cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Asus Z690 APEX - Q-code 53 when restarting but never on cold boot.

fumap
Level 7
Hi,

So I'm having this weird issue I can't seem to find a solution for. I have a Z690 Apex with a 12900K (I removed any OC to crosscheck if it was that issue). I have a Corsair Vengeance kit DDR5 at 5600MHz (yes, not on QVL but it's the same memory chip and speeds as other QVL modules).

My system works perfectly fine except when I want to restart. On cold boots and shutdowns everything works fine. On every restart the board get stuck to Q-code 53. Only solution is to reset with the power button and do another cold boot from scratch. Anyone ever had the same issue? Any solution?

I'm running latest BIOS 1101 but any previous one had the same issue. I ran MemTest86 and memory is absolutely stable. Tried to search for a similar issue but when I searc for Q-code 53 I only find tons of threads about the Hero board...

Thanks for any input!
1,075 Views
43 REPLIES 43

STARRAIN@ROG wrote:
Hi fumap,
Thank you for your reply.
I'll forward it to our tech team.


Thanks, I'll look out for the result!

STARRAIN_ROG
Customer Service Agent
Hi fumap,
I'm afraid our tech team have tested the same model of ram but cannot reproduce the issue you mentioned.
Please refer to the following test video.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1I0OI_6f65-3VFtz-60yEe7W6fNeB8GxJ
If you just install one stick of ram, does it also occur? Please try the each ram stick.
If you have tried each ram stick one by one, but the issue still occurs, please send the motherboard to our RMA for further examination.
Thank you.

Feklar
Level 8
fumap wrote:
Hi,

So I'm having this weird issue I can't seem to find a solution for. I have a Z690 Apex with a 12900K (I removed any OC to crosscheck if it was that issue). I have a Corsair Vengeance kit DDR5 at 5600MHz (yes, not on QVL but it's the same memory chip and speeds as other QVL modules).

My system works perfectly fine except when I want to restart. On cold boots and shutdowns everything works fine. On every restart the board get stuck to Q-code 53. Only solution is to reset with the power button and do another cold boot from scratch. Anyone ever had the same issue? Any solution?

I'm running latest BIOS 1101 but any previous one had the same issue. I ran MemTest86 and memory is absolutely stable. Tried to search for a similar issue but when I searc for Q-code 53 I only find tons of threads about the Hero board...

Thanks for any input!


I have the same issue but mine just started. Memtest showed no errors. Baffling.

i9 12900k + Asus Maximus Z690 Apex + EVGA RTX 3090 Ti FTW3 ULTRA
G.SKILL Trident Z5 RGB Series 32GB (2 x 16GB) DDR5 6000l XMP 3.0 Desktop Memory Model F5-6000U4040E16GX2-TZ5RK+ Samsung 870 Pro SSD, EVO 1TB, EVO 2TB
EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 T2 Power Supply + Fractal Meshify 2 XL case
Ek Velocity 2 CPU block, Ek GPU block
Koolance Fittings and QDC's + Mo-Ra 3 Pro 4x180 Radiator
LG 38GL950G Monitor +
Windows 10 Pro

Feklar wrote:
I have the same issue but mine just started. Memtest showed no errors. Baffling.


So, I reseated the DDR5 sticks multiple times and used the XMP profile with ASUS optimized timings. Now the reboots work probably 50% of the times. I will play with some of the DDR voltages and see if this improves.

Still the board works perfectly, it does not require RMA. I'll also probably wait for future BIOS and see if this helps once DDR5 becomes more mainstream.

My 2 cents, seems to be some very small stability issue on reboots. I'm not that expert in motherboards design, so I'm not sure what changes for the DRAM between a cold boot and a restart but still MemTest shows perfect stability. I can live with it, nice to see I'm not alone...

So, I finally found what was wrong with my DDR5/Apex board (hope so! Never say never...). Writing here as it might help anyone with similar issues.

As I said on the previous post, it has to do with stability of the memory in specific conditions. Issue is that DDR5 has the memory PMIC on the sticks while the memory controller is still on the CPU. This moved some of the voltages around and XMP profiles do not consider every voltage that needs to be adjusted, probably becuase DDR5 is still new.

I would also say that probably future BIOS might solve the issue by adjusting the AUTO voltages for the memory controller, as that was my main issue. I know that XMP is considered overclocking but it's weird that an Apex board have low voltages in auto mode hopefully ASUS can deliver more conservative BIOS voltages to make things easier to run stable.

