Brand new PC builder here, so pardon my noob please. Any help is greatly appreciated, even if your opinion is to contact manufacturers or defective part try RMA.

Here's my build:

• CPU: AMD - Ryzen 5 1400 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor
• MoBo: ASRock - AB350M Pro4 Micro ATX AM4 Motherboard
• RAM: Corsair - Vengeance LPX 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-3000 Memory
• SSD: Samsung - 960 EVO 500GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive
• GPU: Gigabyte - GeForce GTX 1060 6GB 6GB WINDFORCE OC 6G Video Card
• Case: Fractal Design - Focus G Mini (Black) MicroATX Mini Tower Case
• Power: Corsair - TXM Gold 550W 80+ Gold Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply
• OS to be installed: Windows 10 Home 64bit

MoBo UEFI version is AB350M Pro4 P4.50

Here's my issue: I can boot into UEFI, but my SSD does not appear under the M2_1 spot in the storage configuration. It also does not appear as a drive in the Windows installer. I have tried a USB windows installer made with the Windows Media Creation tool. I have also tried with the Windows install DVD and a second USB stick made with Rufus. An additional wrinkle is that I don't have an extra computer/mobo/ssd handy to rule out defective parts easily.

Here's what I have tried:

I changed the CSM setting in the UEFI to both off completely as well as the sub-setting "Launch Storage OpROM Policy" to UEFI only. Both of these settings changes did not help.

I have tried looking for Drivers through the Windows installer with the Asrock Driver DVD that came with the MoBo. Couldn't find any drivers that were compatible w/ hardware.

I have tried running the Samsung SSD firmware update tool via USB stick. The Samsung SSD update tool did not seem to recognize that the SSD was there either. It just searched for a second then quit.

I tried reseating the SSD in the MoBo several times. I even tried putting the SSD in the M2_2 slot (even though I thought it wouldn't work and that slot was SATA3)

Next steps:

My guess here is that I find someone who does have a motherboard that I can test the SSD on? I'm pretty desperate and really not sure how to proceed...

Again any help or recommendation is appreciated. Thank you for even reading through my post :) Thanks!