power cycles (cable out) etc don't help.

I've tried:

• Reinstalling Windows and formatting the main boot drive
• Disconnecting the secondary SATA SSD
• Disabling fast boot
• Clearing CMOS
• Reseating the NVME drive

It's on the latest BIOS version. I'm pulling my hair out. Please help

[3Shirts]

Hi. I actually thought if this today too and I have HWInfo installed already. Weirdly it isn't showing the temp for that drive (WD Black NVMe). It shows reads and writes and remaining life etc but not temperature. It does for my second drive (WD Blue NVMe) so not sure what's up there. Any ideas?

Edit: I installed WD Ssd Dashboard which detects my drives and provides the temperature so I can monitor it there for now. Seems like to be fine, idling about 40.

There was a firmware update avaliable which I've done so I'll see if that's helped.

[Nate152]

Ok sounds good, hopefully the firmware update was the easy fix.

Also, make sure windows and the graphics driver is up to date.

You can check device manager for any missing drivers.

[3Shirts]

Well, we can scratch another possibility off the list. Just had the issue again after a reboot so the SSD firmware didn't fix it.

This time I just turned it off for a minute then it booted fine so I am starting to think it might be some kind of heat issue but the drive is never above 42c even when I ran some tests on it and everything else is nice and cool too (CPU, GPU, memory, MoBo etc).

This is hella frustrating.

[Nate152]

Maybe try bios 2703, that's the one I'm currently using.

ROG STRIX Z690-F GAMING WIFI | Gaming motherboards｜ROG - Republic of Gamers｜ROG Global (asus.com)

[3Shirts]

I'll try it, I'll try anything at this point, but if the BIOS I was on before and the latest one I'm on now both had the issue, one in between not having it seems unlikely.

[Sepp0rl]

So as I understand it, it's pure luck if your bios kills the Z690/z790? ..... 

[3Shirts]

Downgraded the BIOS to 2703 but, no surprise, it made no difference.

I'm going to try some tests with reboots at different SSD temps and see if it makes a difference.

[Robert42]

I know you have tried just about everything, but do you have another PSU you could try?  It could be an intermittent power problem.

[Nate152]

There is a program called OCCT you can run to test your components for stability, maybe it can help point to what's causing the freezing.

Download OCCT Personal, you don't have to run the tests for an hour, if there is a problem, it will usually show within 5 minutes.

OCBASE/OCCT : Free, all-in-one stability, stress test, benchmark and monitoring tool for your PC

Here is a screenshot of the tests you can run.

[3Shirts]

I ran some tests in OCCT and it was all clear. Ran the power test which loads everything up so there is high demand on the PSU and it was stable. I only ran it for 10 minutes but I might try a longer test later (when my electricity is cheaper, lol).

So there don't seem to be any component problems.