Hi,
I have the above mentioned bord after repair, which was related to a lot of missing smd devices on the back of the board.
There were almost 20 devices missing, caps, resistors and some diodes/mosfets.
The board is generally working now, all PCIe ports are working, Windows installs normally.
However I have a problem with SATA ports 4-7 (the board has 8 SATA ports) - disks are not beeing recognized by the BIOS neither by Windows (which is usually normal in case BIOS does not recognize them).
The SATA 4-7 driver network is quite simple chipset<->buffers/drivers<->SATA sockets + a few smd devices, all 4 SATA ports are connected via 2 buffers to the chipset only. have checked all the hardware devices which are between the chipset and the SATA connectors (some swithching mosfet 2N7002, some caps and resistors and two multiplexers/de-multiplexers L04083B) - everything is OK. I even replaced the buffers. So harwdare seems not to be the problem.
Also checked with scope whether the L04083B (equivalent to ASM1480) multiplexers/de-multiplexers get any Enable signal - and there is completely no activity on EN, so the chipset is not talking to these ports at all, nor at POST, nor at BOOT nor in Windows.
Also tried different BIOS versions, all possible settings in BIOS, related to AHCI, Intel RST modes, and any combination that could have to do with SATA operation.
All 4 SATA ports 0-3 are working normally and recognize SATA disks.
Tried also with Windows 11 as well as Windows 10, installing all updates with Gigabyte APP Center, Intel RST Drivers, Management Engine and Chipset software, all Windows updates, nothing helps.
Also I use a SSD PCIe disk in the M2M_32B M.2 port, so according to manual this port does not use any of the PCIe lanes, which are shared with SATA 4-7 ports, so this is also ruled out.
Tried also to configure both PCIe x16 ports (in one of them there is the GPU card installed) on the board to PCIe x4 only to free up PCIe lanes, but this also does not help.
I really wonder if this behaviour is normal for this board.
Checked also for any hint in the Gigabyte userer manual and RAID/RST manual - no information about any specialities related to SATA 4-7 ports.
However this board has something like a Intel VROC functionality (Virtual Raid On CPU) - some proprietery Intel RAID technology.
The board has a 4-pin socket for installing an VROC licence dongle, which has to be bought in order to enable the VROC RAID functionality, so I wonder if a missing VROC dongle can disable the SATA ports 4-7 if not installed.
So I'd like to know, if this behaviour is normal for this board, or may I still have missed to place some smd device which has the effect, that SATA 4-7 is not working (although I have checked the board very deeply several times to comply with the boardview, so I'm quite confident that everything is now replenished and on it's place).
Another suspicion I have, is that an Management Engine upgrade I have made on the board has done some permanent misconfiguration of the chipset. I installed some Management Engine, which was higher than the last version in the newest Gigabyte BIOS (F5r). I know that some boards (eg. ASUS) use modified Management Engine, and a default Intel Management Engine could not work with a board using a modified Management Engine. Due to this I already rolled back the Management Engine version with another BIOS update (overwrite) to F5r, so the BIOS update reverted the Management Engine back to the version contained int the F5r BIOS. However this did not change anything.
Anybody having experience with this board, please let me know if this bahaviour is normal or not.
I'm completely stuck now, and do not know what else I could do, except maybe changing the BIOS setup for SATA with Intel FIT - but I never have done this, so do not know how to do this correctly (no documentation available).
I'd also appreciate if somebody could post a working Intel FIT version for this X299 chipset (it's hard to find).
Thanks for any suggestions / help.
I have the above mentioned bord after repair, which was related to a lot of missing smd devices on the back of the board.
There were almost 20 devices missing, caps, resistors and some diodes/mosfets.
The board is generally working now, all PCIe ports are working, Windows installs normally.
However I have a problem with SATA ports 4-7 (the board has 8 SATA ports) - disks are not beeing recognized by the BIOS neither by Windows (which is usually normal in case BIOS does not recognize them).
The SATA 4-7 driver network is quite simple chipset<->buffers/drivers<->SATA sockets + a few smd devices, all 4 SATA ports are connected via 2 buffers to the chipset only. have checked all the hardware devices which are between the chipset and the SATA connectors (some swithching mosfet 2N7002, some caps and resistors and two multiplexers/de-multiplexers L04083B) - everything is OK. I even replaced the buffers. So harwdare seems not to be the problem.
Also checked with scope whether the L04083B (equivalent to ASM1480) multiplexers/de-multiplexers get any Enable signal - and there is completely no activity on EN, so the chipset is not talking to these ports at all, nor at POST, nor at BOOT nor in Windows.
Also tried different BIOS versions, all possible settings in BIOS, related to AHCI, Intel RST modes, and any combination that could have to do with SATA operation.
All 4 SATA ports 0-3 are working normally and recognize SATA disks.
Tried also with Windows 11 as well as Windows 10, installing all updates with Gigabyte APP Center, Intel RST Drivers, Management Engine and Chipset software, all Windows updates, nothing helps.
Also I use a SSD PCIe disk in the M2M_32B M.2 port, so according to manual this port does not use any of the PCIe lanes, which are shared with SATA 4-7 ports, so this is also ruled out.
Tried also to configure both PCIe x16 ports (in one of them there is the GPU card installed) on the board to PCIe x4 only to free up PCIe lanes, but this also does not help.
I really wonder if this behaviour is normal for this board.
Checked also for any hint in the Gigabyte userer manual and RAID/RST manual - no information about any specialities related to SATA 4-7 ports.
However this board has something like a Intel VROC functionality (Virtual Raid On CPU) - some proprietery Intel RAID technology.
The board has a 4-pin socket for installing an VROC licence dongle, which has to be bought in order to enable the VROC RAID functionality, so I wonder if a missing VROC dongle can disable the SATA ports 4-7 if not installed.
So I'd like to know, if this behaviour is normal for this board, or may I still have missed to place some smd device which has the effect, that SATA 4-7 is not working (although I have checked the board very deeply several times to comply with the boardview, so I'm quite confident that everything is now replenished and on it's place).
Another suspicion I have, is that an Management Engine upgrade I have made on the board has done some permanent misconfiguration of the chipset. I installed some Management Engine, which was higher than the last version in the newest Gigabyte BIOS (F5r). I know that some boards (eg. ASUS) use modified Management Engine, and a default Intel Management Engine could not work with a board using a modified Management Engine. Due to this I already rolled back the Management Engine version with another BIOS update (overwrite) to F5r, so the BIOS update reverted the Management Engine back to the version contained int the F5r BIOS. However this did not change anything.
Anybody having experience with this board, please let me know if this bahaviour is normal or not.
I'm completely stuck now, and do not know what else I could do, except maybe changing the BIOS setup for SATA with Intel FIT - but I never have done this, so do not know how to do this correctly (no documentation available).
I'd also appreciate if somebody could post a working Intel FIT version for this X299 chipset (it's hard to find).
Thanks for any suggestions / help.
Comment