Z87 motherboards and SSDs

[camalbitboy]

Hi All,

I've recently bought a Z87-G45 Gaming MSI mobo and built my new system. I tried to use my existing SSD, an OCZ Vertex 2E only to discover that these drives (along with any others using that sandforce driver) are non compatible with any Z87 mobos.
Understandably I'm rather miffed about this and have approached MSI to see if they will provide a fix, but after a week with their tech team they are saying nothing. I can't see that any mobo manufacurer has supplied a fixed BIOS, although one review site sayd that they were sent a beta bios to fix their review sample asus mobo.

So question 1 is has anyone managed to resolve this issue so far with any manufacturer?

If the worst happens then I'll need to buy a new boot SSD with no money...

So question 2 is is there an advantage to using the onboard mSSD slot with a Crucial M4 64GB mSATA for example to using a normal ssd through a SATA port?

And question 3 is anyone know where I can find a good cheap 60+GB ssd? So far I've found;
Crucial M4 64GB mSATA = 64.37
64GB SanDisk Pulse = 45.17
SanDisk Pulse 128GB = 68.54
and I'm frankly really going to struggle to pull together more than £60 at the mo as off to Australia ina few weeks for a month. Any ideas?

Cheers in advance
Cam

[camalbitboy]

One more question. Would I get away with using a 32GB SSD as a Win7 64bit boot drive, or would that drive me mad really quickly constantly trying to free up space? I can pick up a Crucial 32GB M4 mSATA SSD
for £40 delivered....

[ajones]

One more question. Would I get away with using a 32GB SSD as a Win7 64bit boot drive, or would that drive me mad really quickly constantly trying to free up space? I can pick up a Crucial 32GB M4 mSATA SSD
for £40 delivered....

A full Win7 64bit install with updates is about 20GB...? So it would fit into a 32GB drive. However, having a small drive (I have a Win7 machine on 64GB drive) can drive you a little nuts; you always need to be conscious where you are installing stuff to.

[camalbitboy]

Hmm that was my guess. I was running a 64GB drive before and that was fine so long as I installed pretty much everything else to storage drives, if Win7 install is 20GB or so then I will be always fighting it. 64GB minimum it is.

[stilkun]

One more question. Would I get away with using a 32GB SSD as a Win7 64bit boot drive, or would that drive me mad really quickly constantly trying to free up space? I can pick up a Crucial 32GB M4 mSATA SSD
for £40 delivered....

I have windows 8 install on 32GB mSATA and only have office 2010, web browsers or small size applications installed, I do not constantly free up space as I used folder redirection for data and games to the 1 TB hard drive. You could use Junction to map program files and user profiles to hard drive which I need to do soon. I don't delete stuff constantly on mine but go for 64 GB if you are worried.

[ajones]

One option would be to use a small SSD as a cache drive with iRST, and install windows to your HDD. No experience of it personally though. You could go for a 32GB drive (60 max if memory serves) and at least get some acceleration in the short term.

[camalbitboy]

One option would be to use a small SSD as a cache drive with iRST, and install windows to your HDD. No experience of it personally though. You could go for a 32GB drive (60 max if memory serves) and at least get some acceleration in the short term.

I've thought about this and think that the extra £20 for a 64gb drive is worth it.

Anyone any experience with this Z87 vs older Sandforce ssd issues?

[John013]

I've thought about this and think that the extra £20 for a 64gb drive is worth it.

Anyone any experience with this Z87 vs older Sandforce ssd issues?

1st gen of any SSD controller had compatibility issues and both the SSD maker & I dont think both the parties had worked collaboratively on this to provide the best results for the end user. However, I haven't heard any such issues from the recent second gen SF-2281 sandforce controllers

[Bonebreaker777]

I am having a PC with Z87-G45 and a Plextor 256GB SSD and works flawlessly.
Right now overclocking stress testing during the night (posting at 23:20). Will be having a short review during the weekend.
Whay exactly is the issue? Like not even the BIOS can see the SSD or what?
Tried new MSI BIOS (1.0.4 I think right now)???

