GA-Z170X Gaming 7 Shared Lanes Problem

[Psybernoid]

Hi all,

I've recently built a system up using the GA-Z170X Gaming 7. All working perfectly fine, except when I try to plug a card into one of the PCI-E 1x ports, the system freezes as soon as Windows attempts the access it.

Some background:
I have SATA devices connected to ports 1, 2, 4 & 5 in addition, I have both M.2 sockets populated with M.2 SSD drives, making a total of 6 devices.

I have an nVidia 970 GTX occupying the top PCI-E 16x slot.

Now, the issue I have is that I need to install 2 Blackmagic Intensity Pro cards. These are 1x devices. I have one working by connecting it into the 2nd (middle) PCI-E 16x slot. The 3rd slot isn't functional due to the 2nd M.2 socket being populated.

As soon as I attempt to connect the other Intensity Pro into a 1x slot, Windows will freeze as soon as it attempts to install the driver.

Looking at some schematics, it would appear that the SATA ASM controller shares a lane with the Z170 chipset. So, I figured that disabling that would free up some resource, as I'm only using the Intel controller. However, I can find no way to disable that.

Any suggestions ?

[dmdilks]

By what I have read out there that a lot of people having the same problem with two cards. If these are the same cards then windows should pickup the card and install the driver.

Plus will your software support two cards. Plus I really never have run these cards. I'm only going on what I'm reading. Have you talk to their support?

On the ASM: https://hardforum.com/threads/question-for-owners-of-z170-mobo-w-asmedia-sata-controller.1880431/

[Psybernoid]

Certainly supports 2 cards. That's not the issue. I had them running on an old machine which has sadly given up, hence the new build.

The freezing occurs when you attempt to use either of the cards in a PCI-E 1x slot, regardless of the other being present or not.

Cheers for the forum link, but looks like I'm out of luck on this one.

[Quitis]

According to Blackmagic Design, the Blackmagic Intensity Pro 4k cards require x4 PCIe lanes and will only work in a PCIe x4, PCIe x8 or PCIe x16 slot. The GA-170X-GAMING 7 comes with three PCIe x16 slots, PCIEX16, PCIEX8, and PCIEX4. PCIEX16 and PCIEX8 share lanes and using them both will cause them to both run in x8 mode, which sucks for your GPU but is not a problem for the BIP. PCIEX4 shares lanes with the M2H_32G slot and they cannot both be used at the same time. Placing an M.2 SSD into M2H_32G will disable the PCIEX4 PCIe x16 slot altogether.

I suggest you remove the 2nd M.2 SSD from M2H_32G, populate your PCIe x16 slots, update your drivers, and try again.