ASRock X99 WS-E Possible SATA Issues

[sloscal1]

I'm having some trouble with ASRock's x99 ws-e board and HDD/SSDs. My first ws-e board (bought Feb 5th) would either fail to complete POST (w/ only HDD in) or hard restart during Windows 7 installation (w/ only SSD in) (as soon as the Windows finished loading files and the startup animation got going). I swapped SATA power/data cables, tried all different SATA ports on the board, all with the same effect.

I RMA'd the board assuming that it was some SATA controller issue, received a replacement and installed the new one. SAME EXACT ISSUE. Now I'm trying to think of other problems it could be and get some diagnostic pointers.

Here's my setup:
ASRock x99 ws-e board
Intel i7 5930K cpu
Corsair AX1500i psu
SanDisk Ultra II 960GB SSD
Corsair Vengeance DDR4 2133 4x16GB (64GB)
Nvidia Titan X 12GB (x2)

I also tried an Intel SSD, Samsung EVO SSD, another SanDisk SSD, and two old HDDs. I'm looking for any advice on UEFI settings or something I may have overlooked in hooking up the mobo. Thanks in advance!

 

[CircuitDaemon]

Have you updated your BIOS? there's a bunch of updates available for your model. Also, could you try doing the Windows setup with only one card Titan X? It shouldn't be a problem, but I saw the changelog for the latest BIOS and it mentions PCI-E compatibility enhancements, which leads me to believe there could be something related since this is an unusual motherboard in terms of ports and other stuff.

 

[sloscal1]

Have you updated your BIOS? there's a bunch of updates available for your model. Also, could you try doing the Windows setup with only one card Titan X? It shouldn't be a problem, but I saw the changelog for the latest BIOS and it mentions PCI-E compatibility enhancements, which leads me to believe there could be something related since this is an unusual motherboard in terms of ports and other stuff.

Thanks, but I just checked and I'm running the latest BIOS version: 1.80. I've also attempted to install windows with just a single Titan X card installed with the same results. If it means anything, while I'm in the UEFI menu system, Dr. Debug displays A6 (error associated with SATA devices).

 

[bambiboom]

I'm having some trouble with ASRock's x99 ws-e board and HDD/SSDs. My first ws-e board (bought Feb 5th) would either fail to complete POST (w/ only HDD in) or hard restart during Windows 7 installation (w/ only SSD in) (as soon as the Windows finished loading files and the startup animation got going). I swapped SATA power/data cables, tried all different SATA ports on the board, all with the same effect.

I RMA'd the board assuming that it was some SATA controller issue, received a replacement and installed the new one. SAME EXACT ISSUE. Now I'm trying to think of other problems it could be and get some diagnostic pointers.

Here's my setup:
ASRock x99 ws-e board
Intel i7 5930K cpu
Corsair AX1500i psu
SanDisk Ultra II 960GB SSD
Corsair Vengeance DDR4 2133 4x16GB (64GB)
Nvidia Titan X 12GB (x2)

I also tried an Intel SSD, Samsung EVO SSD, another SanDisk SSD, and two old HDDs. I'm looking for any advice on UEFI settings or something I may have overlooked in hooking up the mobo. Thanks in advance!

sloscal1,

As the problem is disk system but does not appear to be hardware related, one possibility is settings for drives and storage in BIOS- RST, AHCI, and RAID mode. Perhaps carefully reset everything in BIOS and reformat the C: partition, ensuring that it is marked Active.

This will at least eliminate these as factors in the problem.

Cheers,

BambiBoom

 

[sloscal1]

After an email chain with ASRock's tech support suggested listening to beep codes for each component one at a time and plugging in minimal wires to the motherboard I was able to identify the issue: *HDD led causes a short when activated*. I didn't troubleshoot any further to figure out if it was the case (Corsair Graphite Series 760T) or the board that contained the error, I just left it unplugged and will live without that led.

Thanks to the posters on this thread for their insights.

 

[bicepjai]

I have similar setup, asrock ws-e and titanx 12g with ballistic crucial 32g, I build this rig 2 weeks ago and just updated some sleeved wires, after that i see video card would not output anything. I did test the setup by playing a game before. I was waiting for a replacement on my x-fan which was squeaky. I see the Dr.debug display code a A2, i tried removing sata devices and worked on it, then display shows 99. still no video output yet. i tried switching bios, clear cmos lot of times. any tips. removing the board now out of the case on my water cooled rig might be the worst case scenario.

 

[sloscal1]

I have similar setup, asrock ws-e and titanx 12g with ballistic crucial 32g, I build this rig 2 weeks ago and just updated some sleeved wires, after that i see video card would not output anything. I did test the setup by playing a game before. I was waiting for a replacement on my x-fan which was squeaky. I see the Dr.debug display code a A2, i tried removing sata devices and worked on it, then display shows 99. still no video output yet. i tried switching bios, clear cmos lot of times. any tips. removing the board now out of the case on my water cooled rig might be the worst case scenario.

Does the UEFI screen display, or nothing at all? Does the system stay on and just output nothing to the screen? I'd suggest attempting to reseat the VGA card or check out the wires that you replaced and make sure they're exactly right since that's what changed.

For my issue, the ASRock support emails basically told me to do the following to help rule out various sources of error:
1. Clear CMOS by disconnecting the power, removing the 8 & 24 pin mainboard connectors, removing the battery, shifting the clrcmos jumper to pins 2&3, leaving it for at least 5 seconds and then reversing these steps (clrcmos pins back to 1&2) and trying it out.
2. If that didn't work, they suggested disconnecting everything from the board except CPU, 8 & 24 pin power, case speaker (4 pin connection near the dr. debug, not regular speakers), case power button, and cpu fan (all of these mods should be done with the PSU unplugged). Like you, I have a liquid cooled system so I left everything in the case and also left the pump molex connection in instead of a cpu fan. I just yanked the titan cards and put the rubber pin covers back on them and removed their power cables since I didn't have much play with the tubing. When the system is powered on in this state you should hear 3 long beeps and see dr. debug display 19, 53 or 55.
3. Next, put your RAM in. You should hear 5 long beeps and see d6 then 0d. Note: I heard 10 short beeps at this point and saw d6 then d7 but the tech didn't seem to care.
4. Next, put in the VGA card and then you should hear 1 beep (no keyboard) and see a2, a3, or a6. The screen should show something.
From there, you can put back your HD and hopefully things will just work.

If you do see the UEFI screens but no Windows (or whatever OS you're running) I'd recommend trying to boot from a linux live usb to see if it's potentially an OS driver problem.

 

[bicepjai]

asrock-ws-e is the worst motherboard you can have for a linux installation. They specifically say it doesnt support linux. I have had so many problem and my project finish date has been pushed so many weeks because of this.
Issues i have seen
1. Ubuntu would not recognize keyboards
2. multiple boot drives doesnt work at times
3. even if you get it working, after sometime its gonna show issues.

Just get another motherboard and specifically check if they have linux support to save precious time.