New Asus X870E Strix board - M.2 drive disappearing

[Cheairnyndahl]

Hello, just installed my new Asus X870E-E Strix motherboard, loving it so far. When I initially got in to Windows, all of my drives were present (even the new one that wasn't formatted yet was showing in Disk Management) - I updated everything in terms of latest drivers for the motherboard etc, rebooted and enabled EXPO on my RAM, set to 6000MHz with voltages set, didn't touch any other settings...

And now one of my M.2 drives is not showing up in BIOS or in Windows?  I've tried changing the BIOS setting for Bifurcation to GPU+M.2 mode, that doesn't help.  Any suggestions as to what else I can try?  I have a feeling it's related to the whole thing of the GPU slot & the M.2-2 & M.2-3 sharing bandwidth, but the drive that's in one of them is showing up while the other is not now.
I'm going to try disabling EXPO & see if that helps for some reason... wouldn't make any sense if that was it, but perhaps the BIOS version I'm on is messing something up.

[TheDeepShadow]

OK so i just moved my m.2 ssd vrom M.2_3 to M.2_1

It seems that doing this resolved the issue for me, and my GPU now run at full PCIe x16 speed... Should've read the ****** manual lol

[Puuhapete]

There is a new 1003 BIOS out for this motherboard. Haven't tried it yet. No hint of NVME fixes in the release notes.

Release notes:

"1.Updated AGESA to PI 1.2.0.3a Patch A. Please update the chipset driver to version 7.01.08.129 or newer to enhance gaming performance in select games.
2.Improved system performance and resolved the PeCoffLoader memory overflow issue for enhanced security.
3.Added support for up to 5200MT/s when four 64GB memory modules (total 256GB) are installed. The exclusive AEMP option will appear when compatible models are populated.

[DarekGra]

Hello
- ROG Strix X870E-E Gaming WiFiI motherboard
- Kingston FURY 64GB (2x32GB) 6000MT/s CL30 Beast
- ASUS GeForce RTX 4070 Ti SUPER TUF GAMING OC 16GB GDDR6X
- AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D
- SSD M.2 Kingston FURY Renegade 2 TB (system in M2.1 slot)
- SSD M.2 Kingston FURY Renegade TB (data in M2.5 slot)

ok... I think I have a solution to the problem of the disappearing M2 disk in my configuration...
but one by one, I removed the RAM, disks and GPU, I went to tests in each M2 slot but there is no graphics card (it was more convenient)
the result was zero problems with the disappearing M2 disk during restart or sleep, I put the GPU in and again no disk after restart...

Then in the BIOS I changed the PCIe G5 settings to PCIe x16 Gen 4, rigid and disabling M2.2 and M2.3, and changed the M2.5 slot (in which I have a 4TB disk) to Gen4 rigid.

RAM EXPO I 6000 30-36-36-40

after this procedure, about 10 system resets and 10 sleeps without the disappearing disk 

 let's hope it stays that way

There is clearly some error in the motherboard driver and BIOS

[Cheairnyndahl]

Disabling m.2-2 & m.2-3 defeats the entire purpose of the issue for folks like me who are only having issues with those two drive slots.

Fun side story, out of curiosity, I bought a vertical mount kit from Cooler Master with the intent of putting big ass heatsinks on drives in m.2-4 & m.2-5 via having the gpu out of the way... Clearance is fun when your m.2 heatsinks are giant thermalright ones - but, I decided to go what the hell, let's try something stupid. Put the vertical mount all the way on the bottom (my case is huge, Thermaltake View 91) with the pcie cable plugged in to the Gen4 4.0 slot on the bottom of the Strix motherboard, fully expecting nt RTX 4090 to flat out refuse to work in that configuration... 

It works. Not only does it work, it looks sick, gives me room for all the m.2 heatsink I can handle, in all slots, AND it frees up the primary x16 slot for an add on x4 4.0 x4 Nvme card (as in a quad drive card) if I do desire.

It does have some hiccups when alt tabbing . I had to reinstall drivers clean to get it working. But it works. 

