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Z170 Extreme4, m.2, etc. troubles |
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Mushu 
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Joined: 08 Feb 2016 Status: Offline Points: 11 |
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 Topic: Z170 Extreme4, m.2, etc. troublesPosted: 09 Feb 2016 at 1:25am |
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The current bioses for the z170 extreme4 leave a lot to hope for. Basic info first:
Bios 2.40 (stable but slow)
Makes no difference even if pcie link state power management is turned off. Disabling sata controller makes no difference. Forcing pcie links to pcie 3.0 makes no difference since there is no option to set it for the m.2 channel.
BIOS 2.70,2.80 and 2.90 (unusable/unstable)
Additional info All disks have GPT partition scheme, physically removing raid disks does not improve the situation (m.2 nvme connected only). Tried with newest drivers for all the HW and with windows defaults; makes no difference. I would appreciate it if Asrock tech support would try out m.2 nvme disks with the motherboard and iron out the bugs. (Ultra M.2 32 Gb/s (PCIe Gen3) -a feature advertized quite noticeably by the Asrock product page is atm a complete lackluster) -M |
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netjrb
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Posted: 09 Feb 2016 at 6:05am |
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Hi,
Can confirm some of what you are seeing. In the middle of building a new system (see below).
Used 2.50 and 2.60 BIOS. After Windows 10 install I get random hangs (screen freezes). Seems to get progressively worse, until I can't even boot the system. Running Aida Stress Test from a different drive, I can see the M.2 drive drop in and out of the temp sensor list. Finally gave up today and did an RMA on the Motherboard and SSD to Newegg. Didn't want to wait for ASRock to get back from vacation and miss my return window. Sounds like I'll be right back in same boat when the replacements arrive though. Thanks for your post, nice to know someone else is seeing these problems. Hopefully somebody with a similiar setup can respond with a way to get things stable. Rig: Z170 Extreme 7 i7 6700K samsung 950 pro m.2 (boot drive) |
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parsec
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Joined: 04 May 2015 Location: USA Status: Offline Points: 4996 |
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Posted: 09 Feb 2016 at 9:42am |
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First, how do you know your NVMe SM951 is running at PCIe 2.0 x4? What is telling you that? If that is the Samsung Magician software, then it is wrong. Unless you are using a PCIe slot adapter card for your SM951, all Z170 boards do NOT use the PCIe 3.0 lanes from the CPU for the Ultra M.2 port. The Z170 chipset has PCIe 3.0 lanes (for the first time from Intel) that are used for the M.2 interfaces, as well as the SATA interfaces. Intel calls this "DMI3", but the interface is essentially PCIe 3.0 bandwidth. Each Ultra M.2 port (PCIe 3.0 x4) in an ASRock Z170 board shares resources with two SATA III ports. You may use either one Ultra M.2 (I'll call it U-M.2) port, or two SATA III ports. The U-M.2 port has precedence. Setting the actual PCIe 3.0 lanes in the CPU to Gen3 does not affect the Z170 chipset. Some of your comments about the CSM option don't make sense to me. With CSM set to Disabled, the three CSM options we see when CSM is Enabled are all set to UEFI Only, or should be. ASRock has has the CSM option work this way since my Z77 Extreme4 board's UEFI. In theory there could be a bug in any board's UEFI, but I've never seen it with any of my ASRock boards. Your second comment about needing to set Launch Storage OpROM Policy to UEFI Only when CSM is Enabled, for your NMVe SM951 to be recognized by the Windows installer is correct. That is normal and to be expected when using a PCIe SSD, particularly with an NVMe PCIe SSD. That causes the Windows EFI Boot Loader to be used, as well as the Intel EFI Option ROM to be used. Both are essential for PCIe SSDs. Your SSD is not a drive using the SATA protocol, NVMe is completely different, does not use SATA, and cannot be expected to work as SATA SSDs do. The Fast Boot option has three setting, Disabled, Fast, and Ultra Fast. Only Ultra Fast requires CSM to be set to Disabled. Your board's UEFI may have some bugs in it as you described, like the freezing, I've seen that myself. I can't comment on all your claims, since I don't have enough information about your configuration. CSM cannot be Disabled if you installed Windows with CSM Enabled and the other options left on Legacy. That is just a reality. The speed of your NVMe SM951 is at the mercy of the Windows 10 NVMe driver, unless you can force install the Samsung NVMe driver supplied for the 950 Pro. The Win 10 NVMe driver is known to have performance problems with the NVMe SM951, mainly with write performance, sorry to say. I am currently using two NVMe PCIe SSDs with my Z170 Extreme7+ board, and an AHCI SM951. At various times I've had Win 10 installed on the SM951, and currently on a 950 Pro. I also have an Intel 750 SSD (NVMe), which is the Win 10 drive on my X99 board. So while it is possible your board's UEFI has some bugs, ASRock has tested the Z170 boards with NVMe SSDs. I don't have an NVMe SM951, but I doubt it is any different than other NVMe drives when it comes to installing Win 10, except for the Win 10 NVMe driver performance issue. The only advice I can give you about the freezing UEFI is if you are setting the BCLK to anything but AUTO, that seems to cause the freezing, at least with some versions of my Z170 board. |
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Mushu
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Posted: 09 Feb 2016 at 6:34pm |
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Hi,
@netjrb, Thanks for posting and confirming that you have similar problems. @parsec, Thank you for taking the time to help out. I'll try to answer your questions to my best ability.
