Connecting ssd hd and dvd writer on Maximus Hero VIII

[Bram_de_Gruijte]

HI there, the last time I build a PC was in the Pentium I age, but due to a mishap in pocessor delivery I was forced to assemble my Skylake rig myself. Before booting her up I want to be sure I connected everything in the right way. Altough there's a kind of black and white pocket book that comes with the Mobo, I can't say it's all that explicit to me the least when it comes to connecting an SSD, HD and DVD writer. So we have Sata BG 1 and 2, then the darker coloured Sata Bg_E1 and Bg_E2 ports followed by the Sata Bg 3/4/5/6 ports.
On the mobo it says Sata Express for these 4 ports. (page 32 - 33 of the manual)
Now I connected my SSD (boot) to the Bg1 and the WD Black HD with 64 Mb ssd part to the Bg2 port. My Dvd writer to the Bg E_1
port. Did I do that correct? As the manual doesn't give any advice on this (morons) an no colour pics, it really puzzles me.
The water cooling pump connector I connected to the respective connector on top of the mobo (page 7 and 8 of the manual)
and of course the fans to the 2 connecors to the right of the water pump connector. Okay, please help me with my final check, much appreciated.
Another issue is that the Cooler Master Cosmos SE case comes with 2 standard USB 2.0 and 2 blue coloured 3.0 ports on top of the case, but only a usb 2.0 connector was provided. Sould I buy an extra cable to connect the 3.0 ports I know there's a 3.0 usb connector on the mobo bext to the Sata ports.

[Menthol]

The second set of sata ports are on a Asmedia controller, they should be the last choice for a hard drive, SSD or HDD as they won't operate at the speed the other ports that are on the Intel controller, you can use the sata express ports for any drive the same as any other sata port. If you are using only 2 sticks of RAM they need to be in slots A2 and B2, the lighter colored slots. Why do you have your video card in the second pciex16 slot, I assume for convenience but it only operates as an x8 slot, if you want the video card to run at full x16 it needs to be in the top x16 slot (there will be very little difference in performance from 8x to 16x). I am not familiar with your case, early usb 3 cases included usb 3.0 cables that needed routed out the back of the case and connected in usb 3.0 ports on the back I/O, later cases have an internal cable that connects internally on the motherboard, I would suggest you do some research to find a cable or cables and adapter to connect those ports internally on the motherboard.
Welcome to these forums, please return to share your experience or ask any questions you have, a very good group of knowledgeable people here. and enjoy the speed of your new system

[Bram_de_Gruijte]

Methol, thks 4 your quick reply. As you state that the difference between 16 x and 8x is not a big issue I'll leave the GPU in the second pcie slot for now. For better ventilation and a cleaner layout I put the GPU in the second slot.
As the case has a side window one can appreciate the coloured lights of the motherboard better this way too. But if tests disappoint I'll move the GPU up then.
A2 B2 for memory modules, changed that from A1 B1, thks 🙂
OK, I'm assured I plugged everything in correctly considering the sata ports, thks! I sent Coolermaster a ticket just now to ask why there is no separate usb 3.0 cable included in the Cosmos SE case. Thanks for your reply and welcome to the ROG forum.

[Bram_de_Gruijte]

Long wait, but today I received the molex to sata power cable so I could power the DVD writer. Yet another type of cable from the GTX 970 to the Dell 25" which was fortunately supplied by Dell, else more time wasted on ordering cables LOL.
Well the gaming beast runs fast and cool is the first impression, 2 bad the lights of the CM Cosmos SE Case are blue, I prefer red.
Here you see it, the Skylake next to the Bloomfield. I have to figure out how to get the mem speed to 3 Ghz.
And booting from DVD seems to be an issue as it doesn't recognize the windows 7 DVD, any tips on these issues?

[Menthol]

Read and follow the guide for installing Win 7 otherwise you will not be able to use your USB mouse and keyboard during installation

http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/LGA1151/Z170-K/DE164_100_Series_Windows_7_Setup_Guide_print.pdf

[Bram_de_Gruijte]

thanks again for your tip Menthol, the Skylake is running for a few days now en what a fast and cool and silent PC it is, cpu temp around 36 degrees celcius...gtx 970 around 40 degrees...fans not starting till 60 degrees...nepton fans inaudible...seems I spent 2k euros for the right reason 🙂

[Bram_de_Gruijte]

Well after some time trouble with booting begun as I boot from a Samsung Pro SSD. Of course bad luck that the bios that came with the mobo has a problem with that specific brand and series of SSD's. So after asking technical advice from Asus Holland I downloaded the newest bios for the motherboard, put it on a usb stick and decided to go for the flash option with the system powered down in the specific usb port at the rear of the mobo. After that a random looking series of bootups and shutting down began finished by a correct windows bootup, mission succeeded 🙂 Before that I had to press F2 at startup, then f10 and after the following reboot the system saw the SSD with the system files, else boot up ended in the pc asking for removable media and not going anywhere. But ok, problem solved. At 1 instance 1 week ago the cooling fan of my power supply went crazy, making bad noises along with it. But after rebooting it went to silent operation again and hasn't occured since, seems I won't have to send it in for malfunction. That would have been a setback. My asus dvd writer started appearing and disappearing, randomly opening and closing. Luckily I bought 2 of them, I took the first one out and everything works fine now. Only 13 euros so of no importance. With the former bios my 3000 Mhz dominator platinum mem was limited to 2100 Mhz, I'll correct that too as the new bios should fix that limitation also.