[Fwazzy]

What issues while alt tabbing? 

I am having issues where my PC would freeze for 3-7 seconds every time I alt tabbed. Removed the GPU and running off of the CPU graphics and no longer any alt tab issues. Sent the GPU back but don’t have another at the moment. Trying to pickup an RTX 50 series to test again. 

[Cheairnyndahl]

Just lag that isn't present with the card plugged in to the normal x16 slot, be that in the slot directly or in the vertical mount cable. And that's specifically alt-tabbing in & out of games. Might be driver related, I updated to the newest driver when I reinstalled them for the card move. 

[DarekGra]

when I didn't have a GPU installed, the disks worked fine in M2.2 and M2.3

My disk in M2.5 with a motherboard radiator reaches a maximum of 59-60 degrees in crystal disk mark tests, with normal use it doesn't exceed 53 degrees

if you have more disks, try setting everything in Bios to rigid without Auto, maybe it will help.

[Psamtik]

Just tried 1003, no change on the XMP/|EXPO/DOCP and M.2_2 and 3 for me. I tried the usual clr cmos, set to defaults then try each of the setting other than Auto, and still no luck while the GPU is showing as X8 even though neither of the drives are working. So back to auto and manual timings where it all works fine.

Can't say I am surprised now, this is pretty much a thing I have accepted as never being really fixed, but it does highlight the other issue of the PCIe bottleneck on new PC's. Personally, for me at least, I would hope for 4 more on the chipset so I could use x8 cards or 2 X4 ones (right now its use my M.2 card or 10GBe one) and 8 more on the CPU to stop needing bifurcation on the X16 slot and stop issues board like this seem to have.

[Cheairnyndahl]

I have been complaining about lack of PCIe lanes since the days of X299 being the last "HEDT" platform that actually had additional lanes.  I ran an X79 system and it was awesome having all those lanes to use - I also used it for 3-Way & 4-Way SLi at the time.

Gamers (and people that have mixed use like myself) would happily shell out more cash for a motherboard/CPU combo that finally has more lanes again, but I think that both AMD & Intel don't want to un-segment their product lines - right now Threadripper is a whole 'nother their even over a 9950X-type build. The cheapest Threadripper build you can go is more than twice a high end 9950X build (Unless you go full retard with an overkill overpriced $1000-$1200 motherboard)... then there's Intel, Xeon builds literally aren't intended for regular use at all anymore, and the pricing is very much peasant-blocking.

It would just be great if AMD gave us a 24-core or 32-core bridge of that gap where it's got more lanes, but not as many lanes as full on Threadripper-tiers do.  I'd be happy to pay that to not have to worry about this gimping of GPU slots etc anymore... 

Speaking of that, I did run the 4090 on the x4 4.0 slot for a while, finally went back to having the Vertical Mount plugged back in to the x16 5.0 slot, before removing the vertical mount temporarily today... the connector I found recently & saw is actually touching a heatsink with a drive installed in M.2-3 gives me reasons to pause any further fiddling until I get an answer on WTF it is & why it's so ****** close to that M.2 slot... like it's literally close enough that if I put ANY aftermarket heatsink on a drive in that slot, it touches it, regardless of whether or not another drive is in M.2-2.

[Cheairnyndahl]

Does anyone else have this weird connector below & to the left of the CPU socket, that's directly above the M.2-3 slot? It looks sort of like a USB or Audio plug, but it's smaller...

It's not on the Motherboard diagram in the manual AT ALL, not listed AT ALL, and I just noticed, if I have 2 of the aftermarket heatsinks installed in M.2-2 & M.2-3 (I've been shuffling stuff around and taking the vertical mount in & out because I'm crazy like that), the base-plate of the M.2 heatsink LITERALLY touches the bottom pins on it... I'm gonna go out on a limb & assume that is NOT safe.

I'm actually going to contact Asus tech support about this specifically, because that connector is not listed or described anywhere, but it's there for some reason.  

Including a picture so y'all know exactly where/what I'm talking about.