Occasionally appears in M.2 slots
Occasionally appears in M.2 slots
I recently switched from a gigabyte B450M to a MAI B550M motherboard because the B450 only offered two DIMM slots and I needed to upgrade my RAM from 16GB to 32GB for my home PC. Despite this, I’m encountering a problem where the issue seems similar to others but no one with an identical setup has reported it. I’m using an Intel 660P 1TB M.2 as my Windows boot drive, but in either of the M.2 slots on this board it appears only about a third of the time. All other components—four data drives (two HDDs and two SSDs)—function normally, and I’ve tested it on different motherboards, including a Gigabyte MX series and an ASRock ITX model without issues. I suspect the problem lies with the motherboard itself. I tried reinserting the drive between Gen 3 and Gen 4 slots, updated the BIOS to the latest version from MSI, and attempted to update the Intel M.2 firmware, but the drive still doesn’t appear during boot. It seems like a common issue with MSI boards, though most users report that BIOS updates often resolve such problems. Any advice would be greatly appreciated as this is quite frustrating.
You have your RTX 2070 in the top 16x lane, and both 4x slots are free. The lowest 16x slot you’re referring to is likely just an 8x slot.
This suggests there might be a faulty board or drive. It could also relate to the CPU, like a lane problem, though that seems unlikely. You might want to verify the mounting pressure.
It's actually four times the size and when the M.2 is connected, they clash with each other. I'm using a bigger B550 ATX board and haven't had any problems with M.2 yet. I've also switched to MSI's AGESA 1.0.0.2. Perhaps reinstalling Windows could help.
It’s 10pm now, so I plan to reposition the CPU in the morning and reinstall the AIO pump/coldplate. If that doesn’t resolve the issue, I’ll attempt to update the AGESA since there doesn’t appear to be much information on the MSIs website for this board. This situation is unusual because I’ve used the same drive, CPU, and GPU setup across three boards previously—two of them functioned perfectly fine. If it continues to fail, I might have to return the board and endure working with maximum RAM for a few more weeks. When it does boot, it’s stable as well; it ran for 12 hours straight yesterday without any problems.
I just repositioned the CPU, reattached the cooler, and it’s now functioning perfectly. Thank you so much! I wouldn’t have considered it before, but it saved me from having to send the board back for repair.