Question Really Weird Issue with Newly Built PC (PLS HELP)

[Krimblebapp]

TLDR: My M.2 boot drive is not always showing up in the bios, and I have no idea why. Sometimes the PC will boot straight to windows and be fine and stable, and other times it will go straight to the bios and the boot drive will be missing in the bios(read below for full, important details).

Main Specs List: Ryzen 7 7800x3d, MSI B650 MPG Carbon Wifi, RTX 4080 Super Gaming X Trio, NZXT Kraken Elite 280, 32GB of Corsair Vengeance CL30 RGB ram at 6000 mhz, 2tb Samsung 980 pro (weird drive, boot drive also), 1tb Samsung 980 pro, Corsair RM850E 2023, Windows 10 Home.

So I finished building my first pc last night and the work was largely done by a technician who I hired due to a lack of confidence in my own abilities. For the most part everything was excellent, the cable management is top notch, and the pc looks and runs amazing when it actually works.

However, when we got to the stage of the first proper boot with all components installed, the 2tb 980 pro wouldn't show up in the bios, or as an eligible boot drive for installing windows. He then went in the bios and enabled RAID and this seemed to fix the issue (it didn't actually). After this I got on with the usual installation and setup process and he left, as everything seemed fine.

In the process of installing everything I had to restart quite a few times and this would almost always boot straight to the bios, but I just assumed this was due to the AMD expo orange light dram nonsense.


Once everything was setup, I played a variety of games for around 2.5 hours and there were no stability or performance issues whatsoever, and temps were more than fine.

As of now, when I boot up there seems to be a completely random chance for the boot to go completely fine and windows to start as normal, but most of the time the pc will boot straight to the bios and the 980 pro 2tb boot drive will be missing from the bios and M.2_1 slot it is connected to will display "not present" while the other ssd in M.2_4 is fine. The bios was updated to the latest stable version before anything was really installed and I can confirm that this bios update did work.

I am completely at a loss for what could be causing this, as the pc is able to boot and is completely stable when it does, ruling out the possibility of a dodgy connection in my mind (but I could be wrong).

Any help would be greatly appreciated, as I am quite scared :/

 

[Ralston18]

Did/does that technician offer any warranty on his work?

If so, he should be contacted accordingly but may be able to claim that what you have done voided any warranties.

RAID is obsolete and I would not expect "RAID" to be a solution for any home PC.

This:

"Sometimes the PC will boot straight to windows and be fine and stable, and other times it will go straight to the bios and the boot drive will be missing in the bios".

Intermittent drive connectivity suggests, to me, that there is likely a loose connector involved.

Look in Reliability History/Monitor at the next sucessful boot. Any error codes, warnings, or informational events that you can attribute to the times that boot up failed?

May be nothing there if Windows did not get far enough along to even capture an error. Still worth a look.

 

[Krimblebapp]

Did/does that technician offer any warranty on his work?

If so, he should be contacted accordingly but may be able to claim that what you have done voided any warranties.

RAID is obsolete and I would not expect "RAID" to be a solution for any home PC.

This:

"Sometimes the PC will boot straight to windows and be fine and stable, and other times it will go straight to the bios and the boot drive will be missing in the bios".

Intermittent drive connectivity suggests, to me, that there is likely a loose connector involved.

Look in Reliability History/Monitor at the next sucessful boot. Any error codes, warnings, or informational events that you can attribute to the times that boot up failed?

May be nothing there if Windows did not get far enough along to even capture an error. Still worth a look.

He has a 2 year guarantee on his work, and I have been texting him since and he is looking into stuff over the weekend for further discussions when he is back to work on Monday.

The strange thing is that I am typing this very message from the same PC right now, so there doesn't appear to be any transient faults in the connectivity of the SSD, as the PC has been running for well over an hour now without issue. This is what makes the issue really weird to me, as on continuous restarts the pc will fail to boot to windows more often than not.

May be worth noting that I attempted to install the Samsung NVME drivers, but it yields this message:
Samsung NVM Express Device is not connected. Connect the device and try again.

 

[Ralston18]

Intermittent problems are difficult to troubleshoot.

If any given device appears and disappears (apparently at random) my first suspect is the physical connection(s).

No one wants to force anything especially with a new build. So what feels tight and secure may not truly be so.

If I were the technician I would power down and unplug the computer.

Then, carefully unplug and replug, or seat and reseat, everything a few times. Something that originally seemed okay may suddenly go into place much more smoothly and securely.

And use a bright flashlight while doing so to inspect connectors, slots, pins, etc. for signs of damage.