Using NVMe with my x370 gaming K4 motherboard

First off, I've never updated my BIOS because in the beginning it was a "not broke no need to fix it" situation. Then it became, if I update now, I'll have to update it 5 times because of all the prerequisite BIOS updates. So the version is still 2.10 or 2.20 one of the two.

I recently installed an NVMe SSD as my system drive and have had weird problems ever since. I first cloned my original system drive onto the NVMe so that I didn't have the inconvenience of having to reinstall Windows and all my programs. Then I got the drives switched out and it was going fine. Then 2 days later Windows has a cumulative update to install. Restarting afterwards resulting in the boot record getting screwed up after drive letters were changed, and the update getting left as pending. Windows gives me an unrecognizable boot drive BSOD from then on. I use WinPE to reset Windows, it doesn't give me the option of keeping my programs installed so the whole point of cloning is gone. So then im sitting on a reinstalled Windows.

Everything is fine for 2 weeks and then out of the blue there, the computer stops and restarts but gets hung during POST and just sits there. I press the power reset button on my tower and it restarts and gets into Windows just fine. There are no glaring reasons for this crash in the Event Viewer. I just happen to be looking at the changelogs for the BIOS updates and see one of them has better M.2 compatibility.

LONG story and that brings me to my question. Could there be some BIOS problem with my new NVMe in the Ultra M.2 slot that would require me to at least update the BIOS to the version with the M.2 change?

p.p.s.

these drive cloning tend to not work perfectly more times than they do actualy work

I updated the BIOS to 5.10 today and it actually made it worse. Now instead of random restarts that didn't leave any trace of a crash or anything. It now has random BSODs, that all suggest a driver issue.

My thought process for stopping with 5.10 was that I didn't want to update it too much considering im still using 1st Gen Ryzen. But I wanted to get the M.2 changes in 4.60 and thought the bridge was that close why not just go up to it.

ThreeDee wrote: not quite a clean install ... but .. have you installed the latest chipset drivers from AMD?

You mean the AMD Allin1 package? I have the 18.50.16.01, the one it suggests to have installed before you update the BIOS.

matts wrote: I updated the BIOS to 5.10 today and it actually made it worse. Now instead of random restarts that didn't leave any trace of a crash or anything. It now has random BSODs, that all suggest a driver issue. My thought process for stopping with 5.10 was that I didn't want to update it too much considering im still using 1st Gen Ryzen. But I wanted to get the M.2 changes in 4.60 and thought the bridge was that close why not just go up to it.

did you miss the very clear bit i recommended to use bios versions 3xxx

5.10 is for the 3rd gen ryzens and allthough technically it should handle it ok ,there was no need to go above the versions 3xxx i suggested for a first gen cpu

however your done now and cant flash back
as suggested by threedee download the newer AMD chipset drivers
DIRECT FROM AMD SUPPORT

Edited by datonyb - 01 Oct 2020 at 1:50am