Question AM5 (MSI MEG X670E ACE), does not boot when RAID card is used

[ericgandt]

AM5 (MSI MEG X670E ACE), does not boot when RAID card is used, seriously was never even tested by MSI where is the QA?
Now first off the first MB (which is crazy expensive), did not work "Over Current on USB" and the NVMe slots 2,3,4 off the x670 chipset all failed to work (so not overly impressed by their QA). My Second MB (replacement, that cost me 2 weeks and an extra 60 dollars), works kind of, it can boot (takes forever and can not sleep, apparently an AMD not MSI issue), Hibernate works on Windows 10, not 11, exact same setup and set of software, but Windows 11 is a pain like that. So lets just say not an easy setup so far, but I was making progress.

However now the show stopper the MB does not boot with a RAID6 controller installed, this controller works fine on an X570 MB, in fact I had it working on X570 and X370 MB's, but while the MSI MEG X670E ACE will discover the RAID and I can see it in BIOS, I can not actually boot if installed. Seriously installing the RAID means the PC will not boot beyond BIOS or the boot selection menu. Now I bought this MB as I needed 3 slots PCI-E 8x, PCI-E 8x and PCI-E 4x something very hard to find on AM5. Now I'm told by MSI they do not test with an external storage cards and likely it does not work. So right now I have a 700 dollar MB, with a 700 dollar CPU and another $300 in Memory all worthless. Add in the case the Power Supply and other parts (CPU cooler ...) and we are over 2K for what a very large heavy paper weight, because MSI did not do proper QA testing, I'm not trying to boot off the RAID, but want it discovered as storage.

So I've tried:
- switching Video and RAID (PCIE1 and PCIE2), changing PCIE speeds,
- Note it can not be used in PCIE3 as it is an 8x card and performance would be impacted, but hey I gave it a try anyways.
- Tried setting PCIE speeds to 3.0 and even 2.0
- Tried without any drives attached (so bare card)
- Tried a backup card (learned in the past always have a backup RAID card if you can).
In all cases it does not boot, beyond BIOS when installed. Note the RAID is 45TB so I could try to use 3x 18TB drives in RAID0, but that means no redundancy (so that would be awful, also the case is SAS12 so I need a different case to do that, yet more Wasted money.

This is not expected and makes little to no sense, it has to be a BIOS issue, problem is that MSI still has not updated BIOS for this MB after a month (1.25Beta), and as such I have little hope of them providing a timely fix (or one at all).

So now I'd stuck do I try a different AM5 MB (non MSI!) and take a huge hit selling this one off used (I can not return it a second time), do I take a larger hit by going Intel (so new MB/CPU and cooler, not from MSI!), as both MSI and to a lesser extent AMD have let me down with a platform that is not ready for use.

 

[Tech Junky]

I've only had one MSI board on Intel and no issues. I however switched to ASRock for the past few boards and no issues until Z690 where CSM didn't work and had to convert to GPT to boot and one pcie card didn't work properly for ota/dvr on Plex.

There always seem to be some quirks with newer tech. A raid card not working though is a new one though as they're usually the last thing you would think of not working. Try a different board before throwing in the towel since you're already invested. If it doesn't work then return it and find something that does work with SAS like an external enclosure and feed it back into the system via TB4 which still gets you the speed or usb20.

 

[Shmee]

Hmm, I have the MSI X570 Meg Ace, rig in sig, and it has been a great board with great support and BIOS updates. I am guessing that since this is newer tech, MSI needs a bit more time.

Also, what model RAID card are you using? I know that some particular RAID cards, such as the PERC I bought used for use in an X58 board as a Truenas, will prevent the system from booting unless 2 of the PCIe fingers are masked with electrical tape. (I believe pins 5 and 6) Anyway, this behavior can happen on many boards I have read with some of these cards, so they require said tape mod. Luckily, the card and system worked fine once the tape was applied.

 

[ericgandt]

Adaptec 71605T Raid, been using it on a Gigabyte x570 Master with a 3950x for years without issue. As well as X370 and X470 chipsets from MSI and Asus in the past.

I fully agree x670 seems not fully baked yet, from what I'm seeing the whole platform is looking rushed.

I had forgotten about the SMBus issue for years past, I remember doing that in the past as well.

 

[Schaka]

I'm on the B650-P WiFi with the Adaptec 71605. MSI board with an external raid controller. I've tried everything OP has. I don't even need it to work in RAID mode, I want HBA. Unfortunately I've not had luck with either.

Getting stuck at the bios screen. When turning off the screen, the text shows it gets stuck at ATA/ATAPI.

This is meant to go into an Intel system with an AsRock B760. I seriously thought my card was broken until I found this thread.

Were you ever able to find a solution?