Taichi X370 and Samsung Evo 960 on second M2 slot

Hello,

does anyone know if it´s possible to put a Samsung Evo 960 500 GB on the second M.2 slot on the Taichi X370? I know it´s not on the support list, but according to the manual a PCI-e NVMe card should be good... I have tried two different ones, so I can exclude that the Samsung is defect. The 250 GB Evo is working perfectly on slot 1.

Even in the BIOS the 500 GB Evo does not show up on the second slot.

Thanks
The doctor

DoctorCajon wrote: Hello, does anyone know if it´s possible to put a Samsung Evo 960 500 GB on the second M.2 slot on the Taichi X370? I know it´s not on the support list, but according to the manual a PCI-e NVMe card should be good... I have tried two different ones, so I can exclude that the Samsung is defect. The 250 GB Evo is working perfectly on slot 1. Even in the BIOS the 500 GB Evo does not show up on the second slot. Thanks The doctor

There seems to be some issue with the M2_2 slot on the X370 Taichi board for some users and some M.2 NVMe SSDs. Any NVMe SSD should be fine in any M.2 slot that supports M.2 PCIe SSDs, which the M2_2 slot on the X370 Taichi does support.

From the specifications of the X370 Taichi:

1 x M.2 Socket (M2_2), supports M Key type 2230/2242/2260/2280 M.2 PCI Express module up to Gen2 x4 (20 Gb/s)

Note that the M2_2 slot does not provide the full PCIe 3.0 (Gen 3) x4 interface that the 960 EVO requires for full performance. That interface should not be causing the SSD to not be recognized as far as I know.

The M2_2 slot is using the chipset's PCIe 2.0 lanes, rather than the CPU's PCIe 3.0 lanes that are used with the M2_1 slot.

Did you try clearing the UEFI/BIOS when you installed the 960 EVO in the M2_2 slot?

If you boot into Windows, and start Disk Management, is the drive recognized when it is in the M2_2 slot? Assuming it has not yet been formatted.

Do you have anything in the PCIE5 slot? It is shared with the M2_2 slot.

Update: I now have swapped the 250 and 500 GB EVOs so that the 250 is now on m2_2 and the 500 GB on m2_1. And: It works! Nevertheless it's not ideal because I want to have the OS on the ultra m2 slot.

So I can now reinstall the OS on the 500 GB Evo and get a new SATA SSD for games or put the 500 GB onto the shelf and leave the 250 on slot 1 or if ASrock employees read along on the forum kindly request to fix this in a soonish BIOS Update and leave everything as it is now. I prefer the last option because I don't want to spend 200-300 bugs extra on my build for another SSD just because the board is buggy.

If needed I am willing to assist fixing the issue by providing more info and/or logs.
The BIOS version is 2.30

Thanks
Thomas

Edited by DoctorCajon - 03 Jun 2017 at 2:26pm

Thanks, already ruled out everything else. I have tried also 2 different 250 and 500GB EVOs on each m2 slot (I'm building the same config again for wifey). And the only combination not working is the 250 GB Evo on slot 1 and 500GB Evo on slot2. Either on BIOS version 1.6 the board shipped with, nor after updating to 2.3. Will contact tech support.

Did you find any solution?