Bricked Motherboard after installing NVMe

David970 · 8 Sep 2021 at 01:43

Hi.
First of all, sorry if this is a wrong place to post.
Starting off with my current (or ex) setup:
Intel i7 5820k (OC at 4.5GHz at 1.37V at the time it happened).
Corsair H100i GTX AIO Cooler
MSI X99A SLI Krait Edition Motherboard.
AMD RX580 8GB Red Devil GPU
32GB (4x8GB) DDR4 2333MHz Corsair RAM.
2x SSD (250 and 120GB)

Coming down to my problem; I have found a good offer for a Samsung 970EVO+ 500GB NVMe drive (trusted retailer). I have installed it correctly by mounting with a motherboard screw, and from that time, I get no response from my MB whatsoever. No post, my peripherals do not light up (although USB powered devices work fine, i.e. USB desktop fan). All I get is ‚DP No signal’.
Things I have done so far:
- CMOS reset (all 3 ways possible. Even checked the battery voltage).
- Redone all wiring inside the case from scratch.
- Booting with 1 RAM stick.
- Diagnosed any bent pins.
- Removed MB from the case
- Anything CPU related (removed it, reapplied paste, screwed the aio back in).
- Dual bios boot.
- Different PSU.
- Connected GPU to HDMI as opposed to DP.
- Got desperate to try and flash the BIOS with an update file. Firstly blank with just a file on root, and then a freedos Rufus bootable exec.

Also, the debug light does not light up, so I am unable to look into manual. All the fans spin, the RGB inside the case lights up.
I forgot to mention this happens from the very first time the system was started with the NVMe in it, and does it regardless of whether it is in or not.
I would be very grateful if someone could provide me with any tips on what may be causing the problem. Thank you.

tonys · 8 Sep 2021 at 22:37

Welcome to the forums. Are sure that the board can accept an nvme as the specification of that board says m.2 sata

David970 · 8 Sep 2021 at 23:21

tonys said:
Welcome to the forums. Are sure that the board can accept an nvme as the specification of that board says m.2 sata

Thank you for your reply. If that’s the case, my bad. But… should inserting NVMe into m.2 sata port cause a hard brick, and not running it at a lower than specified speed? If that’s the case, then that should be a very important point to mention by the manufacturers.

Thekwango · 8 Sep 2021 at 23:41

have you tried removing the potentially offending drive?

tamzzy · 8 Sep 2021 at 23:43

the x99 krait will support NVME

agree with thekwango
also, if it does work when the offending drive is removed, then consider a bios update to the latest bios. may solve the issue.

David970 · 9 Sep 2021 at 00:21

Thekwango said:
have you tried removing the potentially offending drive?

Yes. As mentioned in the thread. The MB is bricked no matter whether it’s in or out. It’s not even about the NVMe anymore in all honesty.

David970 · 9 Sep 2021 at 00:24

tamzzy said:
the x99 krait will support NVME

agree with thekwango
also, if it does work when the offending drive is removed, then consider a bios update to the latest bios. may solve the issue.

It is hard bricked. I can’t get the BIOS through either of the BIOS switches. As a matter of fact, the BIOS was updated to its latest non beta release before the NVMe was installed (nothing relevant related to the update, just done it before I realised there are no advantages to it with my CPU).

tamzzy · 9 Sep 2021 at 00:36

hmmm...
without physically examining the system, it sounds like something shorted the motherboard at the time of the ssd installation...the motherboard being unable to load bios suggests something catastrophic