PCIe bug with M2_1 slot on X870E Tomahawk

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jlsmith.01712b902af

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So, the M.2_1 slot keeps reverting to PCIe 1 x 4 on a cold boot, sometimes just a reboot from within Windows. Manually setting it to Gen 4 or 5 within the BIOS will get it to run full speed until the next shut down/cold boot, then it's back to 1 x 4 again. Basically, I have to keep switching between gen 4 and 5 setting on every boot or it's stuck at 1 x 4. Auto is also broken. Samsung 990 Evo Plus 1TB.

I've seen another user on Reddit with the exact same issue. Same board, different drive. Anyone using this board, check your drive speed!
 
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rattler_bikes.815a502dd said:
New build here same issues with current bios
7E59v2A6

on x870e tomahawk. This has NOT been fixed despite the claims here that the current bios solves it for tomahawk it does not!

System will still revert to pcie 1x4 on restart
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I finished building my wife's new machine over the weekend, and over multiple warm and cold boots, the M2 and PCIE settings have stayed where I've set them in the bios. The M2 drive has shown 4x4 and the PCIE has been gen 5 each time I've checked. Only changes in the bios I made from default was to set PBO to auto, turn on expo for the memory, disabled the onboard WIFI and integrated graphics and set the graphic slot to gen 5 and the m1 slot to 4x4. I normally turn off all sleep/hibernate functions on any of the computers I build for home use. We also don't shut them off at night and are only shut off/restarted if there is an update that requires it a reboot.

I'm not saying that it is not happening to people, just that it hasn't happened on her machine yet over at least a dozen warm/cold boots over the last 5 days.

Psy
 
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Psylocke said:
I finished building my wife's new machine over the weekend, and over multiple warm and cold boots, the M2 and PCIE settings have stayed where I've set them in the bios. The M2 drive has shown 4x4 and the PCIE has been gen 5 each time I've checked. Only changes in the bios I made from default was to set PBO to auto, turn on expo for the memory, disabled the onboard WIFI and integrated graphics and set the graphic slot to gen 5 and the m1 slot to 4x4. I normally turn off all sleep/hibernate functions on any of the computers I build for home use. We also don't shut them off at night and are only shut off/restarted if there is an update that requires it a reboot.

I'm not saying that it is not happening to people, just that it hasn't happened on her machine yet over at least a dozen warm/cold boots over the last 5 days.

Psy
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Are you using 3 m2 slots?
 
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rvillatoba14ec02d0 said:
I use 3 slots now (M2_1, M2_2 and M2_4) and I don't experience it... And I know a bunch of guys here with everything populated who don't experience it either.
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It would be interesting to see what the commonality in all those users you know is. I've seen a few comment they are fine, but like you they are all using Gen4 drives in a Gen5 mother board. For myself, when I had my (Gen5) Corsair MP700 Pro 2TB in M2_1, it was way more problematic than the (Gen 5) 9100 Pro 4TB I am using now.
 
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Has anyone with a Godlike board tested the Samsung 9100 pro in m.2_1? Some of these ssds use a different controller and claim to have more vs less power consumption etc. Wondering if that makes a difference in the frequency of the problem occurring. I doubt it... but something else to test. The Crucial T710 also claims to use a new controller, but that one is not released yet.
 
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tongerk153102dd said:
thats why

lol thats why you are not experiencing it
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Just reporting that I've not ran into any issues so far with my wife's computer. I still have to buy the parts to build mine next month, and hopefully it will be a smooth as this one has been. If I do have any concern right now is that her machine idles a bit warmer than I would like. I do plan this weekend to open back up the case and make sure that the heatsink is fully tightened down and add a 2nd fan to the NH-U12S, but otherwise everything has been stable.
crai151502d0 said:
It would be interesting to see what the commonality in all those users you know is. I've seen a few comment they are fine, but like you they are all using Gen4 drives in a Gen5 mother board.
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The 990 Evo Plus can run in either 4x4 or 5x2. I just set it to run at 4x4 in the bios. I just didn't have any reason to spend more on a 5x4 drive. For us, it wouldn't be needed the added speed wouldn't really be noticeable.
Psy
 
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This is what I do: My M.2_1 is a Samsung 2TB 990 Pro; M.2_2 and M.2_4 are ADATA SX8200 Gen3 drives. I RAID 0'd M.2_2 and M.2_4, but the speed is only 3400 MB/s instead of double that. I am using the beta BIOS. If I didn't set M.2_2 to x4, the speed would decrease to 1500 MB/s.
 