Two points:

1) I used to run OpenRGB but it gave me tons of issues by making impossible to read my SPD EEPROM data in any tool. I thought that my RAM was broken because HWInfo couldn't read any temperature out of the DDR5 and CPU-Z could not find any data about my memory even if PC was running. Took me few weeks to realize, I thought my RAM was dead or faulty (my RAM has no RGB...). Uninstalled and now everything works fine, everything can be read from the SPD chips. This was the first step to solution.

2) Now into what was really happening. The culprit was the memory controller MC voltage being too low for 5600Mhz when in AUTO. So If you select an XMP 3.0 profile you will get speed, timings, VDD and VDDQ. You need to adjust two more voltages even at 4800MHz, it was giving me errors even at the JDEC base speed so here my comment about the need for better BIOS auto voltages. You need to adjust the SA voltage and the Memory Controller voltage. I already played with the SA voltage but never touched the MC as I did not know about it for DDR5. So I now run VDD and VDDQ at 1.35V, SA at 1.25V and MC at 1.3V (it was around 1.2V stock in auto). This article opened my eyes: https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?126369-Maximus-Z690-and-Alder-Lake-Modern-CPU%92s-require-....

Hopefully this helps anyone else having weird issues with DDR5 at the moment. To recap, I'm running an Apex board with BIOS 1101 and 32GB of DDR5 Corsair Vengeance 5600Mhz, Samsung chips.

Thank you Fumap!!! Â*I’ve been fighting this all day. I thought I would try getting aware from armory crate to control RGB by using openrgb. Unfortunately adding openrgb coincided with making some adjustments to RAM timings and voltages, so I didn’t make the correlation to software. I was operating under the assumption it MUST be the RAM and bios settings. The other symptom I was seeing along with q-code 53 on restarts was any benchmark run in 3DMark saying it was ineligible for hall of fame because system scan was disabled, even though it was turned on.

Â*Removed openRGB and both issues immediately cleared up. The PC now restarts normally and futuremark system scan can now access SPD properly and report.

aarruda
Level 7
fumap wrote:
Hi,

So I'm having this weird issue I can't seem to find a solution for. I have a Z690 Apex with a 12900K (I removed any OC to crosscheck if it was that issue). I have a Corsair Vengeance kit DDR5 at 5600MHz (yes, not on QVL but it's the same memory chip and speeds as other QVL modules).

My system works perfectly fine except when I want to restart. On cold boots and shutdowns everything works fine. On every restart the board get stuck to Q-code 53. Only solution is to reset with the power button and do another cold boot from scratch. Anyone ever had the same issue? Any solution?

I'm running latest BIOS 1101 but any previous one had the same issue. I ran MemTest86 and memory is absolutely stable. Tried to search for a similar issue but when I searc for Q-code 53 I only find tons of threads about the Hero board...

Thanks for any input!


Hi, i am with the same problem... Everything was working fine and it started a couple of days ago, after I installed Aura Wallpaper... With Hwinfo64 open I know exactly when the problem will occur after restarting.. Occurs when monitoring RAM temperatures simply go gray (frozen) . After restarting it is 100% sure that Q-Code 53 will occur.
My system is Asus Apex Z690, Core I9 12900Ks and the RAM is 6400J3239G16GX2-TZ5RK (DDR5, 6400MHZ CL32 G-Skill) Bios Version 1601

STARRAIN_ROG
Customer Service Agent
Hi aarruda,
Does it also occur on bios 1601 with bios all default settings(without XMP)?
Have you tried the tips from fumap at #15?
Thank you

I formatted Windows and the problem continued, I thought it might be something I installed but no. I didn't try without XMP (it's works only in 4800Mhz without XMP) and I don't even want to try because I purchased this card because it was approved by the manufacturer G-Skill for a frequency of 6400 Mhz. I have the best Core i9 processor and it is not possible that I am facing this problem!
I didn't use the settings mentioned by the other user because I don't even know where to change!
If this is a problem with the motherboard's automatic voltage, why didn't they fix it in the last BIOS update? Detail that I was not facing this problem until recently!

STARRAIN@ROG wrote:
Hi aarruda,
Does it also occur on bios 1601 with bios all default settings(without XMP)?
Have you tried the tips from fumap at #15?
Thank you


Update: I downgraded the Bios to version 1505 and it didn't work.
I changed the voltage of the Memory Controller from Auto (1.243V) to 1.3V and it didn't work...
I do not know what else to do