NVMe boot with SuperMicro X9DA7 & X9DRi-F

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kujinke

Member
Jun 19, 2015
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Hi,

I can confirm this method works. I have successfully modded my Supermicro X9DAi BIOS and now It boots off of a Intel Optane 900p.
Must say, things are blazing fast now :D..
 

Vexorg

New Member
Jun 2, 2018
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would the same bios also work for the X9DR3-LN4+?
Take this with a gain of salt but on the supermicro site both boards point to the same bios download file. I can't seem to see much different besides a few more sata/sas ports on the DR3 board. So I'll say yes it will work...
 

noths

New Member
Dec 9, 2015
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Athens, Greece
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JoeBloggs

New Member
Jan 25, 2019
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this isn't strictly related to what you're doing, but i'm trying to get a modded bios for my X8DAH+-F m/b, I've looked all over the place a can't find one ANYWHERE :(. All i'm looking to do (if possible) is unlock the BCLK so I can bump up the xeons speed a little. if anyone can help it would be greatly appreciated :D.
 

JoeBloggs

New Member
Jan 25, 2019
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Kudos to the all the peeps at Fernando's Win-RAID Forum (Storage Drivers - BIOS Modding)

Ha....Supermicro tech support said there was no way to do this :)
this isn't strictly related to what you're doing, but i'm trying to get a modded bios for my X8DAH+-F m/b, I've looked all over the place a can't find one ANYWHERE :(. All i'm looking to do (if possible) is unlock the BCLK so I can bump up the xeons speed a little. if anyone can help it would be greatly appreciated :D.
 

Shawn Arcus

New Member
Nov 21, 2018
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only downtime: in Benchmark Seq. Read is not perfectly fast - it's nearly the same as write (around 2,000 MB/sec, which matches advertised expectations).

Are there any ideas on this?
spec: 3GHz 10c ivy, W10, latest Samsung driver
Was this ever sorted? Having same issue...
 

matteo_galet

New Member
Apr 15, 2019
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Just modded Bios v3.2 of X9DRi-LN4F+
=> now 1TB 960Pro not only works but also boots perfectly W10 within kryoM.2 PCIe 3.0 x4
:D
May I know how you managed to boot win10 x64 on the x9dri-ln4f+ at all??

I'm struggling with errors and blue screens just to boot it on a regular SATA SSD...
SuperMicro does say that anything above Windows 7 cannot work.

Thanks!
 

bzaras

New Member
Apr 15, 2019
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Poland, Cieszyn
May I know how you managed to boot win10 x64 on the x9dri-ln4f+ at all??

I'm struggling with errors and blue screens just to boot it on a regular SATA SSD...
SuperMicro does say that anything above Windows 7 cannot work.

Thanks!
maybe this will help :
FAQ Entry | Online Support | Support - Super Micro Computer, Inc.

and make sure to check this after install too:
FAQ Entry | Online Support | Support - Super Micro Computer, Inc.

my x9dri-ln4f+ boots windows 10 fine from nvme drive (altough i have modded bios as per above instructions)
 

TommyL

Member
Jul 7, 2019
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I was able to get the NVMe module inserted into the latest bios for the SM X9DRi-LN4+ I can share if your still looking for it.
I would love to try it out if you still have it :)

Tommy

Edit: Modded myself, gonna try flashing it soon :)
 
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mhilt

New Member
Aug 8, 2019
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Hi, I noticed that several people here mentioned interest or attempts to Bifurcate Supermicro X9 series pcie for use with Asus Hyper M2 x16 or similar. I've been searching everywhere for a way to get this working; has anyone had success?

I ordered 1x PCI Express Gen 3 Carrier Board for 4 M.2 SSD modules - Amfeltec

Need to find a few $$ for some 960 EVOs :eek::eek:
Big thanks to mafrieger for the help. I managed to fresh install and configure an X9DRI-LN4F+. Couple of things not mentioned earlier:
1 - You cant UEFI boot from CD/DVD you must use a USB Bootdisk
2 - Didn't need any extra drivers at all, you can resolve the driver requirement for sata after the install (On Supermicro site as SCU driver)

I also tried to use an Asus Hyper M2 X16 quad card, only the first M2 slot works. I tried to enable the slot bifurcation with the hidden bios settings which did turn the PCIE speed setting for the slot from 1 setting to 4 but does not seem to configure the Root Ports correctly. PCIE Bifurcation can likely be added but only by a skilled bios engineer. Of course I am assuming that the Hyper M2 X16 card does not have any special requirements as I'm not sure how the VROC / Standard mode setting in Asus bios is applied.
How did you enable the hidden settings? Did you use AMIBCP to modify function access to 'USER'? Anything else?