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1160b02f1 said:
Has anyone with a Godlike board tested the Samsung 9100 pro in m.2_1? Some of these ssds use a different controller and claim to have more vs less power consumption etc. Wondering if that makes a difference in the frequency of the problem occurring. I doubt it... but something else to test. The Crucial T710 also claims to use a new controller, but that one is not released yet.
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Just wondering if you missed the post I made directly above your post two hours prior to you asking this question?

Yes, I currently have a Samsung 9100 Pro 4TB in my M2_1 slot. It is not perfect, but does get much better results of not reverting to low speed modes like my Corsair MP700 Pro did, which was actually messing up quite often.

Expanding on what I just said, with the Corsair MP700 Pro in M2_1 I was having about a 15-20% success rate of it actually hitting 5x4 upon a boot. My Samsung 9100 Pro in the M2_1 has about a 95% hit rate so far of getting 5x4 speeds upon a boot cycle. Sometimes the Samsung Magician software will report 4x4, but Crystaldisk will still bench 5x4 speeds. Changing from the Corsair to the Samsung I really did not make any notable bios changes except for disabling onboard audio, GPU, and Wi-Fi. I doubt those changes made a difference, but you never know with this board.
 
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1160b02f1 said:
Has anyone with a Godlike board tested the Samsung 9100 pro in m.2_1? Some of these ssds use a different controller
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Does it with an MSI SSD, so the brand seems to have nothing to do with it, setting the PCIE incorrectly and it is also random if it will happen or not
it can boot at 1x4 or at 3x4 or 4x4
And ye my board is fully loaded with 7 M.2 drives
Screenshot 2025-05-31 133342.jpg

Screenshot 2025-05-27 223803.jpg

Screenshot 2025-05-31 133909.jpg
 
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crai151502d0 said:
Just wondering if you missed the post I made directly above your post two hours prior to you asking this question?

Yes, I currently have a Samsung 9100 Pro 4TB in my M2_1 slot. It is not perfect, but does get much better results of not reverting to low speed modes like my Corsair MP700 Pro did, which was actually messing up quite often.

Expanding on what I just said, with the Corsair MP700 Pro in M2_1 I was having about a 15-20% success rate of it actually hitting 5x4 upon a boot. My Samsung 9100 Pro in the M2_1 has about a 95% hit rate so far of getting 5x4 speeds upon a boot cycle. Sometimes the Samsung Magician software will report 4x4, but Crystaldisk will still bench 5x4 speeds. Changing from the Corsair to the Samsung I really did not make any notable bios changes except for disabling onboard audio, GPU, and Wi-Fi. I doubt those changes made a difference, but you never know with this board.
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I also have the 9100 pro in m2_1, but no other drives in other m2 slots, and I haven't been able to replicate the slow speed issue.
 
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So I got another response today from my MSI support agent. I specifically pointed out that others have done the RMA on the Godlike and are still having the issue. Here is a copy/paste of what he said:
"If the board is sent to MSI under warranty, issue will be resolved by our technicians. Unfortunately, we do not have BIOS fix that we can provide for this board."

They are very reluctant to give any information on how the RMA is fixing the issue. I created a thread a while back asking who has RMA'd their board and the results they got, but it never got any traction. This is going to be some pretty key information if we decide to take legal action.

Thread is here: https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?...heir-x870e-godlike-for-the-m2_1-issue.412108/
 
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I have an 9100 pro 4TB sitting in a box with the intention to put in my M2_1 but too lazy to disassemble and remove gpu to do that for now (my crucial T705 4TB benching well in M2_2 with USB4 disabled) to see how it works out. With this I will have M2_1, M2_2 and M2_3 full. I'll report back.
 
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Possible work-around for Godlike users but I need more data. I just replaced my Crucial T700 with a Samsung 9100.
    • 1--At default settings I rebooted my computer 5 times: 2 out of 5 times it started in PCIe 1.0 mode. 3 times it booted into 5.0 mode.
    • ----This is no different than the rate of problems with my Crucial drive on the Godlike slot 1.
  • 2--I changed “Performance Mode” in Samsung Magician to “Full Performance Mode” (see image) and restarted 20 times. 20/20 times it started in PCIe 5.0 mode after that.
    • 1749580456222.png
  • 3--Next I tried 20 consecutive sleep and wake cycles. 1 time out of 20 (on my 3rd cycle) it awoke in PCIe 4.0 mode. 19 times out of 20 it awoke into 5.0 mode.
    • ----After it booted into 4.0 mode (on wake 3), I also changed “PCI Express” -> “Link State Power Management” from "On" to "Off". And it stayed in 5.0 for the remaining sleep/wake cycles. This may have been a coincidence.

