AHCI for ssd?

silvman wrote: I have H270m PRO4 bios P2.00 In the BIOS, there is not an option to set the drive to PCIe. My choices are AHCI, and a RIAD setting. This drive is PCIe 3.0x4, and should not run on AHCI? The drive is Intel 600p #SSDPEKKW512G7X1, and set in M2-1 slot. Do I need other drivers like the Intel ME? Do I install Windows OS first? Thanks

The Intel 600p is an NVMe SSD, with its own built in NVMe controller. NVMe is a new storage protocol that is different and has nothing to do with SATA.

Your H270 mother board has a built in SATA controller, as all mother boards do. The SATA modes of AHCI and RAID in the UEFI are for SATA drives, not for NVMe drive, with one exception.

If you had two NVMe SSDs you could use them in RAID mode, and then you would set the SATA mode to RAID, and then set two other options to remap the NVMe SSDs into using the Intel RAID software, that is capable of supporting multiple NVMe SSDs in a RAID array. You are not doing that, so this does not apply to you.

So the SATA controller mode settings have nothing to do with a single NVMe SSD like your 600p. There is no PCIe option setting in the UEFI, since no mother boards have built in NVMe controllers. They are included with the drives themselves, and work automatically. But they still need an NVMe driver.

Given your questions, you don't seem to have much experience installing Windows.

My main question for you is, which version of Windows will you be using? That matters when using NVMe SSDs. Your 600p SSD needs an NVMe driver, which is included with Windows 8.1 and 10, but not with Windows 7.

You always install Windows first, before installing most drivers. Certain drivers can be installed during a Windows installation if necessary, but that is only needed in special cases.

The two main Intel driver/file installation packages you need to run after Windows is installed are:

INF driver ver:10.1.1.38

Intel Management Engine driver ver:11.6.0.1126

If you check your board's download page, you'll see many different drivers available. You don't need all of them, but normally they will be better than the generic Windows drivers installed during the Windows installation.

http://www.asrock.com/MB/Intel/H270M%20Pro4/index.asp#osW1064

silvman wrote: Thank you parsec for your reply. I will be installing Windows 10. This is my second new build, and I wanted to be sure about the bios settings for the drive before I used it (OS install).

Since you are using Windows 10, you won't have any problems with the NVMe driver.  The Intel 600p (I have one) just uses the standard Microsoft NVMe driver.

I forgot to ask what you are using for the Windows 10 installation media. That is, an optical disk or a USB flash drive with a Windows 10 ISO file. When using an NVMe SSD as the OS drive, you should check the Boot Order in the UEFI of the entry for the Windows installation device. There may be more than one entry for the Windows installation device, and you should use the one that looks like this: "UEFI: <device name>".