X99 Extreme4 does not detect Samsung Pro 950 M.2

parsec wrote: Do you have at least UEFI version 1.80, or better, version 2.10 installed on your board? DON'T install the latest, 3.30, yet... please... Both 1.80 and 2.10 add NVMe support, and it looks like version 2.10 improved NVMe support. When you installed Windows on your 950, did you have any other drives connected to the PC and powered up? I have two 950 Pros, and I think I had one in my X99 Extreme6/3.1 board (I move drives so much, I can barely remember what I've done sometimes) and it worked fine. I have an Intel 750 NVMe SSD as the OS drive in that board now, works fine. I agree that dropping a 950 like you did would not seem to cause any damage. The darn thing's weight is fewer grams than in one ounce, a fraction of an ounce. I know you are using a video card, as is required in every X99 PC. Is your 950 under a video card, the video card in the PCIE1 slot? Have you ever monitored the temperature of your 950? They run warm, and if they get too hot, they will throttle their speed/performance. If you don't care about Secure Boot, you can disable it, as long as you have CSM disabled. On some boards the only way to disable CSM is to enable Secure Boot. That's why some guides tell you to enable Secure Boot, but that is the only reason they do that. Sorry for the semi-rant (semi-rant??) I wrote last time. It just bothers me that the NVMe SSD manufactures don't provide any guidance about using them as OS drives.

I'm also using the X99 Extreme4, and I just got a 256gb Samsung 950 Pro. I may not be following the instructions correctly, but I just updated to ASRock's 3.3 BIOS, and I can't see the device in UEFI, under the M.2 storage list, nor in Windows 10 Drive Manager, and when I install the Samsung NVME Driver, it reports; "Samsung NVM Express Device is not connected. Connect the Device and try again."

Edited by MortarArt - 11 May 2016 at 11:49am

tom wrote: Hi guys,   Just a success report: - X99 extreme 4 - samsung 950 pro 512 (nvme) - latest bios (3.30) installed I installed QubesOS 3.1 flawlessly - installer was able to see the nvme drive and use it, MB boot manager displayed both 'Samsung 950 Pro' and EFI boot entry for Qubes on the Samsung. Samsung drive has option ROM and seems able to boot even MBR - in fact I did not disable CSM. http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/minisite/SSD/downloads/document/Samsung_SSD_950_PRO_White_paper.pdf

Thanks for posting the link to the Samsung white paper about the 950 Pro, and how to configure a board's UEFI to use it as an OS drive. Samsung actually did what I was complaining about, documenting how to configure a UEFI booting OS installation.

Nothing new in the document regarding UEFI booting, at least from my perspective.

It's a shame Samsung has this document available on their business support download page, but not on their consumer support download page. It would really help if it was available in the consumer support section, but I suppose Samsung believes very few consumer 950 users will read it. I can't say they are completely wrong about that.

I must say that I disagree that a 950 Pro will boot from an MBR/legacy partition, although I agree that it seems that it does, given what you wrote about not disabling CSM, and your 950 Pro booting fine.

I recently tried setting CSM to Enabled, to see if a UEFI booting Win 10 installation would boot with an NVMe SSD using an MBR partition. The Windows installation program will put both a GPT and MBR partition on an OS drive when the UEFI/BIOS is configured for a UEFI booting installation. That is done to allow certain Windows tools that require an MBR partition to work with UEFI booting installations. If you do a UEFI booting installation on a standard SATA drive, you can switch between MBR and GPT booting by changing the CSM option. I did not think this would work with an NVMe drive, it should require to use the GPT partition.

I tested this on an Intel 750 NVMe SSD, and it did boot normally, but I noticed during POST the usual indication of a UEFI boot. That is, the screen resolution of the ASRock splash screen was in the higher resolution mode (appearing smaller on the monitor) of a UEFI/GPT boot. Another indication of this is the choices in the Boot order list. UEFI/GPT booting installations will always be "Windows Boot Manager" minimally, or that followed by the drive name. Also possible is the prefix "UEFI" followed by the drive name. MBR/Legacy booting entries in the Boot order will be the prefix "AHCI" or "RAID" followed by the drive name, or just the drive name will appear.

I believe I know what is happening.

When we install a UEFI version for our boards that have NVMe support, that support now includes the automatic configuration (behind the scenes) of the CSM option when an NVMe SSD is used as the OS drive. Manual configuration of CSM still works, but the automatic configuration makes things much easier for those users that are not familiar with UEFI booting. This brings us back to NVMe SSDs being plug and play devices, which was not the case at first. So instead of the CSM configuration needing to be done when installing an OS on an NVMe SSD, and resetting CSM after a UEFI clear or update, it is now transparent to the user.

Nice, but we don't learn anything, IMO.




Edited by parsec - 11 May 2016 at 3:05pm