Official GIGABYTE Forum

Questions about GIGABYTE products => Motherboards with Intel processors => Topic started by: Takis_M on November 18, 2017, 08:35:32 am

Title: GA-EP45T-UD3R. Does it boot from a PCI-E SATA Controller?
Post by: Takis_M on November 18, 2017, 08:35:32 am

Good day to the community

I have a Gigabyte GA-EP45T-UD3R motherboard, S.N: SN084100050561, paired with an Intel C2Q Q9550 CPU, 4 x Corsair CMX8GX3M2A1600C9, 4GB DIMMs, a SAPPHIRE NITRO Radeon RX 460 4G D5 OC GPU and a Western Digital WDS250G1B0A-00H9H0, 250GB SATA 3 SSD, as the system disk.

I am going to build a new PC with this hardware, under Windows 10 Pro 64-bit Operating System.

I need to know if I can use an add-on PCI-E SATA 3 Controller Card and have the Western Digital SSD connected to it, allowing the motherboard to boot from this Controller and SSD. I am thinking to  do this, in order to benefit from the faster SATA 3 protocol, instead of using the motherboard SATA 2 connections.

I tried to find if there is such a possibility, by reading the motherboard manual, but I could not locate it. The relevant section in the manual (Advanced BIOS Features - First/Second/Third Boot Device) specifies that the boot order can be done from the following available devices:
- Floppy
- LS120
- Hard Disk
- CDROM
- ZIP
- USB-FDD
- USB-ZIP
- USB-CDROM
- USB-HDD
- Legacy LAN
or to be Disabled.

From above, it is not clear if the motherboard can boot from a PCI-E Controller with an SSD attached to it.

Can someone clarify this for me, please?

Thanks in advance.

Title: Re: GA-EP45T-UD3R. Does it boot from a PCI-E SATA Controller?
Post by: shadowsports on November 18, 2017, 02:47:17 pm

Greetings,
The chances of your board supporting boot from for a PCI-e add-on card is low or non-existent.  Its 9 yrs old.  I doubt any BIOS rev would allow you to do this.