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Z170 Gaming 6+
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Fonix View Drop Down
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    Posted: 13 Nov 2015 at 3:53am
I recently purchased a Z170 Gaming 6+ and a pair of EVGA Geforce GTX 980Tis. I also purchased an Intel 750 AIC. I was under the impression that I could run my 980Tis in SLI @ 8x on the first two PCIEx16 slots and then use the last PCIEx16 slot @ 4x for my Intel 750 SSD. To my dismay, the motherboard will not recognize the SSD in the 3rd PCIEx16 slot (Intel 750 AIC SSD status lights do not illuminate). I verified that the SSD works by pulling one of my graphics cards and putting the SSD in the 2nd PCIEx16 slot at which point the mobo recognizes the card (populates on the list in the BIOS) and the status LEDs illuminate. Do I have a defective mobo or am I missing a setting in the BIOS?
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Xaltar View Drop Down
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Points: 25043 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Xaltar Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13 Nov 2015 at 6:31am
According to your user manual the only BIOS setting for the PCIe6 (the x4 slot you tried to connect the drive to) is link speed. You can try setting that manually to PCIe 3.0 and see if that helps. 
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Fonix View Drop Down
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I was looking for something like this last night, but PCIE6 doesn't even show up... I beginning to think I have a bad mobo, I'll probably have to RMA. Was really hoping that I overlooked something.
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Points: 4996 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (1) Thanks(1)   Quote parsec Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13 Nov 2015 at 11:27am
Originally posted by Fonix Fonix wrote:

I was looking for something like this last night, but PCIE6 doesn't even show up... I beginning to think I have a bad mobo, I'll probably have to RMA. Was really hoping that I overlooked something.


You have overlooked something that an RMA will not fix.

Your CPU has 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes that supply all the PCIe 3.0 slots. When you have an SLI configuration that runs 8 lanes (x8) per slot, there are no PCIe 3.0 lanes left for your Intel 750 SSD.

This is simply a limitation of the Intel "Performance" series of processors, they only have 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes. I imagine it is this line in the specifications of your board that had you thinking your original idea would work:

triple at x8 (PCIE2) / x8 (PCIE4) / x4 (PCIE6)

That really should have been, triple at x8 (PCIE2) / x4 (PCIE4) / x4 (PCIE6), which will work for Crossfire, but not SLI.

Only a Z170 board with Plex chips that multiplex (switch) the 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes between the components using those lanes has a chance of doing what you intended. But whether or not the 750 SSD would work correctly with a Plex chip is something I do not know.

You would need an X99 board with at least an i7-5820K CPU that has 28 PCIe 3.0 lanes to run the configuration you want to use.

If you had the non-AIC version of the Intel 750, you could use a U.2 adapter with one of the Ultra M.2 slots, which uses the IO resources in the Z170 chipset.

A two card SLI with another device needing any PCIe 3.0 lanes will not work in any Intel 100 series chipset board and CPU combination system. The only potential exception is a Z170 board with Plex chips.
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Fonix View Drop Down
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Points: 5 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Fonix Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14 Nov 2015 at 5:38am
Thanks for the info. I'll be returning the board/processor/RAM and getting something X99 based.
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Points: 1 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote heyimjesse Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 27 Nov 2015 at 1:27am
I do have the Extreme6 (non-plus). I'm currently using 2 980 Ti and the 750 in the PCIE6 slot. On my extreme6 the SSD works with BIOS version 1.20. It will not show up in any BIOS higher including the recent 1.70. I've had 2 other extreme6s that all had the same issue (up to BIOS ver. 1.50 at the time), So if you don't mind "downgrading" to 1.20 it should work.

?I was actually hoping to find a solution to my problem but I hope that this at least somewhat helps with your's.




Edited by heyimjesse - 27 Nov 2015 at 11:00am
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Points: 4 		Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote tacgnol06 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 28 Nov 2015 at 4:16am
You're partially correct. Z170 spec offers 20 PCI-e lanes. 16 are reserved for the PCI-E 16x slots (at 8x with SLI), 4 are reserved for "storage", which varies based on the motherboard and how the vendor decides to use them. In this case, I haven't really looked into how ASRock uses them in this board. I know Asus boards that switch between M.2 and the PCI-e 4x slot depending on which is being used, but this isn't necessarily standard.
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