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Maximus XI Extreme SATA problems

spanishflyer
Level 7
Dear friends,
Just finished installing this MoBo, replacing my Z170 Deluxe, CPU and GPU (CPU an i7 9700 and GPU a EVGA 1080Ti Hybrid). I also installed 2 1TB M.2 in the DIMM.2.
Focused on the new drives I installed Windows 10 64bit on one of them and left the other to install programs and games.

After it was ready I then decided to re-plug in my 6 SATA drives, including the CD-rom and that's where my actual problem resides. From the 6 SATA ports on the MoBo only 3 access the HDD's; the other three are dead. If I swap the cables to the other HDD's they are then accessible, but the other 3 are not even recognised in the BIOS.

I have to be clear here; while getting the M.2 drives to work I fiddled with the bios till I got them to work, but I messed around with all the parameters so much, that I'm quite sure I messed it so much that now it is a miracle that at least it reads three of the six SATAs...

I have also updated the BIOS to the latest available for this MoBo, but my lack of experience is surely the cause of the three SATA ports I need.

Is there an easy way to recover them in a simple configuration move? Or maybe I need to install some extra drivers, not included in any of the downloads I took from ASUS webpage?
Any help will be much appreciated.

Best regards,

Spanish Flyer
319 Views
6 REPLIES 6

Tropico
Level 7
You could try going into BIOS and reset with "Load Optimized Defaults", save and reset. This will disable DIMM.2 by default but may get the SATA drives going.

Then go back into BIOS and Enable DIMM.2 (Manual page 3-19).

Worth a try, hope it helps.

spanishflyer
Level 7
Thanks a lot Tropico, I will do so... I'll keep my fingers crossed....

spanishflyer
Level 7
Tropico, you just made another happy owner. As you said, I returned to the optimised defaults and then enabled the DIMMs and all my drives are accessible!
There's only one but that I don't know how much it matters and that is that when selecting the DIMM.2 PCIEX4 socket, I had to select PCIe x2 instead of PCIe x4, since with PCIe x4 enabled, SATA ports 5 & 6 are disabled....
What the difference is between x2 and x4 I have no idea, but surely you or someone else will know.
Still I thank you once more in helping me out.
Best regards and Merry Christmas

spanishflyer wrote:

What the difference is between x2 and x4 I have no idea, but surely you or someone else will know.


Selecting PCIe x4 increases bandwidth to PCIe _3 slot, but you are right in that it sacrifices SATA 5/6. Leave it at x2.

Glad you got things working.

spanishflyer
Level 7
Thank you Señor,
I don't know if you have the same mobo I have, but if that is the case, can you tell me how to change the "rainbow like" led lighting? I totally dislike this feature, but would't mind if I could adjust it to a static blue, since the rest of my leds, including water coolers and fans are in electric blue.
Merry Christmas Tropico

No problem. You should be able to change the lighting in the ASUS AURA application.

Merry Christmas