x299 Taichi and Samsung 960 Pro M.2 compatibility

iconoclast wrote: I am very close to buying an x299 Taichi motherboard. But looking at the Storage QVL list, I can't see the Samsung 960 Pro there anywhere, only the EVO. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that it won't work, just that it hasn't been verified (yet?). Can anyone say if they've had problems or not using a 960 Pro as their boot/system drive on this motherboard? Thank you.

There is no reason you would not be able to use a 960 Pro on the X299 Taichi, or any other mother board as the OS/boot drive, whose UEFI/BIOS supports NVMe SSDs. Of course, the X299 Taichi supports NVMe SSDs as the OS drive.

Like SATA, NVMe is an official storage protocol, that any device using that protocol must support. We don't worry if a SATA drive will work with any of our boards, because they all will work with any board. The same is true for an NVMe SSD. Any NVMe or SATA SSD manufacture that made a drive that required special, individual support in the UEFI/BIOS, would be making a big mistake. I am not aware of even one NVMe SSD that requires special support in the UEFI/BIOS.

Many people, including myself, have used NVMe SSDs on older chipset mother boards, like the ASRock Z77 Extreme4, that existed long before NVMe SSDs did. That board has a UEFI/BIOS update that adds NVMe support, so M.2 SSDs used in an M.2 to PCIe adapter can be used as the OS drive. None of the older boards like this have NVMe Storage QVL lists.

Actually, an NVMe SSD will work in any mother board simply as a storage drive, as long as the appropriate interface to the board can be accomplished. NMVe support in the UEFI/BIOS simply allows these SSDs to become bootable. It does nothing else to make them compatible.

As another example, my ASRock X370 board does not have the Samsung 960 EVO in the manual's Module Support List, yet myself and many owners of these boards use 960 EVOs as the OS drive in it just fine.

The only restriction with any NVMe SSD that will be used as the OS drive is, the OS being installed must have a built in NVMe driver. Windows 7 does not have its own NVMe driver, so a Windows 7 installation will fail with any NVMe SSD, unless an NVMe driver is added to the installation files, or loaded during the OS installation.

Hmm. I installed the 960EVO PRO in my X299 Gamer K6 and the boot sequence dies with an A2 code on the motherboard. The BIOS recognizes it. I am using a bootable USB stick to install Windows 10. When I try to boot with that in, it will load once and begin the installation process but after the first reboot the system stops with an A2 code and I cannot proceed. Any thoughts? I called ASRock support and they insist that it's a problem with the 960EVO PRO.

Are there any special/particular ways in which to install the Samsung m.2 drive?

Ah, okay. I have the 960 Pro.

When I have the bootable USB stick plugged in, and I go into the BIOS, I see 3 entries in the boot-order list:

Samsung 960 Pro
UEFI USB device
USB device

I have played with the order a bit but it doesn't seem to make a difference. I will try again with the UEFI USB device listed first, followed by the Samsung 960 Pro.

I created the USB installation flash drive with Rufus and using my own copy of Win10.

I have no other drives connected to the board.

Does it matter which m.2 slot I use? I have tried using slot 1 and slot 3. Slot 2 is under my video card and not easily accessible.

I am close to exchanging the 960 Pro for another one as the motherboard seems fine when it's not installed, after clearing CMOS.

Druvas, did you figure this out? Did you get a new 960 pro? I am having this issue to (saw a2 error off and on).