Interested in this;

I am looking to mod my X9SRL-F BIOS to support NVMe and use this very adaptor (want to use a 960 pro for ESXi/FreeNAS VM datastore, and a PM953 for a FreeNAS SLOG).
Keen to understand why the other three ports aren't available. Did you ever find out anything further on this?

SuperMicro have confirmed by board supports bifurcation, so guess it must be to do with the ASUS chips onboard and VROC?

EDIT: have put in a query to Asus to see what they say. Will report back.

Cheers
Eds
?? I can't think what Asus mean by that.

I've put an Asus Hyper M2 X16 quad card in the single x16 slot of an Asrock Z370 board using bifurcation of x16 to x8x4x4 set in the BIOS .

This makes a single x16 slot into 3 separately functioning sets of lanes at x8, x4 and x4, so the quad card works perfectly with 3 SSDs onboard - and would see 4 SSDs if the ASrock BIOS had a bifurcation option of x16 to x4x4x4x4 - which supported Asus boards do. Gigabyte also has Z370 boards that do this.

So the Asus quad card definitely works with bifurcation - I can't really see how it could work otherwise ...

Modding a BIOS to introduce bifurcation sounds tricky.
I have a X9DR7-LN4F with Bios 3.3, and although bifurcation settings are visible, when I try to change x16 for instance, x16 is the only option I can select. Do any of yours actually allow you to select a different option?

When I first received the board, it had a 2.0 BIOS on it; and without thinking to back it up, I updated to 3.3 to get V2 CPU support. Oddly, I seem to recall though that when I looked through the 2.0 BIOS, I was able to select the bifurcation options, where I cannot now. Unfortunately I can't find an old BIOS to check that; does anyone have one?

It looks like @davidm (71)? on the win-raid forum was able to do a similar mod to enable bifurcation on a different mfg's board: RE: Add option in AMI UEFI bios menu (how to?) - 2

I've been trying to do similar, but the IFR Extractor tool has not worked for me -- anything I try to read with it spits back an error "Unknown protocol detected". I've tried it on several extracts from UEFI Tool; same result.
 

mb300sd

Active Member
Aug 1, 2016
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Couple ones I made recently. The X9DAi versions are currently untested since that's my primary server for a little while longer. No IPMI so recovery is going to require desoldering the chip again.

X9DAi latest with ES CPU added
X9DAi latest with ES CPU added and NVMe
X9QRi-F+ with NVMe

https://mb300sd.net/files/X9DAi.7z
https://mb300sd.net/files/X9QRi-F.7z

Still trying to add ES Platinums to my Intel S2600STB, since I'm having difficulty selling it, but Intel BIOS seems very difficult to modify.
 
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mb300sd

Active Member
Aug 1, 2016
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X9QRi WORKS! Now booting off an Optane 800p in a AOC-SLG3-2M2. Was afraid it wasn't for a little bit but it turned out to be a bifurcation issue.

Haven't had a chance to test the X9DAi yet. Old server is offline and I'm gonna mess with it when I have a chance.
 

mb300sd

Active Member
Aug 1, 2016
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Gonna have to warn everyone not to try this with the v1.0 BIOS for X9DAi, unless you have the equipment to desolder and reprogram the BIOS chip.

Tried the files I posted above tonight. It does not work with the ES CPU, but does work with NVMe as long as you have a non-ES CPU. After that, I tried to add the module to v1.0 that does work with my ES. Now it won't boot with either chip. Going to have to dig out my SOIC clip and flash it off-board again.

Dead files have been removed from the 7z. The 2 left are the original hard to find 1.0 BIOS for ES, and the latest with NVMe.
 
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Markess

Well-Known Member
May 19, 2018
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Northern California
I got it to work fine with X9SCL, ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶c̶o̶u̶l̶d̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶g̶e̶t̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶k̶ ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶X̶9̶D̶R̶T̶-̶F̶.̶ ̶ ̶T̶h̶e̶ ̶l̶a̶t̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶s̶t̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶b̶o̶o̶t̶s̶ ̶f̶i̶n̶e̶,̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶I̶ ̶c̶a̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶g̶e̶t̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶b̶o̶o̶t̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶m̶ ̶N̶V̶M̶e̶.̶

Edit: I did get this to work on X9DRT-F. I'd originally tried saving the modified BIOS into the same directory and with the same name as the original (i.e. I thought it would overwrite), but it re-saved the original unmodified BIOS instead. I tried the process again and followed the instructions to "Save As" in a different directory, and it worked fine.
 
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AlexHuang

New Member
Sep 28, 2019
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Has anyone tried with an X9SCM-F Board? Someone had success a year ago with the Fernando WinRAID method. I'd like to do the same, but hoping to get an already functional BIOS, since I don't have easy access to a Windows PC. (Going to use Linux on the system after)

EDIT: I also have an X9DRD-7LF4F-JBOD board I'd also be interested in a working modded BIOS for... :)
 
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