M.2 issues

[f1schu]

Hi there. I have a rampage v extreme which is running a 5820k, 2x r9 290 gpus and a soundblaster z soundcard.
I just purchased a new Samsung 960 Evo M.2 ssd, got home and I plugged in the new drive into the M.2 slot on the rampage and booted up the system. At first everything seemed okay as the drive was showing in the bios and the windows install configuration. I started to install windows to the M.2 drive and it all went okay until the system rebooted and gave me an error about something to do with not being able to find locale.
After a few more attempts at trying to install windows with no success the system then started to hang at the bios splash screen. I tried both bios 1 and 2 and both would get stuck at the splash screen with the boot device led on the rampage staying on.
As soon as I remove the M.2 drive it boots fine on both bios 1 & 2.

Now when I purchased the Samsung 960 evo from Maplin the box was open and the guy told me that they had a spate of shoplifting and because of that removed the drive from it's box but assured me that it was brand new. I'm now thinking that may not be the case and it's a faulty drive, or the fact that I'm using a 5820k that has only 28 lanes but I'm not so sure as my first gpu is running at x16 and the second one at x8 equaling 24 lanes leaving 4 for the M.2. Like I mentioned previously I also have a soundblaster z plugged into the pcie x1 slot but was told that the pcie x1 Lane is supplied by the x99 chipset and not the cpu so it should not affect anything.
Just to be sure I unplugged the soundcard and it made no difference. As soon as the M.2 drive is installed the system gets stuck at the splash screen.

Do you think it's a faulty drive? Or something else?

[f1schu]

Brighttail wrote:
Do what I posted earlier. Set your BIOS options the way you want them, save the profile, load optimized default, save & exit BIOS, Re-enter BIOS and your m.2's should be recognized (as long as you have the UEFI properly set), reload your saved BIOS options, save and exit. You should be fine.

This motherboard for some reason will just forget that the 960/961s exist when you start making changes to BIOS. So do what I stated above and it should catch them again.

Yeah sounds like he had the same issue as me that the 960 evo makes the system freeze at the bios splash screen and won't let you enter the bios until the drive is removed from the m.2 slot.
Like I said in my previous post it was strange as when I first installed it everything was okay and I could get in the bios and start a windows 10 install but then after two failed attempts at installing windows it would no longer let me in the bios or past the splash screen with the drive connected. Thus why I think the drive was faulty.