Gigabyte X99-sli bios issue.

[Armadillo]

I got a 5820K + GA-X99-SLI board last week and have been having an issue with the bios. I've found the cause, but have no idea how to fix it.

Basically the issue is, it simply won't enter the bios. It just hangs on a black screen before, then the monitor goes to sleep.

I've found the issue. Apparently it is one of my 2TB western digital greens. Unplug it and it goes into bios 100% of the time. Plug the western digital in and it hangs 9/10 times. The other 2TB drive (same model is fine).

It's 100% fine in windows, everything is detected,all works fine. The computer posts fine 100% of the time. The only issue is, it simply refuses to go into the bios with the drive attached. The drive is fine on others pcs, it's literally just this one that will not go into bios with it attached.

I can always unplug the drive go to bios tweak what I want and come out and plug it back in but that's not really a solution.

Any ideas?

 

[Armadillo]

I know of a fix that worked on x99,it seemed the bios didn't like booting when more than one mbr hdd was attached,if you format the hdd and create it in gpt then it should bootup fine with the two hdd's pluged in

Didn't realise there were other issues, so I should mention the two 2tb are not the only drives.

There is an ssd and another mechanical drive ( a segate). There is no problem booting into windows either, or the system post. It just won't go into the bios.

I've tried swaping the cables. Swapping the ports (different hdd on that sata port, the problem one on another). Tried the problem one by itself.

It does not matter the combination. Even alone on any port, if that 2TB is connected, it will not let me into the bios. The drive is fine on other systems, it just this board.

 

[Armadillo]

Yeah its down to two HDDs being MBR partition,if you make one of the HDDs a gpt partition it should let you access the BIOS with all HDDs attached
Or make the problematic HDD gpt then see if you can access the BIOS

I've seen this before

If that doesn't fix it then idk,its a BIOS bug that needs addressing

Not had a chance to try it yet. I'll give formatting the problem drive to gpt a go see if that fixes it then.

Although I don't think it's the more than one being mbr. All the other drives are mbr and I can get into bios with them all connected at the same time.

I can't get into the bios with the drive with issue, even when it's connected alone. So nothing else with mbr.

I'll still give gpt a shot as I won't lose data though.

 

[Armadillo]

it might be a bios bug with that make/model of hdd

try gpt first though it might be a work around till they release updated bios

Will try gpt later. Although now I think of it, the drive that hangs the bios, is one I had issues before with.

forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18588833

Wouldn't play nice with amd controller, but fine on JMB362.

Was bought later than the other one that is fine, so now I've remembered that, thinking it might be a crappy/different firmware on the drive. Will try GPT though, then maybe see if firmware can be updated (not sure on that drive).

 

[Armadillo]

Having almost bought one of these the other day, there seems to be a lack of BIOS updates from Gigabyte on this

Yeah, there is only the f2 beta bios .

To be completely fair, considering the other issue I had with the same drive (not playing nice on the amd controller), it's probably some dodgy firmware western digital stuck on it (I have 3 2TB drives, only one has the issue and was bought at a much later date).

Only other issue I've had is usb 3 + a certain device (got another thread on that), but then looking online, usb 3 issues seem common across many boards + hardware combos and looking at the requirements of some devices that use it (capture cards etc), it seems usb3 is not as universal as the name would imply.

I did only pay what was essentially £100 for the board (5820k + mb bundle on here when it was cheaper), I guess I might be a bit more annoyed if I had paid the £180 the board normally is.

 

[Armadillo]

Picked up one of these recently for new/rebuild on the Today's Deals offers. Just requested to RMA it back. Not detecting any fans connected to the MB (but powers them) and most of the time on start up it severely underclocks the CPU at 800Mhz-1.2GHz. Have to go into the BIOS and just save and exit just to get it to run at stock.

So far very disappointed nothing but issues getting this board to run properly for over a week however when it does run its rock solid.

Hope I just go one slightly dodgy board and a replacement will be OK.

Do you mean in the bios they are not detected? or using third party stuff from within windows?

HWmonitor for example, doesn't read stuff right. The two fans it pulls are case fans and it ignores the cpu fan.

Gigabyte's own software and bios does show them all though, so if it's the bios/their software, then I guess yours is faulty .

 

[Armadillo]

Sounds like hardware issue.

I have the splash screen on, but when I didn't, I'm pretty sure it showed cpu at 3.3 on boot. Full speed when I go into bios as well. I've certainly never had any slow boot or other issues. I am on the F1 bios.