[Bram_de_Gruijte]

regarding connecting an ssd, I just saw this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uMM3p9zfXI video on youtube where an asus representative in Germany explains the highlights of the Maximus VII Hero, mentioning the M.2 ssd connection (2:04) which makes data transfer of up to 2Gb/sec possible. Ouch why didn't Asus emphasize on that, I would have bought the M2 SSD 4 shure. From a recent PC World test I understood that the Samsung SM951 AHCI/NVMe would do best. What suits the mobo is not clear but I'll check the manual for that. Hm ok, NVME is fastest, but the bios should recognize it....there we go again or perhaps, not. Doest the latest bios support it?? hmm reading this M.2 doesn't seem very interesting on this mobo after all http://www.hardwareluxx.de/community/f15/m-2-schnittstelle-beim-asus-maximus-vii-hero-1034031.html

[Bram_de_Gruijte]

I recently flashed the bios to the latest 2902 version solving the problem with not booting from my samsung pro ssd which the former bios only saw after a reboot. Now the system runs fine and boots up fast. I used the ez tweak menu, set it on game pc and after 2 mousklicks there it was, 4150 Mhz CPU speed. Ok I thought, so easy and effortless let's correct the Mem speed then I have 16 Gb of Corsair 3 Mhz DDr4 lined up which the bios lists at
the standaard speed of 2166 Mhz. In the mem menu I kept everything on auto, set the disired mem speed to 3000 Mhz and set the overclock profile to watercooled cpu (ttf 2 or something) . The bios asks: start tuning y/n ok sure, y, hm what followed was my rig rattling along for 5 mins, after that i shut it totally down including removing the power chord for 2 mins to have a full power down. Well, that was a shock, the system refused booting. Ok, I fixed it by plugging in the usb stick with the latest bios file at the bios update port, takes just a minute, then the rig was booting up as it should. But ok, big fun 1 wrong setting and the bios is corrupted...something to work on asus?! With an overclockers Mobo one should be able to experiment without being thrown out directly shouldn't one rofl. Which leads also to the manual, why not elaborate on what one may expect, for instance, when activating the tuning option, how should the PC respond and how long does it take to complete...in my case I shut it down ater 5 mins of just rattling along, I don't want to waste my expensive rig....some better instructions could be very assuring & helpful here is my point of vieuw. Also, many functions in the manual are not explained to their consequences, I can see myself in the bios screen that one can select Y or No but what does it do to my system? Or go launch some nice instructions on youtube for my sake.

[Chino]

Bram de Gruijter wrote:
I recently flashed the bios to the latest 2902 version solving the problem with not booting from my samsung pro ssd which the former bios only saw after a reboot. Now the system runs fine and boots up fast. I used the ez tweak menu, set it on game pc and after 2 mousklicks there it was, 4150 Mhz CPU speed. Ok I thought, so easy and effortless let's correct the Mem speed then I have 16 Gb of Corsair 3 Mhz DDr4 lined up which the bios lists at
the standaard speed of 2166 Mhz. In the mem menu I kept everything on auto, set the disired mem speed to 3000 Mhz and set the overclock profile to watercooled cpu (ttf 2 or something) . The bios asks: start tuning y/n ok sure, y, hm what followed was my rig rattling along for 5 mins, after that i shut it totally down including removing the power chord for 2 mins to have a full power down. Well, that was a shock, the system refused booting. Ok, I fixed it by plugging in the usb stick with the latest bios file at the bios update port, takes just a minute, then the rig was booting up as it should. But ok, big fun 1 wrong setting and the bios is corrupted...something to work on asus?! With an overclockers Mobo one should be able to experiment without being thrown out directly shouldn't one rofl. Which leads also to the manual, why not elaborate on what one may expect, for instance, when activating the tuning option, how should the PC respond and how long does it take to complete...in my case I shut it down ater 5 mins of just rattling along, I don't want to waste my expensive rig....some better instructions could be very assuring & helpful here is my point of vieuw. Also, many functions in the manual are not explained to their consequences, I can see myself in the bios screen that one can select Y or No but what does it do to my system? Or go launch some nice instructions on youtube for my sake.

The fastest way to get your RAM running at its advertised speed is enabling XMP in the BIOS.