General Discussions

[HelenaB22]

On a new PC build, I received my Gigabyte B650 Aorus Pro AX (v1.0) with F6 BIOS on it.  Before loading Windows 11, I updated to the latest BIOS at the time, F21a.  The install of Windows 11 went fine on my new Crucial T700 M.2 and the PC ran fine, apart from a niggling issue that the motherboard refused to see two WD Red HDD's plugged into SATA 0 and 1 ports.  This issue is currently being investigated by Gigabyte Tech Supp, so I won't go into detail about that here, apart from saying that I have the HDD's connected using Molex power cables, so it's not the old 3.3v sleep issue with them.

The issue that I have (as an attempt to try to fix the HD issue) is that when I try to flash the BIOS with the latest release for my board, F21, the update goes through the file integrity check OK, then initiates an automatic reboot, but the PC doesn't boot back up, just alternately flashes the CPU (short flash) and DRAM (long flash) LED's on the motherboard.  The only way of clearing this state is to power off the PSU and back on again, as using the power button and reset button just return the PC to the same state of flashing LED's.

Am I missing something or just going mad?  Any help would be greatly appreciated, as I cannot find any solutions online and am unable to find any documentation to decode the flashing LED's.  Just to confirm, I am still able to boot up into Windows OK, so it's just updating the BIOS that's the issue I need assistance with.

Build :-

Ryzen 9 7900

Gigabyte B650 Aorus Pro AX (v1.0)

64GB Corsair DDR5 (2x CMK64GX5M2B5600Z40)

Gigabyte Radeon RX7800 XT

Windows 11 23H2

Holding out hope,

Helena.

[elstaci]

When the PC boots up BIOS automatically checks the hardware connected to the Motherboard before allowing to boot into Windows.

BIOS first checks the CPU in which the Motherboard's CPU Trouble LED will light up then turn off. Next it checks the RAM and the Motherboard's RAM Trouble LED will light up then turn off and the the GPU Trouble LED will light up if you have a GPU Card installed.

Each time the Trouble LED lights on and then turns off means that BIOS checked that particular Hardware and it passed it test.

If you had bad RAM or incompatible RAM installed, as an example only,  than the RAM Trouble LED will light up and stay lit and the boot process will stop at that point until your fix the RAM issue.

Now if you are unable to update the BIOS on your motherboard that would seem to indicate a defective BIOS chip on the Motherboard.

Try installing the F21 BIOS with a USB Flash drive using the rear Q-FLASH Plus Button of the Motherboard and connecting it to the Q-FLASH USB Port with the PC just turned on but not booting up. You can leave the CPU and RAM installed just don't press the On button on the PC case to start the boot process. Your PC case fans and most of the Motherboard and Hardware LED would be turned off but still will have power to the Motherboard. You might see the GPU power LED lit. Now you can use Q-FLASH PLUS button in the rear of the Motherboard.

Make sure you have the Flash Drive correctly formatted and BIOS version installed before using. If it doesn't work than you probably have a defective Motherboard.

EDIT: went to Gigabyte Support and checked your Motherboard's QVL List for RAM and use the filter for Corsair 5600 speed/32GB RAM Sticks/ Set of 2 for 64GB of Total RAM: https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/B650-AORUS-PRO-AX-rev-1x/support#support-memsup

All the RAM that has a "Z" at the end of the Part Number is compatible with EXPO but not XMP.  All that have a "C" at the end of the Part number is compatible with XMP but not EXPO.

In the screenshot is all the Corsair 2 x 32GB 5600 speed that Gigabyte has tested. Your RAM probably is compatible since the only difference is your RAM part number ends in "Z40" while the ones on the QVL List ends with "Z36" Possibly yours is a newer version of the one listed on the QVL List and you mentioned that your PC boots up into Windows normally.

You might want to turn off temporarily EXPO in BIOS and see if it boots up without stalling at the RAM Trouble LED light.

Also many times incompatible RAM will not boot up with 2 or more sticks of RAM installed. So just use one RAM Stick on A2 DIMM Slot and see if it boots normally then with 2 sticks installed.

[HelenaB22]

Thank you so much elstaci for going to so much trouble, as I really appreciate it.

Since posting this issue, the HUB 3 chip on my MB decided to physically burn out and take my PSU with it, so until today I've been without a working system.  MB & PSU replaced under warranty and I'm back in action today after a rebuild.

The new replacement MB came flashed with F7 BIOS, so I downloaded the latest version from the Gigabyte site (F22b) and tried everything to get it to update, but was still faced with the same issue of the CPU & DRAM LED's flashing.  Following more internet searches, I found the solution to be applicable to all Gigabyte B650 AM5 boards, in that the downloaded BIOS files from Gigabyte all end in the BIOS version as the file suffix, e.g. "B650AORUSPROAX.F22b".  The fix is to rename the file as GIGABYTE.bin and use the Q-Flash function on the rear board panel.  I did this and it worked, as I'm now running BIOS version F22b.

I still have the issue that if the system is restarted without power-cycling the PSU, the system fails to POST, displaying the cycling MB LED's as described originally.  A small issue that is not going to trouble me, so I'll just wait for Gigabyte to hopefully resolve this in the future.

[elstaci]

Thanks for the update.

I would open a AMD SUPPORT - WARRANTY Ticket just to see if they feel it might be a CPU issue from here: https://www.amd.com/en/forms/contact-us/support.html

[Brown789]

Thank you for sharing this..