ASRock z270pro4 cannot "see" 1x PCI-E NIC?

Hello!

I have a
- ASRock z270 pro4 mainbaord with a
- Intel skylake i3-7100 processor,
- 2 x 4 GB of Kingston DDR4 Ram
- nVidia 610 GPU card (in "PCIE2" slot on mainboard).

This is all working. However, I would like to ADD a pci-e network-interface-card (NIC):
- TP-link Gigabit PCI-E Adapter (Model: TG-3468).

The card as been inserted into ALL available 1x PCI-E slots (1/3/5) for testing purposes but NON seem to work, as the BIOS post does not list the device!

Curiously, the TP-link NIC is receiving power through the PCI-E slot, because the LEDs are turned on!?

The TP-link NIC has been tested in another mainboard (in 1x PCI-E slot) and is confirmed to be functioning.

Also I have inserted a very old PCI (not! PCI-E!) intel gigabit NIC into the single available PCI slot on the mainboard and it works. The mainboard recognizes the intel NIC and it shows up during BIOS post.

I really need to have TWO network cards available; one being the on-board intel NIC and the second one should be the TP-Link one i insert into the 1x PCI-E slot.

note: This is not by first computer build.\
note: All PCI-E slots are configured for "AUTO" in BIOS.
note: BIOS is latest version available: 2.0 released 4/14/2017

Any help and/or suggestions to get the TP-Link 1x Gigabit NIC to work w/ the "z270 pro4" mainboard would be greatly appreciated.

Hello wardog
Thanks for reply.

Matter of fact, i have TWO of those TP-Link gigabit NICs.
one of them has the bracket removed. I have tried both. In each available 1x PCI-E slot.

None of them work, as in, they don't register during BIOS post.

The only thing aside from what I mentioned earlier, there's a SATA connected SSD and a HDD. Nothing else.

Also the BIOS setup menu has a nifty feature that show a image of the mainboard and marks occupied slots.

The nVidia PCI-E grafic card shows up and so does the old-skool intel PCI NIC.
The plugged-in TP-Link NIC is a no-show

What I want to try, if i get around to it and I am not to lazy, is to remove the nVidia GPU and use the intel GPU inside the Skylake CPU for video output and then see if this might free up some PCI-E lanes?

Else I will just live with the intel PCI (!) gigabit NIC 

note: I would be nice if there were a setting in the BIOS to completely disable the GPU inside the CPU?




Edited by scaly_lizard - 11 Jul 2017 at 3:50am

scaly_lizard wrote: Hello wardog Thanks for reply. Matter of fact, i have TWO of those TP-Link gigabit NICs. one of them has the bracket removed. I have tried both. In each available 1x PCI-E slot. None of them work, as in, they don't register during BIOS post. The only thing aside from what I mentioned earlier, there's a SATA connected SSD and a HDD. Nothing else. Also the BIOS setup menu has a nifty feature that show a image of the mainboard and marks occupied slots. The nVidia PCI-E grafic card shows up and so does the old-skool intel PCI NIC. The plugged-in TP-Link NIC is a no-show What I want to try, if i get around to it and I am not to lazy, is to remove the nVidia GPU and use the intel GPU inside the Skylake CPU for video output and then see if this might free up some PCI-E lanes? Else I will just live with the intel PCI (!) gigabit NIC  note: I would be nice if there were a setting in the BIOS to completely disable the GPU inside the CPU?

As suggested above by ASRock TSD, clear the UEFI/CMOS and see if the NIC card is then detected.

As you said, the cards should be detected in the System Browser tool.

The PCIe lanes (PCIe 2.0) for the PCIe x1 slots are provided by the Z270 chipset. They do not use the PCIe 3.0 lanes from the CPU. So removing the video card will not free up lanes for the PCIe 2.0 x1 slots.

You can disable the Intel iGPU by setting the IGPU Multi-Monitor option to disabled. The iGPU will never be 100% turned off, it will still idle at 0.224V.

Do you really prefer the TP-Link NIC to an Intel NIC chip? In the past, I would use Intel NIC cards to replace other NIC chips used in boards. If you look closely, I've seen random NIC cards using Intel chips.