Posting this partly as a data point for anyone else building on sTR5, and partly because I’d genuinely like a sanity check before I conclude I’m the unluckiest builder in the Lower Mainland.
Build: Threadripper PRO 9955WX, 8x DDR5 RDIMM, RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell, SilverStone XE360-TR5, Phanteks Enthoo Pro 2. Two PSUs available for testing.
Board 1: ASRock WRX90 WS EVO — stuck at Q-code A6
Configuration: CPU installed, 8 sticks populated, 2x M.2. Board would run all the way through what appeared to be full memory training (the usual long WRX90 first-boot wait), then flash A6 and hang there permanently.
Additional symptom that I haven’t seen in most A6 reports: the BMC heartbeat LED was showing a repeating 2-blink, pause, 2-blink pattern — not the steady heartbeat you’d expect from a healthy BMC. That pattern persisted across every attempt. Claude thinks the BIOS thinks it needs to enumerate something on the BMC but the BMC is dead and can’t respond. I doubt Claude has any clue as I can’t find anything about BMC blink codes (but maybe one of you can)
What I tried:
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Pulled both M.2 drives — identical behavior, memory training completes, A6, hang
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Multiple cold boots / CMOS clears
My read: the BMC never came up healthy, and the A6 hang was downstream of that. RMA’d as DOA.
Board 2: ASUS Pro WS WRX90E-SAGE SE — no signs of BMC life at all
This one I tested in the most minimal configuration possible: no CPU, no RAM, no cards — just ATX power connected, specifically to watch the BMC boot on standby power. On this board the BMC should come up on its own and eventually bring up the MGMT port link light.
Symptoms:
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Onboard power + reset button LEDs light up, so standby power is confirmed present
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Beyond that: nothing. No BMC activity, no MGMT port link light, no fan twitch, nothing — waited well past the several minutes BMC boot normally takes
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Reproduced with two different PSUs
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Reproduced out of the case, on cardboard (on the mobo box) to rule out a short/standoff issue
Additionally: every DIP switch on the board was in the ON position out of the box — including switches that per the manual should default to OFF. The box was factory sealed and the board showed no signs of being a return or open-box unit.
I reset all the switches to what the manual says the default ought to be, no change. No BMC LED, reconfirmed all switches. Zilch on the network port either… Looks like the port is electrically dead so far as I can tell.
Questions for the community
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Has anyone else received a factory-sealed WRX90E-SAGE SE with all DIP switches ON? I’m trying to figure out if this was a factory assembly error, a repack that made it back into sealed inventory, or something else.
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For those who’ve seen the ASRock A6 hang — did yours also show an abnormal BMC blink pattern (mine was 2-2 repeating)? Trying to establish whether A6-after-memory-training is consistently a BMC failure signature vs. something else.
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Is there any known way to recover a WRX90E-SAGE SE whose BMC won’t boot at all (BMC firmware reflash via header, disable-BMC jumper to at least get the board POSTing, etc.), or is a no-BMC-boot board just dead?
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Anyone tracking serial/batch ranges on failed units from either vendor? Happy to share mine if there’s an effort to correlate.
At this point I’ve had two boards from two different vendors fail in two completely different ways before I ever got to a POST screen on the second one. If anyone has a WRX90 board (any vendor) that’s been rock solid, I’d honestly like to hear which one and roughly when you bought it — trying to decide whether to RMA-swap for the same ASUS board or jump ship entirely.
Both bought from newegg.ca, I’m going to ping someone there and also see about opening a ticket with ASUS. Right now I’m kind of just blown away…
Edit:
All components except the PSU are new from retail and still in the 30 day return window, the PSU seems to be fine and was working on an older machine. I’ll be putting a tester on it shortly to reconfirm.