I use Aida64 for that information, additionally CrystalMark and ASS SSD benchmark both show transfer speeds that support the fact that only pcie 2.0 x4 is used, i.e. R: ~750M W:~750M.
Yes, I have connected the "normal" SSD drives to ports that are not shared with the M.2.
Ok, easiest way to reproduce it on my board is to set the "Video OpROM Policy" to legacy only and then disabling CSM. Then it can be observed that during boot up the visual appearance of the load screens (not windows but Asus's) differs from the uefi only setting being active under CSM before disabling the CSM. Thus, I would reason the setting does not default to uefi only when CSM is disabled.
Agreed, I too have observed and read about the poor performance of Windows default driver, thus I use the Samsung NVMe driver.
Yes, I figured that those are not changeable after install. I am installing with CSM enabled and all policies set to Uefi Only (this works ok in 2.40 but other bioses are unstable).
Thanks for the tip, I use (and have used) AUTO for it. My Uefi setup steps are below: (for 2.40 bios only, newer ones are unstable)
@anyone who is experiencing similar issues feel free to post them here and if you have workarounds please share. -M
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netjrb
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Posted: 10 Feb 2016 at 9:18am |
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Here's more detail on my setup and what I've tried.
System: Z170 Extreme7 (BIOS 2.60) intel i7 6700k EVGA GTX970 4 * 8gb RAM, Crucial Elite 1 * Samsung 950 Pro 256gb(boot), M2_1 slot 2 * WD Red 3tb(Raid1 storage), SATA3_4 & SATA3_5 slots 1 * Samsung 850 Pro 512gb(game), SATA3_A1 slot Windows 10 pro No overclocking My Uefi setup steps: Load Default settings set sata mode to RAID set CSM OPROM policies to Uefi Only, leave CSM enabled (also tried CSM disabled) I'm trying to boot off of a single 950 pro with RAID mode enabled. Windows 10 installation always goes perfectly, but as I said in my previous post it goes downhill from there. I get random hangs in Windows 10 and after each reboot they happen quicker until I hang during boot. I've tried all the following: -CSM enabled with UEFI only -CSM disabled -Loading the Samsung Driver post windows install -Disconnecting all the drives except the 950 pro Could having RAID enabled be the issue? I have it enabled so I can run RAID on my Western Digital Hard Drives. I don't have "RST Storage Remapping" set for the 950 pro. My understanding is if I do that the Samsung Magician software won't see the drive. Parsec, In your post you said you had success witha single 950 pro. Did you have RAID enabled, was remapping enabled for the 950? Thanks. |
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parsec
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Posted: 10 Feb 2016 at 1:23pm |
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Replying to netjrb:
Yes I have had RAID enabled the first time I installed a 950 Pro in my Z170 EX7+, as the Win 10 drive. I've never had any problems using a 950 Pro on our board. That was IRST 14.5, which BTW has been removed from Intel's downloads. I've used 14.8 a month ago, and very recently I abandon RAID mode for AHCI, which is only used by a Samsung AHCI SM951. Otherwise I have a 950 Pro and Intel 750 in this PC currently. Recently I bought another 950 Pro to try them in RAID 0 as the OS drive. That worked out fine too, I never had the problems you have with the "hang" or system freezing I assume (IRST 14.8, with the 2.10 UEFI version installed, that has, "Update RAID ROM and EFI driver". I always install Windows with CSM Disabled, even with SATA SSDs. I want to use the EFI boot loader and fully use the UEFI firmware our boards have, rather than run it in emulated BIOS/Legacy mode, which happens when CSM is Enabled. Whatever CSM setting(s) you used when you install Windows determine how it operates. I know you had to at least set Launch Storage OpROM policy to UEFI only. What happened when you