My Intel 750 NVME 1.2TB SSD experience on Rampage IV Black - it works great!

[Intel_of_Borg]

I had a couple of initial issues getting the Intel 750 NVME 1.2TB SSD going but I got there in the end with a bit of PCIE slot juggling.

Here's a bit more background first - just in case it's relevant for others.

Windows 10 Pro 1607 64bit (anniversary edition - was a clean build from USB image about 4 weeks ago (mid july 2016)

Rampage IV Black running bios 0801

Intel 4960X @ 4.8Ghz

16GB Corsair Dominator 2000Mhz Ram (4 sticks)

2 x Sandisk Extreme 120GB SSD running RAID 0 on Intel ports 1+2 - GPT formatted NTFS boot / OS disk (with 450MB recovery partition / 100MB EFI partition / ~ 200GB OS/data partition)

4 x Sandisk Extreme 120GB SSD running RAID 0 on Intel ports 3-6 - GPT formatted NTFS data disk

1 x Bluray Drive on a third party SATA port.

Asus Essence STX II 7.1 sound card

2 x SLI GTX 1080 (MSI Seahawk EK X watercooled)


When I recently upgraded from 4way SLI GTX 580s (PCIE 2.0 cards) to 2way SLI GTX1080 (PCIE 3.0 cards) I had a small issue too.

With my configuration as per below with the new GTX 1080s I couldn't get my add-in Asus STX II sound card to work without disabling onboard realtek sound card. (more on that in a minute)

Original GTX 580 4 x SLI Configuration

CPU 4960X

slot1 x16 > GTX580 @PCIE2

slot2 x8 > GTX580 @PCIE2

slot3 x1 -

slot4 x8 > GTX580 @PCIE2

slot5 x1 > Asus Xonar Essence STX II @PCIE2

slot6 x8 > GTX 580 @PCIE2


GTX1080 2 x SLI Configuration (pre Intel 750 install)


CPU 4960X

slot1 x16 > GTX1080 @PCIE3

slot2 x8 > GTX1080 @PCIE3

slot3 x1 -

slot4 x8 -

slot5 x1 > Asus Xonar Essence STX II @PCIE2

slot6 x8 -

So without moving anything and with the realtek onboard soundcard disable the above was working fine.

------------

Then I tried installing the Intel 750 in slot 6 as per below... hmmm no green power led on SSD..


CPU 4960X

slot1 x16 > GTX1080 @PCIE3

slot2 x8 > GTX1080 @PCIE3

slot3 x1 -

slot4 x8 -

slot5 x1 > Asus Xonar Essence STX II @PCIE2

slot6 x8 > Intel 750 1.2TB NVME SSD @PCIE3

Then I moved the Intel 750 SSD to slot 4 and the green led powered on!....

But... Now my front USB ports stopped working... (It's not the Intel SSD that stopped the ports working - it's a limitation of the motherboard PCIE lane assignments- so I moved the keyboard/mouse wireless receivers to other USB ports)

So the final working layout is below


CPU 4960X

slot1 x16 > GTX1080 @PCIE3

slot2 x8 > GTX1080 @PCIE3

slot3 x1 -

slot4 x8 > Intel 750 1.2TB NVME SSD @PCIE3

slot5 x1 > Asus Xonar Essence STX II @PCIE2

slot6 x8 -





So after all that slot fiddling I then:

Set the bios to CSM disabled - rebooted

If you scroll right over to the right in the bios menu and keep going you'll see two Intel NVME bios entries, one shows the nvme and drive settings showing it running @ x4 PCIe3 speed and the other shows more detailed drive information. (nothing to change here - but at least the bios sees it!)


I then booted into windows installed the Intel NVME drivers 1.7.0.1002 x32-x64

I then installed the Intel 3.3.6 SSD toolbox and flashed the firmware on the drive to 8EV10174.

Rebooted

Intel SSD appeared in windows and I initialized and formatted ran AIDA64 disk benches and got 2800MB/s reads and 1000MB/s writes - All good!

Then all I did was clone my 2x Sandisk 120GB SSDs running in RAID 0 formatted with GPT NTFS on the motherboard Intel ports 1+2 to the new Intel 750 1.2TB NVME SSD with the trial version of Macrium reflect. (cloned the whole disk including EFI and rescue partitions - it was really fast!)

Then resized the Intel SSD with windows disk manager to take up the rest of the spare space on the drive (from 240GB > ~1TB formatted)

Shutdown

unplugged power to the old Sandisk SATA SSDs

Rebooted straight into windows on the new Intel 750 1.2TB NVME SSD - no other changes required.

Performance with AS SSD is 2080MB/s read 1064MB/s write

Happy camper! ;D

BTW - here's my build log. http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=1194974