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.

[Psamtik]

Well I can confirm that I am a masochist after saying I'm out, as I just tried 1203, and if anything, my raided 990 Pro drives using M.2-2 and 3 are running even slower with DOCP or EXPO, 237MB/s like a fast HDD. Back to manual it seems.

Update

Going to have to try and rebuild my raid as since doing this update, manual and even reverting back to 1103 gives the same score in crystal disk mark and at best PCIe 3 speeds when transferring and thats with everything set to default and going in and manually setting everything to PCIe 4.0. Hopefully trying it split into the 2 and 3 drives and 4,5 and PCIe x4 slot drives and see what the speed is. gives me more of an insight, or even fixes it. The M.2_1 drive is still showing the full PCIe 4.0 X4 speed though.

I'm also making sure I have the 2025-02-25 dated chipset drivers installed as I am not sure they were there when I checked for 1104.

Update 2

Got it back to full speed with my manual settings after splitting and testing each drive, so must have been an unfortunate glitch, but it still has the same slow speed bug as 1104 when DOCP/EXPO is enabled

[solomonshv]

just bought this today at microcenter. plugged in some SSDs and nothing is getting detected in M.2_2 or M.2_3. that's with or without a GPU installed. BIOS 1203. I tried WD 850X, hynix P41 and gen 4 phison SSDs. so this has little if anything to do with samsung 

already regretting my purchase. might pack this up and get something else. this is not acceptable for a product that costs $500 and has been on the market for 6 months already. either fix it or pull it off the shelves

[Psamtik]

I assume you have tried this, but if not, try it on auto as DOCP/EXPO settings and even manual, can make this happen. Its why even though its not happening now for some of us since 1104, its still not fixed as it cripples drive speed, I end up using manual settings but leave that one on auto. 

If it works on auto, then your best bet is to find out what ram type you have (usually SK Hynix, Samsung or Micron) and see if there is a guide for decent ram settings. Mine are SK Hynix, so I used the buildzoid guide initially and then tweaked from there.

I'll say one thing for this board, its certainly one for giving those retro bios vibes when you had to do near everything manual. lol I was half expecting onboard jumpers as well 😄

[David_79]

Hi guys!   I'm David and i'm writing from Spain.

I have the same problem with mobo Asus Strix X870E-E Gaming Wifi.

My configuration includes two M2 SSD (Samsung 990 Pro 2Tb and M2 Samsung 990 Pro 4TB). Until now, the only solution was to install the M2 2TB in slot M2_1 and the M2 4TB in slot M2_4 or M2_5, trying to install M2 in slots M2_2 or M2_3, reproduces the M2 missing errors.

Recently Asus has released BIOS 1203, but unfortunately it has the same problems.

I had not tried to look into the errors in depth, but after several BIOS releases and the problem not being resolved, today I wanted to investigate.

I think the problem is due to the AMI driver in the BIOS, or at least it partially fixes the errors.

To fix this, enter the BIOS:

1 - “Advance Mode (F7)”, section “Boot” and in the “AMI Native NVMe Driver Support”, select “Dissasble”.

2 - Then, in the "Advance" section, enter "Onboard Devices Configuration".
     Here, it is important in "PCIEX(G5) Bandwidt Bifurcation Configuration", select "Auto Mode", any other option will still give the same error.

3 - In the same section, below, under "PCI Link Speed", I recommend leaving everything on "Auto", although the options,
     “PCIEX(G5) Link Mode” > “GEN 5”, “M.2_2 Link Mode” > “GEN 5” and “M.2_1 Link Mode” > “GEN 5”, they have worked well in my case.


The tests have given me readings on both M2 of 7000 Mb/s of reading and 6800 Mb/s of writing, and on my 7900 XTX 24Gb I have not perceived any loss of performance. All measured with benchmarks.

I think a possible solution from Asus would be that once a graphics card with M2 is inserted into the M2_2 and/or M2_3 slots, the AMI driver would be deactivated by default, all after a BIOS update.

I hope that, until a better solution is found, what I described will be helpful to you.
Sorry for my poor english.

Regards!

[David_79]

Hi guys! I have continued testing.


I recommend the following parameters in the "PCI Link Speed" section:

PCIEX16(G5) Link Mode > GEN 5
M.2_2 Link Mode > GEN 5
M.2_3 Link Mode > GEN 5
M.2_1 Link Mode > GEN 5

I have achieved higher and more consistent speeds, reading 7450 Mb/s and writing 6940 Mb/s.

I have the M.2_1 and M.2_3 slots occupied with M2 SSD and PCIe with graphics card. The rest of the slots are empty.

I have not tested the M.2_4 and M.2_5 slots, so leave the rest of the options in "AUTO", or try your own settings.


Regards.