[Solved] NVME drive not working in second slot of Asrock B450

My new Crucial P3 won’t show up in UEFI if plugged in the second nvme slot of my motherboard, but an old kingston drive works in both slots.

I’m not sure if it might be due to nvme 1.4 vs 1.3 difference b/w the drives or because the crucial drive doesn’t want to work with just x2 Gen3 lanes instead of the full x4 Gen3 that the second slot runs at.

Any opinions or ideas on what to do are appreciated. Is there anything else I should try, if you have any suggestions for drives I should look into if there’s no other way than to buy another one.

Below are the details


Hardware:

Asrock B450 pro4 R2.0 (manual) (storage QVL) BIOS: P5.0 with Ryzen Summit Ridge CPU.

  • 2 NVME slots
    • M2_1: 3.0 x4 (4 lanes)
    • M2_2: 3.0 x4 (2 lanes)
  • 2 PCIe x16 slots
    • PCIE2: 3.0 x16 (16 lanes)
    • PCIE4: 2.0 x16 (4 lanes)

What I want to work:

I want the crucial P3 drive (CT1000P3SSD8) to be detected in UEFI and work when plugged into the second M.2 slot (M2_2). This is so that I can use the second x16 slot (PCIE4) for a GPU. M2_1 and PCIE4 are mutually exclusive, so using M2_1 isn’t an option.

What works:

My small Kingston A2000 drive works and boots in either nvme slot (4 and 2 lanes).The P3 works only in the first M.2 slot (4 lane).

I’ve checked this with different combinations of ssd<->slot combinations.

What I’ve tired:

  • Tried all pci related setttings in the UEFI
    • turning off the sata ports since some of those are mutually exclusive with M2_2,
    • changing vfio related settings,
    • changing pcie gen for all slots, etc)
  • Rollback BIOS to a last recommended version for the CPU (3.50, but rollbacks are not possible)
  • Tried populating the second pcie slot to force M2_1 to be disabled (which it does, but doesn’t change M2_2 detection for P3, so not some pcie resource allocation issue)
  • Booted into widows and tried crucial storage executive, latest firmware according to it, no fw updates on the support site for ssd either for manual download.

What I suspect:

When writing up this post, I realized the M2_2 runs only at Gen3 x2 speed. The Kingston seems to handle it well. I used CrystalDiskInfo and confirmed that the A2000 was indeed running at gen3 x2 on M2_2.
I also noticed that it was nvme 1.3, while the crucial P3 was running 1.4 (checked using smartctl). P3 also has HMB and other extra features.

tl;dr: The crucial P3 doesn’t seem to like the lack of 4 full gen3 lanes, not sure how the nvme 1.4 standard plays into that.

I couldn’t find anything else online about this issue.

I have the exact same board and the same SSD and it doesn’t work in the M2_2 slot for me either. I have 2 NVME 1.4 SSDs (P3 and Cheap Chinese one) both of which work in M2_1 slot, but refuse to work in M2_2 slot. I am sure the slot is not defective since I was able to run an old M.2 SATA SSD just fine in the M2_2 slot.

Which processor are you running? I feel it’s a limitation of the B450 chipset that doesn’t support M.2 NVME 1.4 drives since the slot M2_2 is connected to the chipset and slot M2_1 is connected to the CPU.

Oh wow I wasn’t expecting a reply, thank you for it first of all.

I’m running 1600x on the board, but I’m gonna swap it out with a 5600 soon (in a week maybe), so that might give us the answer.

I incorrectly assumed M2_2 was going to be connected to CPU directly , but just realized it is only 3.0 x2. The only CPU connected slots are PCIE2, and PCIE4/M2_1

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I am running R5 2600. Let me know if the CPU upgrade helps. It will probably the rule out the CPU PCI-E lanes as the culprit. :slight_smile:

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So, Asrock sent me a beta bios with a new option called Force M2_2 to support PCIe type device which will force switch between SATA or PCI-E M2_2. With this option set to Yes, the second drive works fine.


I guess a new stable BIOS will be available soon with the fix :smiley:

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:flushed: omfg, what did you even tell ASRock to get this done? This is amazing!

What version does that bios report? and would you mind uploading it to this thread in case the update never goes public?

I contacted them over the support email and explained the situation. It was a relatively new board (under a week of purchase). They acknowledged the issue and provided a beta bios to test after a week or so.

The BIOS version is P10.03A.

Being a new user to the forum, I am unable to post links or upload files. I can’t send PMs either.

Note that my board is B450 Pro4 R2.0 revision.
https: // www . mediafire . com /file/kzadhaw8zdibzm5/B45P4T1003A.zip/file

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Please sir, I have the same problem, could you please send me the P10.03A BIOS? The support could take too long.

There is a new 10.08 beta bios released by ASRock. You can find that in the official support page for the motherboard. It has the NVME Slot 2 fix included.

Hey I have the same issue. My M2_2 slot isn’t detecting my SSD. I have updated my bios to the latest version 10.08 too, and it still does not work. Anyone can help?

You have to enable Force M2_2 to support PCIe type device option in the BIOS and then reboot. Once you do so, your M2_2 SSD will show up in the BIOS.

updated my bios no such option shows

Thanks a lot, Dhiru bro. Your help really saved me from this problem. At first, when I encountered this issue, I approached a reputed computer service center, but they told me that my slot was damaged. So, I decided to search the web, but nothing worked. However, your valuable information solved the problem. Once again, thanks a lot, bro

Can someone help?
Got the same problem. On B450M Steel legend with version of BIOS 10.30 and m2_2 slot not working with m2 nvme ssd
I got R7 5700X CPU
And no function Force m2_2 to support PCI-e type

I have the same problem, with the B450M Pro4 R2.0, I think I was wrong, I updated the bios to 10.31 [Beta] thinking that the bios had the solution but no, I asked asrock for help but they have not responded, I downloaded the bios that Dhiru posted above but the instant flash does not detect it, I assume it is because I already have a newer bios, any solution.

Same here with a B450M Pro4-F, the second slot does not work, even after updating the bios (the Force m2_2 to support PCI-e type did not appear)

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