set CSM to disabled? I installed the Samsung NVMe driver, which results in an entry under Storage Controllers in Device Manager. That means that the Intel IRST driver is not controlling the 950. The version 14 IRST software can control NVMe PCIe SSDs, but RAID must be enabled, and two or three 950 Pro's are in a RAID array. If you have the IRST Windows driver package installed, with the IRST Windows UI, you won't see the 950 Pro listed as a recognized drive for use in a RAID array, unless two or more are in the PC. When you create a RAID array out of 950 Pros, the Samsung NVMe driver cannot see the SSDs, and won't install. That is trying the driver installation after the Win 10 installation. The Magician software can't handle RAID anyway, and only partially recognized the RAID 0 array of 950s. Pretty much like it does not completely recognize SM951s.b The IRST driver completely controls these SSDs when in a RAID array. I did not try installing the extracted files from the Samsung NVMe driver during the Load Driver phase of a Custom Install. How did you install the Samsung NVMe driver? The RST PCIe Remapping option should only be enabled if you want to create and use a RAID array of PCIe SSDs. I never see those options appear in RAID mode until I have more than one 950 Pro connected to the board. Are you saying you see the Remapping option with one 950 Pro installed, and using RAID mode? I don't recall that happening. What version of IRST are you using. Please be more specific than just 14. There is 14.0..., 14.5..., 14.6..., 14.7... (never released officially), and 14.8.... Did you check the Windows logs for any clues about your freezing/hang issue? Wow, your 850 Pro works Ok on the ASMedia SATA ports?  I have all kinds of strange stuff happening with an 840 Pro on an ASMedia SATA port. Win 10 manual TRIM will not complete, that semi-hangs the TRIM function, I must kill the process in Task Manager. AS SSD will not run on my 840 Pro when using an ASMedia SATA port, it just fails immediately. I tried running the TRIMcheck program on the 840 Pro, the program never finishes the first step. Two strikes against TRIM with a SSD on the ASMedia ports, does that mean no TRIM support by ASMedia? What driver are you using for the ASMedia chips?Which reminds me, the IRST driver, since version 11.6 I think it is, has had strange compatibility problems with the ASMedia chipset, and/or driver. I don't want to go into details here, but a simple thing to try is putting your 850 Pro on an Intel SATA port, since IMO that might be causing your issues. What is it that makes you think RAID mode and the 950 Pro might cause your issues? |
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parsec
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Posted: 10 Feb 2016 at 2:50pm |
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Does your board's UEFI, in the Chipset Configuration screen, any of these options: PCI DMI ASPM Support PCH PCIE ASPM Support If so, if either of these are Enabled, that could cause the issue. Those are power saving options for the PCH. Otherwise, the 750MB/s write looks like the Win 10 driver is in use. But you say you installed the Samsung NVMe driver. Do you have an entry under Storage Controllers for a Samsung NVMe controller? This is what one 256GB 950 Pro does in AS SSD on my board, while running Windows: 
You mean the size of the font is larger on the ASRock splash screen? I would agree that seems to indicate that the Video OpROM Policy setting is taking precedence over setting CSM to Disabled. That sounds like a bug IMO, unless someone could explain why allowing a setting set to Legacy only with CSM Enabled is carried over when CSM is Disabled. That seemingly defeats the purpose of disabling CSM. Or does that allow a non-GOP compatible Legacy video source to be used with all the other UEFI option enabled.
My board does not have any of the Force M2 options shown, unless that only happens when SATA drives are connected to the SATA ports shared with an M.2 slot.
