PRO-IT Rocks!

SSD Gigabyte AORUS Gen4 7300 SSD 2TB M.2 not working on Gigabyte Z790 UD AX M2A_CPU slot.

Bartosz Maciejewski -

I recently built a new PC with all the latest technology. With DDR5 and 14th generation CPUs, which are still quite new, there are a lot of challenges to even start freshly built PC.

I finally got it to boot and display the splash screen. Happily, I started to browse the BIOS and ... no disk. The last thing I would suspect of being invalid was the M.2 disc plugged into the dedicated M2A_CPU slot here:

Having nothing better to do, I just swapped the disc to the other M2P_SB port and to my surprise it showed up in the BIOS and in the Windows installer.

So the disc is fine, but the motherboard is not? I have read that the M2A_CPU slot is connected directly to the CPU socket and then to the CPU, so if you bend or damage some of the pins, it could cause the disc not to be recognised. But frankly, that would be very unfortunate. Also, before the 11th generation CPU, this slot is disabled because the CPU can't handle it yet. But with my 14th generation i7 14700K it should just work.

As stated in the subject of this post - I have Gigabyte Z790 UD AX ver 1.2, so I assumed it was quite new and all 14th gen and DDR 5 things should work. I also checked what BIOS came with it. It was F4 from March 2023, so quite recent, isn't it?

Check the download page - there is the latest F9b BIOS from November. I tried it.

With the Q-Flash feature, it was as simple as putting it on the USB drive and doing the update. After a while and a reboot I noticed that... the whole GUI of the BIOS had changed. I also enabled XMP profile to use my 6800 Mhz DDR5 RAM instead of safe 4800Mhz. Keep in mind that setting XMP will program the memory which looks like motherboard hangs for 2-3 minutes with led pointing to memory error. Just wait patiently.

Then I plugged the M.2 disc into the desired port, and... it worked!

Apparently M2A_CPU for this disk was added in F6 BIOS. Whole spec of this build below:

  1. Motherboard: Gigabyte Z790 UD AX
  2. Memore: GoodRam IRDM, DDR5, 64 GB, 6800MHz, CL34 (IR-6800D564L34/64GDC)
  3. CPU: Intel® Core™ i7-14700K 3.4 GHz/5.6 GHz
    LGA1700 BOX
  4. AIO Cooler: Endorfy Navis F360 ARGB (EY3B006)
  5. Disk: SSD Gigabyte AORUS Gen4 7300 SSD 2TB M.2 2280
    PCIe 4.0 x4 (7300/6850 MB/s) 3D TLC
  6. PSU: MSI MPG A850G PCIE5 850W 135mm 80plus Gold
  7. Case: Endorfy Arx 500 Air