Z170 Extreme4, m.2, etc. troubles

Hi Guys,

netjrb wrote: Hi Guys, Finally found stability on my motherboard.  The issue was having two Blu-ray drives hooked to the ASMedia SATA ports.  Once I disconnected them I was stable.  Swapped them over to Intel SATA ports and still stable.    Mushu, Did you have any Blu-ray or DVD drives hooked to your ASMedia ports?

UGH, ASMedia SATA chipset...

Some mother board manufactures suggest not using optical drives on the ASMedia SATA ports. Now you can see why.

I had the 840 Pro I used in my crazy RAID 0 array connected to the ASMedia SATA chipset a while ago. I could not run AS SSD on it, it would fail with some error I've never seen before. Plus running the Win 10 manual TRIM feature on it would never finish, and I had to kill the the Properties process with Task Manager. The TRIMcheck program would hang when I tried to test TRIM on the ASMedia chipset. I've tried both an ASMedia driver and the generic Windows AHCI driver, no difference.

I suppose you can use HDDs on the ASMedia chipset, but if I can't get a TRIMcheck or manual TRIM to complete on it, how can I trust using an SSD on it?

I should say that about two years ago, the new (at the time) Intel IRST RAID driver had some kind of interaction with the ASMedia chipset that caused problems with the IRST Windows program. It would not run at all. I suppose the problems I see with the ASMedia chipset MIGHT be related to the IRST RAID driver, but I don't really know. How could this still be a problem years later?

Thanks for your input.  You guys have some pretty good information in this thread and, for example, it was a  good find that Christer noticed this is temporarily alleviated by sleep/wake-up.  Not sure I would have thought of that if I didn't see his post about that.

Hello everyone,
it is my first post here on asrock forum.
I purchased an Asrock Z170 Extreme4+ motherboard couple of weeks ago, it is my third Asrock motherboard afterZ77 OC Formula and some socket a/462 motherboard I owned 12 years ago or more.
Got some issues, various issues with the system I've built (I3 6100,Corsair Vengeance 2666 2*8GB, Samsung 950Pro 256GB NVME, WD 6TB green as hdd, one bluray writer, one dvd writer and an Asus Xonar sound card [from  my previous system]).
.The system runs win 7 sp1 64 installed from a stick and nvme drivers loaded also from a stick during installation.
The system is great while working :D the problems occurs while trying to boot up and while shutting it down.
Small problem first: 2 out of 3 shutdowns, the system shuts itself down, the windows is closing but electrically is still on, the coolers still spinning yet the OS is off, blank/black screen.
I have to force the shut down from the button so it is also shut down electrically.
And now the bigger problem, after 16 hours being completely off, no power in psu I switch the supply;s power button and power on the system from mobo;s button (I do not use a case).So i attempt a cold boot from the very beginning. The boot sequence (POST) is very oiften long, takes long to pass,  sometimes hangs at various codes either 35, 53, F4 (no it is not memory related as it  presents also while memory running at 2133) . I have to press reset, then at second, or third try the POST sequence is finally passing til code 99, it beeps for ok and onward to the windows logon screen... when it hangs. I have to press the reset button once again but if i wait for too long, the reset button won't go so i press the power button for 4 seconds. So, the second attempt, it hangs again, maybe, or maybe not. Sometimes I just shut down the power source from its button and it boots up like nothing ever happened before, quicker and maybe it hands while windows logon or maybe not.
I know you may say, too many variables, why do you still use win 7 sp1 64. Well I believe the hanging at post is quite odd and has nothing to do with the operating system, and I guess the partial shutdown is about the same, motherboard related issue as operating system is closed yet electrically the system is still on.
But, tha annyoinf thing is that the system works like a charm, after i managed to boot it in windows no complains whatsoever while it is on. Everyday i spend like 10-15 minutes to power it on.
There is one slight overclocking concerning the ram modules, they are rated as 2666mhz but i keep them at 2800mhz. No voltage adjustments, everything on auto. The problems remains either i set the ram modules at 2666 or 2133, it  behaves the very same.
All drivers are the latest ones available, the NVME ones for the ssd are the latest available from Samsung and where installed while installing the windows, so no other drivers ever used before.
The bios version i use is 2.30. not the latest but the previous one.
One question tho, is there any difference between extreme4 bioses and extreme4+ ones? I mean the board is the same, extrem4+ has the usb3.1 panel. By the way, I've got the bay but not sata express cable so the panel is unusable for me no cable to connect it to the motherboard :(
I installed windows 7 with CSM setting as uefi. Any ideas?
Thanks for your time

Hey Mushu,
I have an improvement yet I do not know it is just luck because I made the change only 3 days ago, so not many bootups-shutdown to confirm as a rule, rather I'd call it an improvement. Well I moved my memory modules closer to the cpu from A2 & B2  to A1 & B1. I thought i should give it a try and see. Out of 4 boot ups so far 3 were successful, no hang ups. Yesterday tho it hanged with a "00" code but right after reset it booted up with no hangs in windows logon. Actually I experienced no more windows login hangs at all, just a asingle hang with "05" code while shutting down but only once out of 3 shutdowns
I wonoder whether the 2.90 might be a good idea for my 4+ too, is there any other difference   between 4 and 4+ apart of the external bay? Maybe different pcb revisions of the same board?
I have to read more about your settings to understand your approach.
Right now i have no clue whether 2.90 is good for me or not, i am still using 2.,30 as 2.40 comes with some certain limitations.