Question ASRock X399 motherboard - - - plugging in a third SSD has turned off one of the other two ?

[cadbot]

Hello,

I originally had an m.2 SSD in slots m2_1 and m2_2. Today I picked up a third ssd and put it in the empty m2_3 slot. It turned off one of the other two slots (not sure which. I can determine if that matters). Now one of the original two works and m2_3 works. When I removed m2_3 the other two slots both worked.

All 3 slots and all m.2 ssds at least partially work and and individually work. Oddly they don't work all together at the same time.

Manual mentions something about the u2_1 slot turning off m.2 slots but nothing is plugged in there. The only change I made was using the 3rd M.2 slot.
Removing new SSD from the 3rd slot returned normal operation to the original slot.

I turned off XMP on my mobo just in case that was the cause. No dice

Any suggestions?

Thanks!



MOBO manual: https://download.asrock.com/Manual/X399 Taichi.pdf

 

[Lutfij]

Can you list the make and model of all the M.2 SSD's you've got at your disposal? As for your motherboard, can you also state what your current BIOS version is on your motherboard?

 

[cadbot]

Hello,

The new m.2: SAMSUNG 980 PRO SSD with Heatsink 2TB PCIe Gen 4 NVMe M.2 Internal Solid State Drive

The old ones are both 970 EVOs. One 1tb the other 2Tb. I'll go check the bios version

Update: it says UEFI Version X399 Taichi 93.60

Thanks!

 

[Misgar]

You might have to remove one of your PCIe cards to get all three M.2 drives working.

There are only so many PCIe lanes in from the CPU and chipset to share out amongst plug in cards, M.2 drives, internal and external ports, etc. Some combinations are impossible.

Check your mobo manual carefully in the section that describes M.2 drives. You may find one of your M.2 sockets shares lanes with a PCIe X4 socket.

 

[cadbot]

I see. So even though I might not be out of total PCIe lanes, some of the m.2 sockets might be trying to use particular lanes already in use.

 

[cadbot]

I figured it out.

I did uninstall the wifi module and it worked... but that was a red herring. I noticed the true problem was the m.2 standoff was missing... so the m.2 was screwed directly into the board. This must have caused a short that caused the other one not to work. That's a little odd, as you'd figure it would short itself and not a different component.

This got me on the right track regardless. All my components are working now. Thanks!