GA-X170 BIOS Nightmares

[gamefixated]

I have installed a single M.2 SSD PCIe (Samsung 950 Pro) on the motherboard (there are 2 M.2 slots on this board). The BIOS then proceeds to disable most of the SATA ports on the C236 controller. There are 4 tables (see attached) in the manual on page 31 that lists the options depending on if the SSD is installed in the M2D or M2H slot or whether AHCI or RAID is configured. Only one of them seems to be correct. For the SSD in M2D, SATA ports 4 & 5 work. Hurrah! 2 ports won't support RAID 5 though on my HDD's. Even RAID 0 & 1 won't work because the BIOS ignores my selection to boot from the M.2 SDD with windows and tries to boot from my uninitialized RAID volume.

When the SSD is installed in the M2H slot, SATA ports 0-5 should work in AHCI mode and ports 0-4 should work in RAID. No ports work!

Is this BIOS screwed up or is my understanding of these tables flawed.

[TinkerToyTech]

Re: GA-X170 BIOS Nightmares

I have installed a single M.2 SSD PCIe (Samsung 950 Pro) on the motherboard (there are 2 M.2 slots on this board). The BIOS then proceeds to disable most of the SATA ports on the C236 controller. There are 4 tables (see attached) in the manual on page 31 that lists the options depending on if the SSD is installed in the M2D or M2H slot or whether AHCI or RAID is configured. Only one of them seems to be correct. For the SSD in M2D, SATA ports 4 & 5 work. Hurrah! 2 ports won't support RAID 5 though on my HDD's. Even RAID 0 & 1 won't work because the BIOS ignores my selection to boot from the M.2 SDD with windows and tries to boot from my uninitialized RAID volume.

When the SSD is installed in the M2H slot, SATA ports 0-5 should work in AHCI mode and ports 0-4 should work in RAID. No ports work!

Is this BIOS screwed up or is my understanding of these tables flawed.

Depending on which MSATA you use for your 950 PRO you will get ZERO or 4 sata ports is the experience I have with the GA-Z170X-UD5 motherboard with a 6700K CPU. Try moving your ssd to the other port, and I then got 4 ports to work.

-TinkerToyTech

[gamefixated]

Re: GA-X170 BIOS Nightmares

Depending on which MSATA you use for your 950 PRO you will get ZERO or 4 sata ports is the experience I have with the GA-Z170X-UD5 motherboard with a 6700K CPU. Try moving your ssd to the other port, and I then got 4 ports to work.

-TinkerToyTech

TinkerToyTech,

I trust you mean M.2 connector since MSATA is a different form factor. I have tried both connectors. On the M2D connector, I get 2 SATA ports on the C236. This connector is shown to only use 2xPCIe lanes which maxes out the SSD anyway. If I use the M2H connector, which has full 4xPCIe connected, I get ZERO available ports on the C236. The BIOS will not detect any drive on any port on the C236. Like your board, mine also has an Asmedia ASM1061 chip which provides 2 more SATA ports. The BIOS will detect HDDs on the Asmedia, but unfortunately no RAID is available and certainly not RAID5 with only 2 ports!

I can understand that there are limited high speed Serdes lanes coming off the C236 (can either be used for PCIe or SATA) so when the M2D connector is used, 2 less lanes are available for SATA. FYI, I have designed chips with Serdes. This isn't rocket science.

I think this is a BAD BIOS.

Do you have RAID installed with a M.2 PCIe SSD?

Dave