Asus WS X299 SAGE/10G motherboard dont boot with Intel Optane 905P pcie ssd.

[OSoly]

Motherboard: WS X299 SAGE/10G

SSD: Intel Optane SSD 905P 960Gb firmware: 0435

Bios: last 0501

The motherboard stop boot with q-code 92.

[n_scott_pearson]

Sorry, you will have to ask Asus what this "q-code" means.

[OSoly]

I know.

Its on the user guide. q92 = PCI bus initialization started.

The bios not recognize the pcie ssd. If i take out, the computer is booting normally.

Asus support send me to the intel.

[DiegoV_Intel]

Hi OSoly,

Thank you for posting in the Intel® communities.

I haven’t seen the issue you are describing, however it may be related to a missing driver. I recommend you to install the following NVMe* driver and also to check the System Requirements in the article below just to confirm your system meets these requirements.

• NVMe* driver: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/28325/Client-NVMe-Microsoft-Windows-Drivers-for-Intel-SSDs?product=129835
• System Requirements: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000028298/memory-and-storage.html

Hopefully what you need is just the driver.

On the other hand, you can check in the following site the motherboards from ASUS* that have been tested with this drive: http://compatibleproducts.intel.com/ProductDetails?activeModule=Memory%20and%20Storage#. The one that you have is not listed there, so it would be good idea to confirm with ASUS* if this motherboard supports the drive too. It probably does, but since there are no records of it, I cannot confirm it.

Please let us know what the results are after the driver installation.

Have a nice day.

Regards,

Diego V.

Intel Customer Support Technician

Under Contract to Intel Corporation

[OSoly]

Hi Diego,

The computer is not booting if the card is used. Does not start, does not start windows..... i can't install driver....

The tested motherboard list date: 2018-04-26

BR

Otto Solymos

[DiegoV_Intel]

Hi Otto,

Are you using the drive as the primary drive or as a secondary drive?

Is it possible to run the Intel® System Support Utility (SSU) without the drive connected to the system (in case the drive is a secondary drive) and get the full report from it? You can download the tool from this site: https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/25293/Intel-System-Support-Utility-for-Windows-

Once you run the tool, you have to export the data to a text file. Please attach that file in your response.

Have a nice day.

Regards,

Diego V.

Intel Customer Support Technician

Under Contract to Intel Corporation

[OSoly]

Hi Diego,

I have another intel optane ssd, 240Gb 900p, on the u.2 port, it is there the windows installed.

The new pcie ssd i would like to use it as secondary drive.

Attached the report.

BR

Otto Solymos

[DiegoV_Intel · Accepted solution]

Hi Otto, Thank you for the information. If you already have an Intel® Optane™ SSD 900p Series working as the primary drive, it may be possible that when you connect the second Intel® Optane™ SSD 900p Series drive, both of them are trying to use the same bus and that’s causing the issue. Even though these two drives have different form factor, the interface is the same (PCIe NVMe 3.0 x4) and it’s probably that they are being connected to the same bus in the motherboard. After checking the specifications of your motherboard in the following site: https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/WS-X299-SAGE-10G/specifications/, there is a note in the PCIe slot that says “Please refer to the block diagrams in the Appendix for more details in the manual.”, so I recommend you to check with ASUS* directly if there is any issue at the motherboard level when using the U.2 and the PCIe drives together, or if you need to configure something at BIOS level to setup the PCIe device correctly. I hope you find this information useful. Have a nice day. Regards, Diego V. Intel Customer Support Technician Under Contract to Intel Corporation

[VFrid]

I got the same problem with ASUS WS 299 SAGE (not 10G) motherboard. Exactly the same behavior and error code. I was trying various configurations and this is what I found so far. Problem occurs if I put 905P drive in PCIe Slot #3. In this configuration I have just two things plugged into the motherboard - Graphics card in PCIe Slot #1 (Nvidia 2080 Ti), and 960GB 905P Drive in PCIe slot #3. According to the motherboard manual this is recommended configuration for this case. However the boot hangs with error code 92 (which means "PCI initialization started"). But according to the manual I can also plug 905P into PCIe slot #5 instead. And it works - it boots normally. Than I added second Graphics card (also 2080 Ti) into PCIe Slot #3. Now I have two Graphics cards in Slots #1 and #3 and 905P in slot #5. And it still works fine, no problem with boot. After that I added two more identical 905P drives to slots #6 and #7. And everything still works fine - no problem with boot. I also added two Samsung 970 Pro 1TB drives into the motherboard M.2 slots, and everything still works - no boot problem. Later today I will add two U.2 drives - also 905P 960GB in U.2 version and see if it still works.

However this configuration is not ideal to say the least. The problem is that two graphics cards are right next to each other. As a result the first card air cooler fans are almost completely blocked and the card overheats pretty quickly. The other problem is that you need 2-clot SLI bridge and they are not available for these cards. The possible option is Quadro RTX 2-slot SLI bridge but I' not sure it will work with these cards, that is not configuration Nvidia officially supports. I'm getting this bridge later today and will try it.

I will post update of my investigations tomorrow.

Thanks,

Vitali

[DiegoV_Intel]

Hi Vitali,

Thank you for sharing this incredibly useful information in the community.

Once you have updates of your tests, feel free to share them here.

Regards,

Diego V.

Intel Customer Support Technician

Under Contract to Intel Corporation

[VFrid]

I've done additional testing. I added two 960GB 905P U.2 drives to two motherboard U.2 ports. Everything still works, it boots and runs fine. I also added Quadro RTX 2-slot NVlink SLI bridge to the graphics cards and enabled SLI without issues.

Right now I'm running in open air test bench and use really big fan blowing air on the whole setup, but more importantly on the back of the first GPU card. Without this fan the card gets very hot. For VRM I just use small 50 mm fan included with the motherboard and it keeps VRM temperatures well under control. However that big metal rectangle that covers two PLX 8747 chips and X299 PCH gets quite warm. It also unfortunately is ended up being located under the graphics cards in my config and warms them even more. For this build I use delided and binned 7980XE CPU overclocked to 4.4 GHz using 1.12V Vcore voltage. The whole rig generates a lot of heat under load, I can't imagine running it on air or even AIO cooling for significant stretches of time. I will be using custom watercooling loop so hopefully it will be fine.

Thanks,

Vitali