x870e motherboards - M.2_1 bug data collection
As many are (painfully) aware, there is a bug on x870e boards where the M.2_1 slot will run in PCIe1x4 mode (read speed of about 900MB/s) instead of PCIe4x4 or PCIe5x4 (read speed of 14000MB/s on some drives). SOMETIMES it runs at the proper speeds, but after a reboot or waking up from sleep, etc., it will (very) frequently revert back to PCIe1x4 mode, ignoring the BIOS setting.
I am hoping folks with x870e boards can provide some data to determine if this is a hardware issue, a BIOS bug, etc. It does not seem to matter what x870e board you have - I have the issue on two different Godlike boards and there are a lot of people with the Tomahawks with the issue too. A few folks even said they have one of these boards and DON'T have the issue (gasp!) so, lets try to figure out what is different on the boards of those who don't have the problem!
I tried it on two x870e Godlike boards, one manufactured October 2024 and the other manufactured December 2024. I tried it with the newest BIOS (1/22/25) and also tried the 10/30/24, and 10/5/24 BIOS (the 9/24/24 BIOS was unstable and would not boot). I tried every setting change imaginable in the BIOS, none of it matters. The BIOS files do not go back any further than that for the Godlike. I am also using a Ryzen 9800x3d and my drive is a 4TB Crucial T705. I have several USB devices plugged in, some are picked up as hubs (some folks suggested it might be related to USB devices).
Can others please also chime in on what board you are using, your CPU, BIOS version and BIOS date, your SSD, if you have any USB HUBs connected, manufacture date, anything else you think that might be useful to find the root cause, and if you have the issue or not? Lets figure this out!
- --Make sure your drive is in the M.2_1 slot and then Run Crystal DiskInfo to see if it is in PCIe1x4 or PCIe4x4 / PCIe5x4. Windows will still boot pretty fast in PCIe1x4 mode so if you don't check, you might have this problem without realizing it.. surprise! You could also benchmark the drive to see if it runs at advertised speed.
- --Check in Crystal Disk or benchmark it, reboot, and check again. It *sometimes* works correctly so you need to reboot and check again 3ish or more times to verify if you do or do not have the problem.
- --To find your manufacture date, look at your board's serial number. After the B is 4 digits, the first two are the year and second two are the month. For example B2410 means it was manufactured in October 2024.
Thank you to everyone who can provide data! All data is useful. Even (maybe even more-so?) those who have working boards, so we can figure out what is different about yours!
Edit for an update: This might be out of our hands. At this point it seems every single x870e board that MSI makes is faulty. Every single person (who worked with me) with a PCIe 5.0 drive verified theirs does not work. Even those who thought they had working 5.0 drives-- those who could follow up and restarted a few times per instructions verified they were wrong and also have the issue. So the defect rate is at a staggering 100% for MSI x870e motherboards with PCIe 5.0 drives. Now, those with 4.0 drives are where it gets interesting, because its mixed. Some report having the problem, some don't. I have not been able to work with everyone who has tested a 4.0 drive to verify this, but I suspect those are all faulty too but the defect happens less frequently (meaning more reboots required before its a problem) than it does compared to 5.0 drives. But this is just speculation.
Since I have not found a single person with a working m.2_1 slot PCIe 5.0 drive regardless of what (MSI x870e) motherboard, drive brand, manufacturing date, bios date, etc, all that this data collection has told me is that this a big problem and every single board is faulty. Hopefully MSI is paying attention, because a fix needs to come from them. Hopefully it can be fixed with a BIOS update. Keep creating support tickets through MSI and adding your details here so they give this attention.