cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

ASUS Z690 Maximus Hero Motherboard Burnt with QCODE 53 and QLED Orange

maximumrog57
Level 7
So I purchased the ASUS ROG Z690 Maximus Hero and the GSkill DDR5 6000 CL36 Black combo from NewEgg and upgraded from the X99 MSI Gaming 9 ACK with following config:

  • Product Model: ASUS Maximus Z690 Hero Motherboard
  • BIOS/FW Version: 0803
  • CPU: I9-12900 K
  • Memory: GSkill Trident Z5 DDR5-6000MHz CL36-36-36-76 1.30V 32GB (2x16GB)
  • HDD: WD_BLACK™ SN750 NVMe™ SSD 1 TB
  • VGA: EVGA GeForce RTX 3070 XC3 GAMING, 08G-P5-3753-KR, 8GB GDDR6, iCX3 Cooling, ARGB LED, Metal Backplate
  • Power Supply: Corsair AX1200i
  • OS Version: Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit


I did upgrade the BIOS to 0803 and upgraded the ME and firmware listed on the support site along side whatever the armoury crate recommended on drivers, removed the old MSI drivers and enabled ReBar for the GPU, XMP II to get 6000 on the RAM and AI overclock on the CPU with UEFI Secure Boot and TPM 2 enabled.

Everything worked great for a day or two (no memtest done), I may have heard a clanky noise and assumed it was the fab clip from the air cooler being too close to the top case fan and chose to review it the next day after a full shutdown and restart.

Next day I get stuck on boot with QCODE 53 and QLED Orange (first time) and noticed a penny sized burn mark under the bottom right of the QLED, burnt to a crisp almost (top side, lot of soot) and melting the QCODE box a little. On documentation the error refers to incompatible RAM/wrong placement which doesn't make sense as it worked from initial boot, I'll admit I faced D6 errors because i had all peripherals hooked up on POST so with just the keyboard and mouse it worked and then with all items plugged in .

I have sent the mobo back to NE and waiting on a replacement. I concerned that this may happen again so wanted to check with everyone if they have any advice.

Attaching pictures for reference.

EDIT:
I also noticed that the specific RAM QVL is not listed on ASUS but GSkill , should I be concerned? Same for PSU...

Thank you!
AM
550 Views
132 REPLIES 132

Jimbo93 wrote:
I would either RMA the thing or run it after doing some kind of check for over heating components.

Apparently RMAing the board is not a solution as some are getting the same "backwards" part. If that is indeed the issue. Asus really needs to come clean on this one. Learn from NZXTs and others mistake.

BamaInArk wrote:
Apparently RMAing the board is not a solution as some are getting the same "backwards" part. If that is indeed the issue. Asus really needs to come clean on this one. Learn from NZXTs and others mistake.


come clean to what? An internet rumor? Get serious. Heres a simpler overheating check shut the machine down and discharge all residual power to ground, ground yourself and touch the surface of any chips of concern trying to avoid exposed circuits. Are they even hot?

Jimbo93 wrote:
come clean to what? An internet rumor? Get serious. Heres a simpler overheating check shut the machine down and discharge all residual power to ground, ground yourself and touch the surface of any chips of concern trying to avoid exposed circuits. Are they even hot?


It wasnt an internet 'rumour' there was decent evidence to support this theory. There's even been electrical engineers commenting on how the capacitors that come on reels or in cartridges can sometimes be backwards, meaning the pick and place machine places them incorrectly. There was also someone on the Reddit thread who checked the polarity of the capacitor on their board and found it to be the wrong way around. https://www.reddit.com/r/ASUS/comments/rjp8tt/asus_rog_z690_hero_motherboard_two_mobos_dead_in/hqaho...

91427
Sorry i couldnt resist. 😄

Anyway, its good Asus has finally issued a recall on this, so obviously there was a problem: https://www.tomshardware.com/uk/news/asus-owns-up-to-fiery-z690-motherboard-flaw-starts-recall-progr...

