Curious SSD Behaviour on Maximus VI Extreme

[Oshay]

Hello, everyone.

I just gave myself a nice birthday present and upgraded my PC. I bought a Maximus 6 Extreme, with a new 4770K Haswell chip, and a nice EVGA GTX 780 video card.

All of these things are working well. Or at least, they work well when the computer will boot.

Allow me to explain further.

I have 3 drives and a Blu-Ray Optical Disk Drive in my system. They are plugged into the first four intel SATA ports on the board.

The first drive is a Kingston SSD Now 128 GB SSD, SNV425S2128GB. It runs at 3.0 GB/s
The second drive is a Seagate 500 GB HDD. It runs at 1.5 GB/s
The third is a much newer Seagate 2 TB HDD. It runs at 3.0 GB/s

The two HDDs and the Blu Ray player always post.
The SSD only posts some of the time, and when it doesn't I get a Windows BSOD (Black Screen of Death?) and a STOP error. Research on said stop error says, unsurprisingly, that the boot drive is unavailable.

After two or three hard resets using the power button, the SSD will post, and windows loads normally. I can play for as long as I want, do anything I want, and things are fine. I even ran Prime95 for eight hours, no problems.

But every time I shut down the computer and go to bed, or to work, and come home, I have to turn the computer on two or three times to get the SSD to post.

Does anyone know what could be causing this problem? It never happened on my old board (which was also an ASUS, a Sabretooth FX-990 r2.0). The SSD was not removed from the case when I installed all the new hardware, I kept the same case, the only thing I swapped out was the SATA cables to ensure that they were all good.

For the record, my power supply for all these goodies is an: ABS DARK BERET seriesDB1000-M-BRZ 1000W

I also have a second, unrelated question. From reading the manual, it seems like if you use only a single PCi-e card, it /must/ go into slot one, adjacent to the processor. That was my understanding, and so I installed it there. But it is uncomfortably close to the aftermarket heat sink I bought for my processor, and I'd like to move it down to slot 2a, if that is at all feasible. Is it, or does it have to stay in slot one?

[jasonelmore]

disable quick boot and also make sure your boot drive is on the top of the priority list in the bios. see if that helps. also switch quick boot switch on motherboard to the "off" position.

[Classic_GOD]

Some older SSD controllers are incompatible with Haswell due to stricter SATA compliance required by Intel on 8 series platform. The best know example is Sandforce 1xxx series incompatibility. I'm afraid it's possible you have the same compatibility problem with your SSD.

[Oshay]

I suppose that gives me an excuse to pick up the Samsung 750 GB drive I was eyeing. I flashed the BIOS to the latest revision, I'll see if that helps at all. I'll also try to turn off the quick boot.

[Praz]

This may be some type of compatibility issue. You are second person I have seen using this drive and having detection issues. This may be why the drive is not listed on the QVL.

[HiVizMan]

Indeed, Haswell has slightly higher QVL requirements and I can not help but wonder if your SSD might need to be upgraded.

[Oshay]

Well, after flashing the BIOS and doing what Jason Elmore suggested, then sleeping eight hours, no joy. Same trouble this afternoon when trying to boot. Obviously I finally got it on, but I'm monumentally uninterested in turning my computer on and off eight times to get it to finally work.

Headed down to Canada Computing to get a Samsung 840 Pro 512 Gig. Heard nothing but good things about it. Thanks for the help guys.

Oh, on that second question... does the Geforce GTX 780 have to stay in the topmost slot, or can I put it somewhere else for better airflow?

[Valon1982]

this mobo have an AHCI option? usually I think when you install OS on a SSD you disconnect all the other hard drives ? SSD is always very sensitive by installation of files in any kind of OS especially for windows , qualify vendors list is a high issue , boot options? 1st boot devise SSD 2nd disable 3rd disable ? f1 error report exist in this mobo ? in boot options again , quick boot , keep kurend

[Oshay]

I have the Samsung 480 pro set up, and it's giving zero problems. I have turned the computer off several times and left it to cool to boot it up again, and it works every time. I even managed to clone the old drive, thus saving what was on it, and put it on the Samsung. So, all is well.

[Oshay]

The strange thing that's happening now is that the time doesn't count up unless Windows is open.
When the PC is off, the BIOS/CMOS isn't keeping track of the time?? o_O