DC P3700 makes my computer reboot over and over (NVMe driver issue?)

[RAlfj]

I got this SSD as a replacement for my old Intel 910 series that failed.

Problem: As soon as the SSD is placed in an available PCIe slot my computer starts an endless loop of rebooting. The LED on the SSD goes from yellow to green and the fans starts spinning, then a second later next reboot.

I get no BIOS screen, no nothing so I'm completely in the dark. I read something about an requierment being UEFI version 2.3.1 but there is no way to get this information from my motherboard (MSI Z77MA-G45 with the latest BIOS version) so I can't confirm nor dismiss this being the issue.

Even unplugged some other hardware to make sure the SSD got enough power with no improvement of the situation...

Any ideas?

[PHans4]

A POST card is a diagnostic card that can display Port80H messages if they are sent over the PCI bus.

Search eBay for: "POST PCIe" for example and you will find several.

Do note that as best they are Mini-PCIe meaning you would need a PCIe > Mini PCIe passive adapter to use such a card with your mainboard...

Oh wait, while writing I found this one, for full size PCIe

http://www.ebay.com/itm/PC-Analysis-Diagnostic-Motherboard-POST-Tester-Card-Computer-PCI-Express-/27... PC Analysis Diagnostic Motherboard Post Tester Card Computer PCI Express | eBay

[RAlfj]

Ok so MSI told me that the NVMe drivers are not supported by my motherboard. I can use the SSD with 1 or 2 memory DIMMs with the catch that I have to load BIOS defaults upon every boot.

With my PC booting BIOS gives me an message that my cpu or memory changed and promt me to enter bios to change my setting or to load bios default. No matter what I do in bios I get the same boot-time message upon every boot.

Is there any solution to this or will I have to return the SSD?

[CChon3]

You will have to paste a non-electrical sticker over one pin to work around this issue.

[RAlfj]

Hello and thanks for your reply. I've read that other thread more thorough and applied this non-official fix.

It works like a charm! Thank you so much! Attaching is an screenshot when I benchmarked all my SSDs.

C: An Intel 520 series, 120Gb

😧 SAMSUNG Evo 850 500Gb

G: Intel DC P3700 400Gb

The differences are insane really! Too bad I can't use the P3700 as system drive... One question thou. In the other thread you state that this workaround is to prevent the SSD from "overwriting the SMBus SPD". What does that actually means and will that have any effect in the long run? I mean the implementation must be there for a reason?

EDIT: I've gotten several BSOD since installing the SSD with the workaround... Any thought about that? :S

EDIT 2: Ok, my PC starts but I cannot copy large chunks of data to the new SSD without getting constant BSODs... Any ideas?

[CChon3]

Your motherboard should be able to use the card as a system drive.

Read this on how to do that:

The speed/timing data of your DIMMs is located somewhere, when the card is plugged into a desktop motherboard, the card overwrites the speed/timing data of DIMM slot B2 with it's own vital product data. This makes the motherboard BIOS confused when it tries to set the DIMM speed on the memory controller based on the speed/timing values that is overwritten by the SSD which is completely invalid for memory.

Do you have a screenshot of the BSOD?