Last weekend, I woke my trusty 3-year old M5E from hibernation state after about an hour away from the PC, the screen came on to Windows desktop, but my KB and mouse weren't working on wakeup, so I did a manual power off (holding power button for 4 seconds).

When I tried to power on the system a minute later, it didn't finish POST, showing Q-Code 20.

Tried all the DRAM solutions (different slots, one stick, no stick, etc), no help.

Unplugged everything but the 24 pin and 8 pin PSU connectors.

Tested the RAM in another system, it worked fine.

Cleared CMOS. No help.

Pulled battery, removed power, and waited overnight. No help.

Tried BIOS flashback, but it never seemed to work (when holding down the ROG connect button for 3 seconds, the BIOS light on the board would just go out). Tried SIX, count them SIX different USB sticks, formatted to FAT32, and with M5E.CAP as the only file. Tried three different computers when formatting and copying the BIOS file.

Tore the system down (watercooled SLI setup, not fun), removed the M5E from the case, took out the CPU, checked the 1155 pins with a bright light and a magnifying glass, couldn't see any bent pins.

Tested CPU in another board, it worked fine.

Tested PSU with another board, it worked fine.

Tried another known good processor (2600K) and this time I got a Q-Code 22. Switching back to the 3770K, code 20, switching back to the 2600K again, code 22.

Tried to POST with nothing installed (no CPU, no RAM, no GPU), got the expected code 00, replaced the CPU, right back to code 20. And as I mentioned, I get this code with or without RAM installed.

I love this board, please tell me it's not dead.

System specs:

M5E, REV 1.01, BIOS 1903
i7 3770K
Corsair AX860i PSU
GTX 780ti in SLI
2x8GB Corsair Vengeance Pro 2133 (which has worked in this board with no issues since 2013, and still works in other boards).
XSPC Raystorm water block (and Intel stock HSF for testing)
Samsung 840 EVO 512Gb and 1Tb SSD drives
Windows 10 x64 Pro