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Asus Z87-A disaster

J

Jmucker

n00b
Joined
Dec 9, 2013
Messages
32
Recently picked up a Asus z87A with the Intel Core i5-4670K Haswell 3.4GHz.

(Running 8 Gig's of Gskill ram)

My nightmare starts at the BIOS screen: only detects one SSD (out of two). It randomly decides not to find either of the SSD's periodically. These drives are 100% fine and worked on my last build (yesterday) and I have new cables.

Any ideas?

I can't "update the bios" because my board came with the newest build. 1707.

Thank you in advance.

BTW also searched the forums, nothing seems to describe this specific problem.
 
Have you tried clearing the BIOS and load "Optimized Default"?

If that doesn't help, insert them in different port and see if makes any difference. If nothing helps, exchange it for a different board. That board might be bad.
 
I could try that.

The thing is I haven't messed with any BIOS options at all.

Tried the port thing too. 1-2 seem to have better results than 3-4.

How can something work 40% of the time? lol
 
20120920_the-police-ghost-in-the-machine_33.jpg
 
Do any of these SSDs happen to be older drives? What drives are they?

The Z87 chipset is 'stricter' with enforcing the SATA standards which some older drives don't 100% conform to. This may be the cause of the SSDs being randomly detected.

Quoting from the [H] Z87 A review fyi:

I did have one issue with the Z87-A, as well as every other Z87 chipset motherboard we have used so far. My "old" 120GB Corsair F120 SSDs that we have used for testing motherboards caused big issues. On the ASUS Z87 motherboards, the F120 drives would work, but could be slow or not recognized, or cause boot issues, or simply not been seen by the BIOS or the OS. Plugging the Corsair F120 SSDs into the Intel motherboard shipped with the Core i7-4770K left us with nothing. The Intel motherboard would not see these drives at all. I reported this back to ASUS and it replicated the issue in-house and sent us over a Beta BIOS (as referred to earlier) that fixed the issue. We had already moved onto putting new Samsung Pro SSDs into commission by then as our testing platform needed to be updated and we needed to get to work on Haswell. Letting Intel know about this problem it originally expressed it had not seen any issues, but later came back to say:

We have seen some older SATA 2 devices that are out of spec (8-series has tighter tolerances to specs as platform power is much lower – but fully complies with all SATA specs) and have intermittent behavior, we are investigating whether this particular drive is one of those.

Obviously Intel is aware of a "problem" internally, although the fault may not be on its end.

Doing a bit of digging we found that some 1200 and 1600 series SandForce controllers are not fully SATA specification compliant and the previous Intel chipsets allowed for this out of spec behavior. It seems that the Z87 will not allow for this as it requires "strict adherence to the SATA specification." We did test the workaround BIOS that ASUS sent us without issues using the older F120 SSDs that employ the Sandforce 1200 controller. So obviously, this will have to be solved at a motherboard BIOS level and something to keep in mind if you have older SATA 2 SSD drives. This issue does not seem to be "widespread" though as Intel sent us a chart that contains many SATA 2 drives that have been verified to work fine with Z87 chipsets.
Click to expand...
 
First drive is :

G.SKILL Sniper Gaming Series FM-25S2S-120GBSR

Second drive is an older 160GB SATA 5400rpm (I'd have to lookup the brand name)

So to answer your question, I'd say they are older and most likely out of spec.

I'd love to see the list of SSD's that work effectively so I can grab one...
 
Do you have them both plugged into the Intel controller?..........I believe that board has an additional Sata controller. Check your bios in 'Peripherals' and see if there's an Asmedia or Marvell Sata controller.
 
Jmucker said:
It randomly decides not to find either of the SSD's periodically. These drives are 100% fine and worked on my last build (yesterday) and I have new cables.
Click to expand...

Jmucker said:
First drive is :

G.SKILL Sniper Gaming Series FM-25S2S-120GBSR

Second drive is an older 160GB SATA 5400rpm (I'd have to lookup the brand name)
Click to expand...
Hello

The FM-25S2S-120GBSR uses a SandForce SF-1200 and is not compatible with the Haswell chipset. The second listed drive is not a SSD as SSDs do not have any moving parts to attach a rotational value to.
 
Jmucker said:
First drive is :

G.SKILL Sniper Gaming Series FM-25S2S-120GBSR

Second drive is an older 160GB SATA 5400rpm (I'd have to lookup the brand name)

So to answer your question, I'd say they are older and most likely out of spec.

I'd love to see the list of SSD's that work effectively so I can grab one...
Click to expand...

I'm sorry, to clarify -- I meant that older SSDs are the one that maybe outside SATA spec.

The Z87 Chipset doesn't seem to have problems with old hard disks.

mothman said:
Do you have them both plugged into the Intel controller?..........I believe that board has an additional Sata controller. Check your bios in 'Peripherals' and see if there's an Asmedia or Marvell Sata controller.
Click to expand...

Jmucker said:
The intel controller is the one that's double stacked right?
Click to expand...

There isn't any asmedia/marvell SATA controller on the Z87 A. All SATA ports on the board are from the Z87 chipset.

jkramp said:
Hello

The FM-25S2S-120GBSR uses a SandForce SF-1200 and is not compatible with the Haswell chipset. The second listed drive is not a SSD as SSDs do not have any moving parts to attach a rotational value to.
Click to expand...

In this case, the OP is using an incompatible drive. The motherboard isn't at fault -- the SSD is and it's a design issue.

At this point, the Crucial M500 and the Samsung 840 Evo are great budget choices as consumer drives. Get whichever is cheaper.
 
I have this mobo and zero problems with seagate 840 pro ssd and seagate 2tb data drive
 
@Jkramp : The FM-25S2S-120GBSR is working right now about 60% of the time.

I don't understand how that could be the case -

Either its compatible and finds the drive, or it's not.

Unless the world is against me!
 
Conclusion :

Managed to get both drives to boot (for once)

Copying all my files off my old drive. Ditching it. Buying one off the "approved" list.

Praying it finds it 100% in the BIOS.

Thanks for all the help guys! :)
 
Hah, just the other night I was hanging around at tweaktown gigabyte forums and was catching wind of Z87 and older sandforce SSD's that did exactly what you got going on.

I've had no drive problems on my Z87 platform with a Samsung 830 SSD 128GB. Sandisk Extreme 240GB and 2x 2TB Seagate drives. I'd approve those. Now my ram and SLI on the other hand...
 
Jmucker said:
@Jkramp : The FM-25S2S-120GBSR is working right now about 60% of the time.

I don't understand how that could be the case -

Either its compatible and finds the drive, or it's not.

Unless the world is against me!
Click to expand...
Hello

This is the behavior seen with SSDs using the SandForce 12xx/15xx series controllers. This incompatibility was announce before Haswell was released.
 
FWIW Intel 540 240 GB don't have any problem, also Seagate600 240 GB Looks like all the well established name brands are clearing stock on most SSD's.

Also running a Mushkin Chronos Delux 256GB on a P5B Delux with no problem over 2 years now.
 
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