New M.2 SSD only Intermittently Detected

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Hello all,

Relevant system details up front:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X
Motherboard:Asus ROG Strix X470-F Gaming
RAM: 32GB
GPU: AMD ATI Radeon RX 6900 XT
Storage: Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1TB, Toshiba 3TB HDD (failing; requires me to pass through a BIOS check to boot)
Operating System: Arch Linux, 6.7.1-zen1-1-zen

I recently purchased a new WD_Black SN850 4Tb NVMe SSD to expand my system’s storage. I installed it in my motherboard’s M.2_2 slot as M.2_1 is occupied by a Samsung 970 Evo Plus 1TB. Unfortunately the new drive was not detect by my BIOS or OS. I thought nothing of it and RMA’ed the drive. Unfortunately the new drive also exhibited the same behavior. I began to think I had a bad M.2_2 port. I figured I’d uninstall the drive and save it until I replaced the motherboard itself.

A couple of days later I booted the system and, lo and behold, the drive was now detected. I formatted it, added it to fstab, added a bunch of games to it, rebooted, and it was still there. The next day though, I booted, and it was gone once again. I decided that it was definitely a bad M.2_2 port and purchased a PCIe expansion card to try and remedy the issue for good. I installed the drive in the card then installed the card in PCIe x16_3. And everything was good. The drive even had the same UUID which means I didn’t even need to edit fstab. I turned the computer on the next day, and it was gone again.

Which brings us to tonight and my utter befuddlement when I booted up my computer and what should great me in the BIOS but the WD_Black SN850 4Tb NVMe SSD? I am at my wits end trying to figure out what’s going on here. Maybe it’s bad PCIe traces in the mobo chipset?

I’ll be happy to provide any more information you may require.

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*1 PCIeX16_3 slot shares bandwidth with PCIeX1_1 and PCIeX1_3.

board page says this. i did a something similar with another board and had similar issues with windows 10 where drives would disappear and reappear because maybe lane conflicts idk hope this was somewhat helpful

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Probably unrelated because drive does not appear on boot.

But have an eye on the SN850X temperature. It tends to run too hot without some heatsink and airflow. That manifests first with throttling, but disappearing would be possible, too.

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Interesting. Those slots are unoccupied. I wouldn’t think it would conflict. I’m also aware that PICe x16_1 and x16_2 share lanes. If I’m reading the manual correctly at least. I believe my board was from the Tiwanese market, and I’m unable to read the language. I may try moving the card to x16_2 though. See if my graphics card performance is impacted and if the drive shows up more reliably. Thanks.

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No matter where I put it it is getting good air flow. No headsink, but it’s also only running off of a PCIe gen2 connection rather than a gen4. My board is a bit old.