[SOLVED] ASUS MoBo can't see SSD in M.2_1. "INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE" in M.2_3

[BigSalt64]

Specs:
Intel Core i7-13700K 3.4 GHz 16-Core Processor
Asus PRIME H670-PLUS D4 ATX LGA1700 Motherboard (BIOS ver 2014)
Samsung 980 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive
EVGA FTW3 ULTRA GAMING GeForce RTX 3070 8 GB Video Card
EVGA SuperNOVA 650 G5 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX PSU
Windows 10

Recently my computer has started booting straight into BIOS. I can see in BIOS that my SSD (which was previously working as my boot device) is no longer listed as a bootable device, and doesn't seem to be detected at all. I tried to reinstall Windows, but not even the windows installer could see the SSD. I bought a new SSD (Western Digital Black SN850 500GB) thinking that was the issue, but the new one was also not seen in BIOS or in the Windows installer. I tried moving the SSDs around to different M.2 slots and found that when the Samsung is in M.2_3 it can be seen in the BIOS and is listed under "bootable devices", but when I try to boot to Windows I get the BSOD with the error message "INACCESSABLE_BOOT_DEVICE", and it still can't be seen by the Windows installer, even when BIOS sees it. Any ideas?

 

[Lutfij]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

Can you state what the BIOS version for your motherboard is at this moment of time? Also,. if you ended up getting the K suffix processor, you should've looked into the Z series chipset. Might want to see if the drive works in another, donor, known working system. If the drive is under warranty, get it RMA'd.

 

[BigSalt64]

Welcome to the forums, newcomer!

Can you state what the BIOS version for your motherboard is at this moment of time? Also,. if you ended up getting the K suffix processor, you should've looked into the Z series chipset. Might want to see if the drive works in another, donor, known working system. If the drive is under warranty, get it RMA'd.

Current BIOS is ver 2014. I should maybe mention that I recently upgraded my CPU and added a GPU. Prior to the i7 I was running a 12th gen i5 with an iGPU in place of the 3070. The system was running fine for 2 weeks after installing everything though, so I don't think it has to do with the upgrades, but maybe.

 

[Lutfij]

Make and model of your PSU and it's age?

 

[BigSalt64]

Make and model of your PSU and it's age?

EVGA SuperNOVA 650 G5 650 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply
it's less than a year old

Edilt: for faster reference I just edited my original post to include the extra info

 

[BigSalt64]

My friend has a theory:
"What actually happend is: something blew up on the SSD which caused 2 power lines to short circuit, meaning that lets say the Power from the 5V Rail went onto the 3V Rail, which broke the PCH. However there is a chance that it didnt stop there and went right trough the PCH to the CPU and killed both.
Another theory that it could be both is basically the other way around, the new i7 killed the PCH and the PCH the SSD."

Going from the SSD makes more sense to me. When I pulled out the SSD for the first time after it stopped being recognized I saw that the silicone that stuck it to the mobo's heatsink was like goo and completely off the SSD. So maybe the SSD was in there naked and got too hot which caused a short and broke the PCH and (please god no) the relevant portion of the CPU as well?

 

[BigSalt64]

Another thing maybe worth mentioning is that I had a wired keyboard that i would use to enter BIOS but i wanted to use a wireless one, so i turned off fast boot in order to be able to use my wireless keyboard for the BIOS hotkey. The reason this might be important is I've read that power off settings are different depending on whether you have fast boot on or off, and one of them requires the PSU to maintain a really low power level when you shut down the machine that some PSUs can't handle. So maybe I changed the boot configuration and my PSU couldn't handle the low power level?

 

[BigSalt64]

Another update: The MoBo manual identifies 2 different types of M.2 slots. M.2_1 is listed under "Intel 12th Gen Processors". M.2_2 and M.2_3 are listed under "Intel H670 Chipset". The slot that I originally had the Samsung SSD in was M.2_1. This is the slot that isn't working any more. The M.2_3 slot will show the Samsung SSD in BIOS. M.2_2 doesn't show anything.

 

[BigSalt64]

Update: I ordered a new MoBo and the problem was fixed. I'm assuming this means the M.2 slot itself was bad.