Nozyspy wrote:
It wasnt an internet 'rumour' there was decent evidence to support this theory. There's even been electrical engineers commenting on how the capacitors that come on reels or in cartridges can sometimes be backwards, meaning the pick and place machine places them incorrectly.


I see, but at the time I wrote that my perspective was different, I was not going to go and study every internet posting on the issue, I judged it based on reasons I already stated. It was an incorrect judgement.

Jimbo93 wrote:
I see, but at the time I wrote that my perspective was different, I was not going to go and study every internet posting on the issue, I judged it based on reasons I already stated. It was an incorrect judgement.


No worries! I had to do a lot of reading about it as i have an unused Hero board for my build and i didn't want it exploding, so i was looking through all the evidence that people were posting. 😄

According to what I just read on a site specializing in computer products, this problem is encountered a lot in North America, however Asus has to repatriate all the MB, because even in my country in Europe it is no longer for sale as of today, so the recall campaign has started well everywhere... at all their resellers.

Ribellu wrote:
According to what I just read on a site specializing in computer products, this problem is encountered a lot in North America, however Asus has to repatriate all the MB, because even in my country in Europe it is no longer for sale as of today, so the recall campaign has started well everywhere... at all their resellers.


I can confirm this.

My original board is at Asus, prior to this issue popping up they wanted to charge me. I've disputed that but no word yet. On 11/15 I went to Microcenter and bought another Hero to keep me running while I waited on the RMA thru Asus, figuring I could then return that to Amazon. Well today, 15 days past the return window I took the board back to Microcenter who accepted my return no problem, they were aware of the recall. I was able to pick up an Extreme, which of course is $500 more. Since I've intended all along to pass the Hero system with the 12900k to my kids when 13th gen comes out and get an Extreme or Extreme Glacial that didn't bother me much. At this point whenever Asus returns my board I'll tuck it away and wait to install this CPU back in it and install a 13th gen in this Extreme board.

The Extreme is really nice, not sure if it's 500 dollars more nice, but it's nice nonetheless.

Anyway Microcenter, at least, is accepting returns.

It will take them 4-5 weeks at minimum for them to bring it back in stock and another couple for me to get it (just buffering given timelines) - I wanted the Strix Z690-E to begin with but chose to go for a hero combo just to get the ram, at the end they are more or less the same given I am not going to push them beyond stock for my needs for sometime.

So I setup a ROG Strix Z690-E WIFI today and moving on.

Perhaps once the RAM market and kits get normalized I can rethink the board and kit, I am deeply appreciative for everyone here who participated and ASUS to follow these issues and give everyone a potential chance to avoid what others dealt with.
AM

jcd_raider
Level 7
ASUS Announcement Regarding Maximus Z690 Hero Issue

To our valued ASUS Customers,

ASUS is committed to producing the highest quality products and we take every incident report from our valued customers very seriously. We have recently received incident reports regarding the ROG Maximus Z690 Hero motherboard. In our ongoing investigation, we have preliminarily identified a potential reversed memory capacitor issue in the production process from one of the production lines that may cause debug error code 53, no post, or motherboard components damage. The issue potentially affects units manufactured in 2021 with the part number 90MB18E0-MVAAY0 and serial number starting with MA, MB, or MC.

You can identify your part number by referring to the product packaging: Please reference the attached image


As of December 28, 2021, there have been a few incidents reported in North America. Going forward, we are continuing our thorough inspection with our suppliers and customers to identify all possible affected ROG Maximus Z690 Hero motherboards in the market and will be working with relevant government agencies on a replacement program.

Thank you so much to everyone for your patience and support while we are working through the replacement program.

If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to contact ASUS customer service.


-------------------------------------------


As noted - Based on our ongoing review no other ASUS Z690 motherboards are affected including FORMULA.

The "internet rumour" 😄