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Mushu
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Posted: 10 Feb 2016 at 7:17pm |
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Yes, those are present as well as these two; "PCIE ASPM Support" and "DMI ASPM Support". All of those are at default value, i.e. disabled.
Yes, I have under storage controllers an entry that reads: Samsung NVMe Controller.
Additional discovery with 2.40 bios, I have observed once that after a boot the SM951 NVMe ran at correct pcie 3.0 x4 (Seq Read speed ~1800M, Seq Write speed ~1200M). <- this is similar to result obtained consistently with 2.90 bios (which is unstable for me). Next boot returned the situation back to pcie 2.0, there were no changes to uefi or drivers between boots. *One more thing is that Aida64 indicates that PCIE2 link speed (used by GPU) is at pcie 2.0 x 16, not sure if helpful. **Other thing is that the z170 extreme4 online manual indicates that PCIE6 Link Speed should be selectable by the user under Chipset Configuration.(Could it be the link the M.2 uses?)
However, there is no such entry in the uefi. (only selection for PCIE2 and PCIE4, tried to set both to pcie 3.0 which had no effect on M.2)
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Christer703
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Posted: 12 Feb 2016 at 3:01am |
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I have the z170 Extreme 4 board and having problems with my samsung 950 pro drive. i managed to install windows 10 on it without any troubles. however it is only stable with bios 2.80 and later. bios 2.40 i get freezing issues in windows randomly. tho with bios 2.40 i have full speeds on the samsung 950 pro disk. but i want it to be stable also so i have bios 2,90 now. with this bios the the bootup is much wuicker and the pc is 100% stable, however i get only half the speed on the m2 disk. (850read/750write).
samsung magician tels me with the bios 2.40 my PCIe link speed is 10Gbps, and now with the 2.90 bios the speed is 2.5Gbps. Crystaldisk info confirms this because there it says i am running the ultra m2 slot in PCIe 1.0 mode. how can i fix this? There is one other very strange thing about this. if i put the pc in sleep mode and wake it up right away i actually get full speeds. but when i restart the system or turn it off and on again i get the same slow speeds. samsung macigian still says im running in only 2.5Gbps after wakeup from sleep tho. This problem i can reproduce over and over again. Programs i have used for testing these speeds are as ssd benchmark, samsung magician, crystaldisk mark, anvilbenchmark, aida 64 extreme. i also have the samsung nvme 1.1 driver installed. do i have to delete or remove old windows nvme driver???
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netjrb
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Posted: 12 Feb 2016 at 6:55am |
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Hi Parsec, Thanks for the info. Please see response to questions below.
I'm using IRST 14.5.0.1081, downloaded from the ASRock website. Sounds like I should be using a newer version. Do you have a link to the latest? I upgraded the BIOS via internet update right after motherboard installation. It updated to version 2.50, don't remember what the version was before the update. Recently upgraded to BIOS 2.60, no difference in behavior. Should I not be using the latest version?
I only change BIOS options before Windows installation, never after. My last installation was with CSM disabled, didn't seem to help with the issues I'm having.
Downloaded from Samsung website and installed after Windows 10 installation. Was able to run Samsung Magician performance test on 950, before hanging caught up with me.
If I leave the CSM options as "Legacy Only" and disable CSM, the RST PCIe Remapping option does not appear. If I change CSM options to "UEFI Only" and then disable CSM, the RST PCIe Remapping option appears.
No haven't done that yet. Will research how to do that and get back to you.
Didn't make note of the ASMedia driver, it's whatever Windows 10 chose to install. Can't say the 850 was actually functional. I was able to format it. Could also see it in Samsung Magician. I don't get a lot of operational time before the system starts to hang. I did install Windows 10 on an old SATA drive. Using that I was able to run AIDA64 Stress Test without issue, but I didn't have the 850 installed at the time. Also was able to run Memtest overnight. So CPU and memory look good. I was planning on using the ASRock USB 3.1 front panel which leaves me with no available Intel SATA ports after I add my RAID drives. I was counting on using the ASMedia port for my 850. Going to be bummed if that won't work.
Really just speculation. Looking for what I might be doing different from everybody else who's had success. I've seen lots of posts with people using M.2's as RAID drives. Hadn't seen anyone before this with RAID mode enabled but only running a single M.2. |
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Mushu wrote: