Rampage V Edition 10 - Hardware Issue

[phatec]

Hello Asus,

Discovered an issue with the Rampage V Edition 10 motherboard.

There is an issue with the 10 SATA connections, I'm not sure if this is just me, but I've spent 3 hours testing.

• I have 5 SSD's, 2 HDD's hooked up to the motherboard, I have always connected the drives from the top to bottom orientation on the SATA ports.
  
• It seems when I have the drives connected in this way, I'll get a BSOD on startup, Startup failed or freezing load screen.
  
• I tested each drive 1 by 1, and same issue as it seemed like a hard drive issue.
  
• I then switched the orientation of the SATA connections to be from bottom to top.
  
• No longer receive BSOD's on startup.
  
• No other changes were done except for this.
  
• I've restart my computer several times, and have not had any further issues.

Is this an issue which can be resolved via new BIOS drivers? or is this a hardware issue?

My Specs:
Mobo: Asus Rampage V Edition 10
CPU: Intel 5930k
CPU Cooler: NZXT Kraken x52
Mem: 8x8 Corsair Dominator 2400
GPU: 2x Asus Strix 1080 TI OC
PSU: EVGA 1600w Titanium
SSD Boot drive: Samsung EVO 960 NVMe 500gb
HDD 1: 3TB WD Black
HDD 2: 1TB Seagate Black
SSD 1: 480GB SandDisk Extreme
SSD 2: 240GB Corsair
SSD 3: 250GB Samsung EVO
SSD 4: Kingston 240GB

Thanks,

[Korth]

phatec wrote:
I have 5 SSD's, 2 HDD's hooked up to the motherboard, I have always connected the drives from the top to bottom orientation on the SATA ports.

• It seems when I have the drives connected in this way, I'll get a BSOD on startup, Startup failed or freezing load screen.
  
• I tested each drive 1 by 1, and same issue as it seemed like a hard drive issue.
  
• I then switched the orientation of the SATA connections to be from bottom to top.
  
• No longer receive BSOD's on startup.
  

Do all of your drives have active bootable system partitions? Chances are that you've installed your WinOS on one bootable system ( C: ) drive and Windows then automatically configured/mounted all other drives as non-system storage disks. Windows often makes things blurred and complex when swapping drives around from port to port, it puts physical drive IDs and logical drive IDs and all sorts of (permanent or session) tables and boot data onto boot records. Not helped by the fact that Windows also creates an extra (hidden) partition, Recycle Bins and System Volume Information (and other) system folders onto each drive, etc etc.

Just saying that (at least as of Win7/8/10) you can't always expect things to play nice when you move your drive hardware around. Especially when Windows boots and runs from (at least) one of the drives being moved. And especially when multi-drive RAIDs, JBODs, or Microsoft's drive spanning is used. Your weird BSoD startup errors could mean a dozen different things, all caused by Windows halting after not finding system components where it expects them to be. Things get even messier when Windows "migrates" or "locks" parts of itself across multiple drives after attempted WinOS reinstalls/repairs on different drive (mis)configurations - a common scenario when Windows breaks and the user attempts to install Windows again on another drive while keeping the broken-Windows drive installed (to recover data, etc).

Knowing your way around DISKPART can force things to be configured exactly the way you like/need instead of living with a confusing Windows automess. One specific drive which boots the WinOS, no Windows system components littering any of the other drives.
But not knowing your way around DISKPART can irrecoverably destroy all your data.

...

What do you mean by "top to bottom orientation on the SATA ports"? Which SATA ports on page 1-2 of the RVE10 user manual?

Note (on page 1-25) that ASUS describes two groups of SATA6G ports: A (SATA6G_1, SATA6G_2, SATA6G_3, SATA6G_4) and B (SATA6G_5, SATA6G_6, SATA6G_7, SATA6G_8, SATA6G_9, SATA6G_10). A BIOS setting (on page 3-21) allows some SATA ports to be disabled. RAID volumes can support a maximum of 6 drives. And the mobo will always search SATA6G_1 for bootable fixed drive by default (although this can be changed by autodetection and BIOS settings).
All 10 of the 6Gbps SATA 3.x ports on this mobo are serviced through the X99 PCH, without any add-on SATA chips (from ASMedia, etc).

[davemon50]

I know it doesn't resolve your issue, but just for some additional input for you:

I am using 7 of the SATA ports on the R5E10, and have switched around the served devices more than once with no issues. Current configuration is: the first two SATA ports go to SSD's, 2.5" form factor, SATA ports 3 to 5 go to HDD's, and 6 to 7 go to BD players. I boot W10 from an onboard M.2 SSD drive.

I did uninstall previous versions of Windows from the two other 2.5" SSD's. Perhaps that could be your conflict? I haven't had any concerns over bootup in that order, other than the fact that other than the BD players, Windows recognizes the M.2 drive as the last device according to Disk Management. I find that strange but the boot process is unaffected. You might want to re-check your BIOS boot tab settings to see if there's anything fishy going on there.

[phatec]

Korth wrote:
Do all of your drives have active bootable system partitions? Chances are that you've installed your WinOS on one bootable system ( C: ) drive and Windows then automatically configured/mounted all other drives as non-system storage disks.

Hi Korth,

Thanks for your reply. I had installed Windows to one of the drives a while back, and wiped it after I finished with testing on my old system.

Because you mentioned this, I went and checked my drives in the BIOS, I had 1 of the SSD's showing as "Windows OS Boot Drive". Which is odd because all of the drives (including this one) had been wiped clean (showing 0 data on each) prior to imaging the OS on the M.2 SSD.

So for some reason, even though the SSD was deleted, and reformatted, from both the windows install sequence, and while logged into the computer, the SSD was still being recognized as "Windows OS Boot Drive" by the motherboard.

• What I ended up having to do was "delete" the SSD from within the UEFI BIOS, this had wiped the drive properly, and is no longer being recognized as "Windows OS Boot Drive".

Moved my drives back to the normal orientation, and all is working fine.

[red454]

More than once I have had to get into the BIOS to point it to the correct boot drive after a failed start up (after moving drives around). I always panic for a moment, and then realize what happened. Easy fix.