[camalbitboy]

Its an issue with a specific sandforce controller found in Vertex 2 and other ssd's of that time not being fully Intel Compliant. The new Z87 boards (all manufacturers) are fully Intel comliant now, and so the ssds don't work.

http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/fo...-2-and-Haswell
http://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=170135.0

And hardocp.com has some info

"I did have one issue with the Z87-A, as well as every other Z87 chipset motherboard we have used so far. My "old" 120GB Corsair F120 SSDs that we have used for testing motherboards caused big issues. On the ASUS Z87 motherboards, the F120 drives would work, but could be slow or not recognized, or cause boot issues, or simply not been seen by the BIOS or the OS. Plugging the Corsair F120 SSDs into the Intel motherboard shipped with the Core i7-4770K left us with nothing. The Intel motherboard would not see these drives at all. I reported this back to ASUS and it replicated the issue in-house and sent us over a Beta BIOS (as referred to earlier) that fixed the issue. We had already moved onto putting new Samsung Pro SSDs into commission by then as our testing platform needed to be updated and we needed to get to work on Haswell. Letting Intel know about this problem it originally expressed it had not seen any issues, but later came back to say:

We have seen some older SATA 2 devices that are out of spec (8-series has tighter tolerances to specs as platform power is much lower – but fully complies with all SATA specs) and have intermittent behavior, we are investigating whether this particular drive is one of those.

Obviously Intel is aware of a "problem" internally, although the fault may not be on its end.

Doing a bit of digging we found that some 1200 and 1600 series SandForce controllers are not fully SATA specification compliant and the previous Intel chipsets allowed for this out of spec behavior. It seems that the Z87 will not allow for this as it requires "strict adherence to the SATA specification." We did test the workaround BIOS that ASUS sent us without issues using the older F120 SSDs that employ the Sandforce 1200 controller. So obviously, this will have to be solved at a motherboard BIOS level and something to keep in mind if you have older SATA 2 SSD drives. This issue does not seem to be "widespread" though as Intel sent us a chart that contains many SATA 2 drives that have been verified to work fine with Z87 chipsets."

[John013]

Z87 now being fully Intel compliant, new SSDs still wont work?? I think you have mistenkenly quoted here. I have heard the recent sandforce SSDs work flawlessly with Z87 boards

[AJRDLawrence]

A 32GB SSD for Windows 7 is definitely way too small. I have a 60GB SSD formatted to 55.7GB and after the install, a few tiny apps, windows updates, system restore, a 12GB page file and the occasional small download I only have 2GB of free space left. People may say you can live without a page file if you have enough RAM, but I prefer to keep it for legacy compatibility etc nonetheless. In any case even without a page file it will still be over 32GB install just running the OS, updates and some basics so that wouldn't be a good idea

A 64GB SSD as you say wouldn't be a bad idea, especially if you plan to use it for OS only, but there arn't many low capacity drives out there with a decent amount of IOPS or write speeds and most of the mSATA drives Scan have in stock use the Marvell controller, which works fine I guess but you can do better. http://www.scan.co.uk/products/64gb-...0mb-s-73k-iops looks OK for an mSATA drive though.

You'd be much better off paying the little bit extra for a higher capacity SSD such as 120/128Gb to have some room to play with and forget mSATA ever existed In which case http://www.scan.co.uk/products/120gb...83000-iops-max looks mighty fine for the money

[Heighnub]

Z87 now being fully Intel compliant, new SSDs still wont work?? I think you have mistenkenly quoted here. I have heard the recent sandforce SSDs work flawlessly with Z87 boards

Who quoted "new" SSDs? The problem occurs with the older Sandforce controller only. I'm not surprised either considering how many problems my Vertex 2E has had. Bought a Crucial m4 to replace it a while ago which has been rock solid.

[camalbitboy]

Well the plot thickens. At long last MSI have got back to me to tell me that its not a mobo issue and that they will not be fixing this with a BIOS.

"Ticket:
Vertex 2 vs Z87 mobo issues
Content:
Sorry for my late reply,we have double checked the issue,and it should be not a MB bug.we can not fix this problem by bios,The SandForce SF-1200 HDDs have some compatibility issue with the 8-series chipset .But now the manufacturer has stopped maintaining the SandForce SF-1200 product,we have to suggest you upgrade the second generation SF-2000 family of SSD controllers to fix the issue.sorry for any inconvenience caused."

So if MSI won't fix the BIOS (despite Asus having circulated a beta bios fix proving it can be done), and OCZ claim its a mobo issue, then it looks like I'm doomed to having to buy a new ssd and I've got no funds atm.

Will try to catch OCZ with the "fit for purpose" angle, and its within warrenty, but not holding out much hope here