Intel SSD 750 & RAMPAGE IV BLACK EDITION

[NPano2]

I have a RAMPAGE IV BLACK EDITION motherboard and after reading about it a bought an Intel 750 Series HHHL (CEM2.0) 400GB PCIe NVMe 3.0 x4 MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) SSDPEDMW400G4R1.

My mistake... 😞

After failing to boot from SSD… at Intel site I noticed the "Before you Buy" link that says:

A system based on an Intel® Z97 Chipset or an Intel® X99 Chipset.

My question: Is Intel going to support X79 chipsets in nearby future or I have to sell my NEW SSD 750 because a can't boot from it?

Is there any other way I can boot from Intel 750 SSD with my Asus RAMPAGE IV BLACK EDITION motherboard Intel® X79 Express Chipset.

Thank you all in advance

[skeal]

one caveat, tip works very well for windows 7 and 8 but limited in windows 10. The clone I did was from a hard drive that was running windows 10 partitioned in MBR and not the new GPT format of windows 10. While the drive does work I had the same problem as with my previous HD - it would not install the November 2015 windows 10 update. For that you need to install fresh from USB. I does update all other patches from Microsoft though. I tried to convert to partition to GPT and diskpart format into NTFS instead of FAT32 but that didn't work. In the end I just got the ISO from microsoft - google media creation tool - I did a fresh install and everything worked from the start without the need to tweek the partition or fix the boot

[idata]

Thanks for sharing, gave me the confidence to go ahead and buy an Intel 1.2TB 750.

I had a couple of initial issues specific to my configuration that I thought may help others with the same Rampage IV Black.

Here's a bit more background first - just in case it's relevant.

Windows 10 Pro 1607 64bit (anniversary edition - was a clean build from USB image about 4 weeks ago (mid july 2016)

Rampage IV Black running bios 0801

Intel 4960X @ 4.8Ghz

16GB Corsair Dominator 2000Mhz Ram (4 sticks)

2 x Sandisk Extreme 120GB SSD running RAID 0 on Intel ports 1+2 - GPT formatted NTFS boot / OS disk (with 450MB recovery partition / 100MB EFI partition / ~ 200GB OS/data partition)

4 x Sandisk Extreme 120GB SSD running RAID 0 on Intel ports 3-6 - GPT formatted NTFS data disk

Asus Essence STX II 7.1 sound card

2 x SLI GTX 1080 (MSI Seahawk EK X watercooled)

I recently upgraded from 4way SLI GTX 580s (PCIE 2.0 cards) to 2way SLI GTX1080 (PCIE 3.0 cards)

With my configuration as per below with the new GTX 1080s I couldn't get my add-in Asus STX II sound card to work without disabling onboard realtek sound card. (more on that in a minute)

Original GTX 580 4 x SLI Configuration

CPU 4960X

slot1 x16 > GTX580 @PCIE2

slot2 x8 > GTX580 @PCIE2

slot3 x1 -

slot4 x8 > GTX580 @PCIE2

slot5 x1 > Asus Xonar Essence STX II @PCIE2

slot6 x8 > GTX 580 @PCIE2

GTX1080 2 x SLI Configuration (pre Intel 750 install)

CPU 4960X

slot1 x16 > GTX1080 @PCIE3

slot2 x8 > GTX1080 @PCIE3

slot3 x1 -

slot4 x8 -

slot5 x1 > Asus Xonar Essence STX II @PCIE2

slot6 x8 -

So without moving anything and with the realtek onboard soundcard disable the above was working fine.

------------

Then I tried installing the Intel 750 in slot 6 as per below... hmmm no green power led on SSD..

CPU 4960X

slot1 x16 > GTX1080 @PCIE3

slot2 x8 > GTX1080 @PCIE3

slot3 x1 -

slot4 x8 -

slot5 x1 > Asus Xonar Essence STX II @PCIE2

slot6 x8 > Intel 750 1.2TB NVME SSD @PCIE3

Then I moved the Intel 750 SSD to slot 4 and the green led powered on!....

But... Now my front USB ports stopped working... (It's not the Intel SSD that stopped the ports working - it's a limitation of the motherboard PCIE lane assignments- so I moved the keyboard/mouse wireless receivers to other USB ports)

So the final working layout is below

CPU 4960X

slot1 x16 > GTX1080 @PCIE3

slot2 x8 > GTX1080 @PCIE3

slot3 x1 -

slot4 x8 > Intel 750 1.2TB NVME SSD @PCIE3

slot5 x1 > Asus Xonar Essence STX II @PCIE2

slot6 x8 -mailto:-@PCIE3 -@PCIE3

So after all that slot fiddling I then:

Set the bios to CSM disabled - rebooted

If you scroll right over to the right in the bios menu and keep going you'll see two Intel NVME bios entries, one shows the nvme and drive settings showing it running @ x4 PCIe3 speed and the other shows more detailed drive information. (nothing to change here - but at least the bios sees it!)

I then booted into windows installed the Intel NVME drivers 1.7.0.1002 x32-x64

I then installed the Intel 3.3.6 SSD toolbox and flashed the firmware on the drive to 8EV10174.

Rebooted

Intel SSD appeared in windows and I initialized and formatted ran AIDA64 disk benches and got 2800MB/s reads and 1000MB/s writes - All good!

Then all I did was clone my 2x Sandisk 120GB SSDs running in RAID 0 formatted with GPT NTFS on the motherboard Intel ports 1+2 to the new Intel 750 1.2TB NVME SSD with the trial version of Macrium reflect. (cloned the whole disk including EFI and rescue partitions - it was really fast!)

Then resized the Intel SSD with windows disk manager to take up the rest of the spare space on the drive (from 240GB > ~1TB formatted)

Shutdown

unplugged power to the old Sandisk SATA SSDs

Rebooted straight into windows on the new Intel 750 1.2TB NVME SSD - no other changes required.

Performance with AS SSD is the same as Seans - 2080MB/s read 1064MB/s write

Happy camper!