NVME M.2 on Z170 Extreme 4 not working?

Murdock9 wrote: And another interesting update: I got my hands on a brand new Z270 Extreme 4 Board (note the z270, not z170) and rebuild everything. The 960 evo shows in the UEFI under storage (with the 1070 plugged in), but not in the system browser. I boot up Windows 10 and there is no Evo there. I reboot the PC, the Evo is gone from UEFI as well... I give up

Has the 960 EVO has been initialized and formatted in Windows 10 on another PC, or the Z270 PC? If it has not been initialized and formatted yet, it will not appear in Windows until is has been formatted.

If you open Windows Disk Management, are you prompted to initialize the 960 EVO? That should happen if it has not been formatted yet. From there is must be formatted, creating a new volume.

If you open Disk Management, you don't see the 960 EVO at all?

Or if you run a Windows Command Prompt (Admin), and run the diskpart command, and enter list disk, if the 960 EVO is formatted it should appear with a capacity of 465GB.

It if it listed, note the Disk #, and enter select disk n  where n is the numbers shown in the list for the 960 EVO.

If that works then enter detail disk, which will show the drive's name and other information.

I'm stuck about what the problem is. We have not had other reports of either of the boards you are using, having a problem with NVMe SSDs.

I did a full UEFI reset and tried it again, but still no luck. I also tried plugging the 1070 into PCIE port 4, but that didn't help either.

I appreciate all the effort and your honest words about a possible fix. Nonetheless, still a really annoying situation seeing as it's been keeping me busy for months now.

Not sure where I go from here, I'll probably have to go for another board (again) and/or check another GPU.


Would contacting the Asrock support make any sense in your opinion?

J Z wrote: Okay, Windows10. I have no problems with Samsung 960 Evo and 960 Pro

Hi JZ,

seeing as you seem to have a similar set up, did you have any issues when using a certain GPU?

Thanks.

Murdock9 wrote: Well, I'm back (again)... with some interesting news! I returned the last PM961 that I had when I wrote my last post and ordered a Samsung 960 EVO, thinking that there is a general compatibility issue with this board. The 960 EVO only just arrived last week and I built it in straight away- and it doesn't work either. Tried BIOS 7.20 and 3.20, the UEFI system browser did not show it. So basically I had three different Z170 Extreme 4 Board, three Samsung PM961 SSDs and now a 960 EVO and none of them worked together. For some strange reasons I didn't throw everything out the window but instead did some digging: I found several users who use Samsung 960 EVOs and Pros on their Z170 Extreme boards successfully so I started back at zero. I unplugged everything (SD card reader, Creative Soundblaster Z, Gainward Phoeinx  GTX 1070, two other SATA SSDs) and only left the 960 Evo drive on the board. And... it worked, the 960 Evo was found in the UEFI System browser straight away. I started putting everything back together and found out that as soon as the GTX 1070 is back on the board, the drive disappears from the UEFI system browser again. Well... I think this is it, I'm pretty sure I found the root cause- but I don't know what to do. Any ideas where I can go from here? Any specific UEFI settings that I could try?

That is just the strangest situation I've heard of with M.2 NVMe SSDs. I have two 960 EVOs now, and I've used them in RAID 0 and just one as the OS drive in my ASRock Z270 board, never any problem with them being recognized. Except when in RAID 0, I see the 960 EVO in Storage Configuration, NVMe Configuration, and System Browser, before and after the Windows 10 installation. That is normal when using NVMe SSDs in RAID.

That your 960 EVO is shown in the UEFI after removing the video card is really crazy. I use video cards (not a 1070) in all my PCs with NVMe SSDs, and never had a problem with the SSDs not being recognized.

There aren't any specific compatibility situations with any Samsung NVMe SSDs and mother boards. At the OCN, SSD forum, there is a thread specifically about the SM961. They are being used with all different kinds of mother boards and other hardware, and recognition problems are very rare. Sure, older boards without M.2 slots won't show them in most UEFI/BIOS, but that is when using M.2 to PCIe slot adapater cards.

As you can see above, J Z has a 960 EVO in his Z270 Extreme4 board. We are not getting any other posts in this forum about problems with NVMe SSDs and your board.

Forgot if I asked you about this, have you ever cleared the UEFI/BIOS with the board's jumper when you make changes to your hardware, as you described? That is very important to do. I know you've changed UEFI/BIOS versions, which is the equivalent of a UEFI/BIOS clear, but I always do a clear every time I change even the location of some hardware in a PC.

The only thing I can think of is the size of the MMIO (Memory Mapped IO) being used by the 1070. That is related to what is called TOLUD (Top Of Lower Usable DRAM). That is memory reserved for hardware, which has a limited size. Some board's UEFIs have an option to adjust TOLUD, and of course yours does not seem to have that option, in the Chipset Configuration screen. I can only check the manual for that option in the UEFI, a later UEFI update might have added it. It would be called Top Of Lower Usable DRAM. Setting it to Dynamic would be setting to use.

If that is the issue, which I am not sure of, there is not enough memory allocated for the 1070 and the NVMe SSDs.

Do you have another video card to test with, to see if it makes a difference?

Are you changing any options in the UEFI that might be causing this situation? I always see my NVMe SSDs after a UEFI clear, and when I adjust storage related options.

Thanks for the replies guys.

I just checked, I don't have an "advanced NVME" section in my UEFI.

parsec wrote: Your board's UEFI, in Storage Configuration, has the M2_1/SATA3_0_1, SATA_EXP0 Switch option. Try setting that to Force_M2.

Already tried that before. When I set it to Force_M2, the boot time increases by almost 2 minutes but it doesn't change anything.

I was able to see and format the drive in Windows (10) with Bios 3.4 and 2.8 until I rebooted, then it was gone. With Bios 7.00 and 3.2, I could only see it in the system browser like once or twice- never in Windows.