I am building a new PC, based on the Intel I7-6770K and Z170 chipset, using a Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Designare. I have a problem and could use some guidance whether this is related to lane configuration, or if the motherboard seems just broken.
In that MB are:
- One U.2 connected Intel 750 1.2TB disk by the on-board U.2 connector
- One EVGA GTX970 Graphics card in the x16 PCIe slot (only slot used)
- Three Samsung 2TB 850 EVO SSD's connected to SATA ports
There are no other add-on boards or cards. The 750 is attached to a native U.2 port (one reason I bought this board is it had a native U.2 port, not needing a daughter card).
I am not overclocking. It has 64GB G.Skill 3000mhz memory running at the native 2133mhz at present.
The built in Intel graphics card is enabled but not in use. The two Intel NIC ports are enabled but only one in use. Thunderbolt is disabled (mostly to eliminate it as an issue).
There are 6 built in SATA ports. In this configuration the manual calls for ports 2 and 3 to not be available (lanes consumed by the U.2 port) and indeed that is true, I cannot use 2 and 3.
The power supply (Silverstone 520W fanless) was working in another PC, I swapped it to this one because I like the silence. So I have reason to believe the PSU is stable and working.
My issue is that ports 0 and 1 are not working either. They are not, however, completely disabled - they are flakey. SATA port 0 will sometimes work for a few minutes, show the disk, then hang. Port 1 will almost never (maybe always never but I think I may have seen it once) show a disk at all.
The normal symptoms of connecting an SSD to those ports are:
Bios will not show the drive in the SATA configuration at all, 90% of the time, though occasionally it shows up.
Bios RAID setup will usually show the drive (though the SATA configuration does not), but it is not usable. Sometimes it will not show up either.
Attempts at using the drive if seen, e.g. in windows, will just lock the drive up - event logs show warnings of resets, drive 100% busy in task manager, no access of any kind works, power off required (shutdown will hang).
I have used all three SSD's in all configurations and swapped cables, and also tried additional cables, different power cords, etc, hours of experimentation. It is definitely specific to the ports, with ports 4 and 5 occupied, the drives are completely stable over hours of running, benchmarks, formatting, etc. Port 0 has never run more than about 2 minutes when it would run at all.
I've reset the MB bios to defaults, tried various changes with no impact.
Here's my root question - after a lot of reading I THINK That these should work, that the U.2 port should only affect two ports 2 and 3. My GUESS is that this is a hardware or firmware issue, not something I can fix. But there's a lot of contradictory information about how lane assignments work, how GPU's impact the storage lanes (my take is they do not, for a single x16 GPU), and even in several places whether the NIC's affect the SATA ports.
Does anyone have solid knowledge of how this should work? Am I over-committed on lanes in some fashion? Is there some way to ensure I do not have some conflict I am not thinking of?
Or do I just have a non-working motherboard?
PS. The Intel 750 in the U.2 port is working fine, it has not had any issues during all the experimentation.