ASRock wrx80 creator not allowing more than 14 nvme ssd

Hardware Build a PC
#1

Hi all,

I’m currently building a server based on the 5975wx.

I seem to have hit a bug with the ASRock wrx80 creator bios.

I can add up to 14 nvme drives with 4 Asus hyper m.2 cards but as soon as I try to add a 15th one I don’t get past boot. Not even into the BIOS.

It hangs with the A0 or A2 error code.

This happens if I add it to one of the PCIE cards but also with the onboard slots or with the u.2.

These are 980 pros.

I am using the x16 slots and they are in x4x4x4x4.

All 14 nvme works but I can’t get past that. Theoretically I have a total of 5 slots left (2 in a card, 2 on board and 1 u.2)
I don’t need more (I moved the OS to SATA SSD) but I am curious.

I have written to ASRock support but could I be missing something I don’t know or is not documented for this motherboard?

Thanks for the help!

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#2

@wendell

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#3

What if you hot-plug them after it has booted? That’d confirm if it is a UEFI issue.

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#4

Disable csm, disable nvme raid ?

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#5

CSM and NVME raid disabled. I’m going to try the hot plug in a bit.

#6

Try also slots nearer to the cpu. Excessive pcie errors may cause this problem

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#7

I will try to move the PCI cards and see.

Is there something special to do for NVME hot plug on Linux? It it supposed to work ?

I can see SATA messages when I plug in in dmesg but can get it to appear in lspci.

Granted I’m on the ubuntu server live install cli, so I haven’t looked into if this need kernel Paramus and/or config.

#8

Have you tried forcing 3.0

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#9

I haven’t yet but I will thanks. But even if it works this is not what this card advertised. Feels like a bug to me to be honest.

Tomorrow morning I’ll do what Wendell said and move the cards around (although I tried a few configs) and if that doesn’t work the. 3.0 just to see.

Mainly I’ll wait and see what ASRock says since I don’t really need the slots at this time.

#10

What could be happening is they only verified one and not multiply cards being used at the same time

4.0 isn’t so simple as what it should be on paper

This is why I kinda hate that they’re pushing 5.0 so much when 4 hasn’t matured at all yet, look how long we were on 3.0

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#11

Double check the power supply and the connections to the mb.

One Samsung 980 Pro can pull 8.49W, which it certainly will at boot time. 15x that is quite a bit of power.

#12

^ This. WRX80 creator only has one 6 pin of additional power for pci-e. I was also facing issues with using crapload of copper NICs. Motherboard didn’t post at all. I believe it’s easy to overload it if you use too many devices without external power connectors.

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#13

Hello, have you made any progress on this issue ?

It looks like supply chain issues will force me to use the Asus motherboard but I might encounter the same problem so I’m curious.

PCIe slot power puzzles me. In theory, each slot should be able to provide 75 W, so with 7 slots a motherboard would have to be able to provide 525 W just to the slots. In that context, even the three PCIe power connectors on the Asus are theoretically insufficient (they would only total 450 W)

Yet Asrock Rack advertises a WRX80 motherboard with zero PCIe power connector. What’s the intended use-case for such a board ?

#14

Most bifurcation cards use external power, and graphics cards tend to rely mostly on external power if it’s not a low end consumer card, enterprise cards will include external power for cards that might not even need it for extra compatibility

After 480s started melting mobos everyone kinda steered away from relying on mobo power

#15

at least 16nvme drives + 100G nic + 2 U.2 drive has been tested working simultaneous on asus wrx80. None of them take external power. But note that the asus MB itself took 1 8Pin + 2 6pin to supply pcie slots power. So it is less likely to have asrock issue.

#16

Haven’t replied in a while. I moved on deciding it was power related and I was gonna check another time.

the Asus hyper m.2 is not externally powered. I might go down that road someday and find a powered one.

There is also a 10G intel X550-T2 SFP+ card in there.

I also have a powered SAS HBA card and a powered 3090TI in there.

I can’t add more but it works.

edit. BTW asrock never replied…

#17

BTW asrock never replied

that’s why I haven’t bought an Asrock product since I had problems with a 2011-3 board and Asrock ignored my requests

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#18

I doubt it’s a power issue imho I think it’s “overuse” or bifurcation on a single board.
Grab one or two of the highpoint cards they have their own plx chips and don’t require bifurcation . Pricey but you could take 2 x 8port cards and it’ll work guaranteed.

I have the 4port ssd7505 for me it works better then e.g the 4port gigabyte card in bifurcation mode .

Not saying bifurcation doesn’t work just perhaps doing it for 4 or 5 slots at the same time.might be where the issue is …

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