My partner is building a new computer and I've been helping her out with it, I've built a few systems in the past, the last significant one being my z390 Aorus master system that I built about three years ago.

I recommended that she purchased the DDR5 version of the board despite the scarcity of it. - at the time of ordering we were only able to obtain a single stick of 16 gigabyte crucial memory, we figured this was enough to get the system booting and we'd buy more later.

When it came time to get the system to post, it boot looped on error code 54 - Memory initialization error occurs.

At first, I thought I just needed to reseat the ram, when that didn't work, I moved the chip over to socket DDR5_B1, and voilà, the system now posts. - But I wanna stick a 64-gig ram kit in this unit, so I need all the channels working.

The first thing I did afterwards was reseat the CPU but that made no difference, I trusted my original insertion method.

After some Googling, I figured it was time to start the RMA process, I logged a ticket to the vendor figuring if there was something obvious that I'd overlooked they'd pointed out to me, but they accepted it and requested me to send the board back to them, tonight as I started disassembling the system (yes I did not test the motherboard prior to installing it, my partner started building the computer and I took over about halfway through), she came running to tell me to refer to page 16 of the motherboard manual, "When installing a single memory module, we recommend that you install it in the DDR5_A2/DDR4_A2 socket." - I then move the single chip of DDR5 memory over to ram socket DDR5_A2, and yes, the system posted.

In my defense most of the systems I work with don't come with a motherboard manual so I rarely refer to them outside of trying to troubleshoot an issue, I had a similar experience when I built my z390 Aorus master system and couldn't get the SATA drive to work, because I'd populated an m.2 slot.

So now there's a debate about whether the socket is defective because the motherboard manual doesn't state that it will prevent the motherboard from booting it just says that it's 'not recommended'.

We've now ordered more ram, so I'm waiting for a dual channel kit to arrive so that we can properly test the ram socket.

We ran a test by changing a setting in the BIOS when the system was booting to display a warning message when the optimal ram configuration is not correct, the hope was that this would display a warning on the screen if we put the chip back into DDR5_A1, but when I moved the chip back into this socket, I just got the same error code 54 again.

So at this stage we don't know if the socket is defective until we get another ram chip. - I figured I would make this post as it may help someone who is experiencing the same issue as us.

After struggling a bit setting up my z690 Aorus Pro DDR5 / 12700K / Kingston 5200 DDR5, I thought I'd post some of the roadblocks / solutions I hit here in case other people have similar difficulties:

• Legacy mode in Bios: If you're planning on starting in CSM (Compatibility Support Mode) in order to boot from a previous Windows 10 non UEFI / Windows 7 SSD / HDD, you can't use the CPU's onboard HDMI output, but need to use a graphics card display output instead. If you don't, CSM will just return to 'disabled' each time you reboot.

• RAM Slots: Not sure what the variations are for different RAM modules, but as far as this brand of 5200 RAM goes, if you're using one stick, it needs to go in channel A2 (second from left). If two, you need to put them in A2 and B2 (second and fourth sockets from left). From what I've read, support for more than two modules is non-existent / limited at this point. In my experience, any configuration other than this wouldn't even post.

• SATA; M.2 Ports: This is mentioned in the manual, but not made very clear.. If you're using an M.2 SSD in the second port down from the top (M2C_SB) or a PCI M.2 SSD, SATA ports 2 and 3 (the two bottommost ports) will be disabled, and drives plugged into them will not be recognised in the BIOS. The four remaining SATA ports (4,5,6,7) should still be functional.

• M.2 Port compatibility: The second M.2 port from the top (M2C_SB) will support all M.2 drives. The other three will only support X2 or x4 SSD's.

• BIOS update: You'll need to update to the latest BIOS (currently F7a) for anything to work properly.

Hope this helps :-).