Question Stuck on Asus Q-code AE (sometimes) ?

[tubeitup]

Hi all,

I would really appreciate some insight on this one.

I've recently upgraded my PC. Installed the EK water block on a 3090. The motherboard is Asus Maximus XI.

I've connected 4 monitors to the machine (3xDP 1xHDMI)

Occasionally when I start the PC I get no signal. My monitors acknowledge the power by turning on but then no progress. And it gets stuck on Q-Code AE. And it doesn't show the BIOS screen or anything.

The only relevant information to booting is that I have to select legacy mode instead of UEFI.

I know AE is a meaningless code to truly diagnose an issue by itself. as it just indicated booting OS. So if it gets stuck on that it might mean it can't find an OS. But that's not the issue because a restart fixes the problem. And I can shut it down and restart it 10 times over, no issue. But sometimes it might happen again.

I've done all kinds of stress tests on the card. Left games running for 24hours etc. All tests pass with flying colors.

Can this be GPU related?

Any thoughts would be really appreciated.

Many thanks.

 

[Ralston18]

Update your post to include full system hardware specs and OS information.

Will the system immediately and always boot into Safe Mode?

First: go into BIOS and configure the POST process to be as verbose as possible.

Second, once successfully booted, look in Reliability History. There may be some entries that correspond with the times that the boots failed.

(You can also look in Event Viewer. Not as user friendly as Reliability History but something may have been captured there.)

Third: power down, unplug, open the case. If necessary clean out dust and debris. Then double check that all connections, cards, RAM, and jumpers are fully and firmly in place. Something could be a bit loose and need some warming up to expand and make full, working contact.

 

[tubeitup]

Update your post to include full system hardware specs and OS information.

Will the system immediately and always boot into Safe Mode?

First: go into BIOS and configure the POST process to be as verbose as possible.

Second, once successfully booted, look in Reliability History. There may be some entries that correspond with the times that the boots failed.

(You can also look in Event Viewer. Not as user friendly as Reliability History but something may have been captured there.)

Third: power down, unplug, open the case. If necessary clean out dust and debris. Then double check that all connections, cards, RAM, and jumpers are fully and firmly in place. Something could be a bit loose and need some warming up to expand and make full, working contact.

Thank you for your response. Honestly, I'm not sure what it was. But last thing I changed was to remove a DP splitter and change the cable as well. It's been 5 days without incident. I'm feeling hopeful.

I did go through event viewer, nothing useful there unfortunately since it wouldn't even get to windows so it wouldn't log anything.