    • I need more data to determine if Full Performance Mode and/or Link State Power Management are actually helping or if that is just a coincidence. From prior posts from folks it does seems like the problem might just occur less frequently with the 9100 drive. So its both possible these setting changes are a work-around but also possible that it staying in 5.0 mode after I made those changes is a pure coincidence due to it occurring less frequently with this drive.

    • I also cannot tell what Full Performance Mode is actually changing; I thought it might just be a shortcut to some Windows power settings, but at initial glance I don’t see anything different in Windows power settings after changing that, so it might actually be a change specific to the drive itself rather than a shortcut to Windows settings.

    • I know some other folks also mentioned they were going to swap out their existing drives for a Samsung 9100. Can you guys also report back?
 
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1160b02f1 said:
Possible work-around for Godlike users but I need more data. I just replaced my Crucial T700 with a Samsung 9100.
    • 1--At default settings I rebooted my computer 5 times: 2 out of 5 times it started in PCIe 1.0 mode. 3 times it booted into 5.0 mode.
    • ----This is no different than the rate of problems with my Crucial drive on the Godlike slot 1.
  • 2--I changed “Performance Mode” in Samsung Magician to “Full Performance Mode” (see image) and restarted 20 times. 20/20 times it started in PCIe 5.0 mode after that.
  • 3--Next I tried 20 consecutive sleep and wake cycles. 1 time out of 20 (on my 3rd cycle) it awoke in PCIe 4.0 mode. 19 times out of 20 it awoke into 5.0 mode.
    • ----After it booted into 4.0 mode (on wake 3), I also changed “PCI Express” -> “Link State Power Management” from "On" to "Off". And it stayed in 5.0 for the remaining sleep/wake cycles. This may have been a coincidence.

    • I need more data to determine if Full Performance Mode and/or Link State Power Management are actually helping or if that is just a coincidence. From prior posts from folks it does seems like the problem might just occur less frequently with the 9100 drive. So its both possible these setting changes are a work-around but also possible that it staying in 5.0 mode after I made those changes is a pure coincidence due to it occurring less frequently with this drive.

    • I also cannot tell what Full Performance Mode is actually changing; I thought it might just be a shortcut to some Windows power settings, but at initial glance I don’t see anything different in Windows power settings after changing that, so it might actually be a change specific to the drive itself rather than a shortcut to Windows settings.

    • I know some other folks also mentioned they were going to swap out their existing drives for a Samsung 9100. Can you guys also report back?
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Coincidence. I've run it that way since installing it a month ago. It will still go random. Sometimes I'll boot 15+ times just fine and then a rash of limp-mode boots. One thing that has worked thus far though has been powering off PSU, pushing start button, then powering on PSU and booting. That too may also be coincidence, but it has managed to hit 5x4 for me each time attempted.
 
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rvillatoba14ec02d0 said:
I use 3 slots now (M2_1, M2_2 and M2_4) and I don't experience it... And I know a bunch of guys here with everything populated who don't experience it either.
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I'm on the x870e godlike and I have all 5 slots populated with Samsung 990's and I experience the issue in the m.2_1 slot and none of the updates have fixed this issue. Its nice to see some folks not having an issue but its also a chance if you are not checking on every single boot you might just not notice it happen. for many folks even the PCIe 1.0x4 speed being reported will be fast enough that its not always noticed there is an issue.
 
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durrill153502d5 said:
I'm on the x870e godlike and I have all 5 slots populated with Samsung 990's and I experience the issue in the m.2_1 slot and none of the updates have fixed this issue. Its nice to see some folks not having an issue but its also a chance if you are not checking on every single boot you might just not notice it happen. for many folks even the PCIe 1.0x4 speed being reported will be fast enough that its not always noticed there is an issue.
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I have a Tomahawk, not a Godlike... It's a Tomahawk thread originally. Still not a single issue with the X870E Tomahawk after nearly 3 months.
 
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