This is a copy pasta from of a post I made on EVGA forums, hoping having a few more peeps viewing can help me solve. Hi everyone, looking for a bit of help and advice atm with my z97 Classified board. Unfortunately seems to be no end of issues for me, mostly appear to be compatibility but others I just have no idea. Recently bought a new system, classified board, corsair dom platinum 1866 16GB RAM, i7 4790k and the EVGA SC ACX 780ti and a intel 530 120GB SSD. These are being powered by a Corsair HX850 currently running win 8.1 pro 64bit. Now, first things first, a slight issue with my old Razer Megalodon not being recognised by the system. People have said this is a USB 3 issue, which seems to be resolved by disabling XHCI, whether this may cause other issues later I'm not sure, but full stories are usually necessary. Next I noticed an issue with the write speeds on my SSD being extremely low in AS SSD (140MB/s max on sequential as opposed to the advertised 480) This got me reasearching and trying to resolve. At this point all my drivers were installed from the EVGA support site (excluding USB3 due to system saying I did not meet the requirements, maybe due to disabled XHCI?) and SM BUS was definitely working and I was still running win 8. I decided to push through windows updates and install 8.1 and try to get the SSD running at advertised speeds. Unfortunately, nothing worked. I thought maybe I was missing an AHCI or intel SATA driver (seeing as the SSD was in the intel ports not marvell, and the bios was definitely set to ahci) I looked in device manager and all of a now SM BUS controller has no longer got a driver. I tried reinstalling the chipset driver, but still the SM BUS was missing. I removed the device and reinstalled. I reset my bios (which unfortunately caused a boot mgr error as it wasn't looking at my SSD as the primary boot, but it refused to let me back into the bios to change back until I reset the CMOS by taking out the battery.) So now I'm stuck, no idea where my SM BUS controller has gone and chipset driver installation not working. SSD stuck at low write speeds, and no intel drivers for sata to even find on the disk or website. Razer headset not working unless I disable USB 3 support from the entire system. Hopefully someone can help me. I have sent an email to europe support, but I'm guessing they won't reply until Monday at the earliest, and it would be nice to get this resolved. Any other info or clarification needed, let me know. Thanks in advance, Mike
When you say the SM BUS controller was missing do you mean device manager didn't list any SM BUS controllers ? Or that they were listed with a yellow exclamation mark.
yellow exclamation mark. always there even after trying to reinstall chipset drivers. I did actually try to uninstall then refresh device manager list, but it always re appears with that damn yellow exclamation. Unfortunately more and more issues appear to pop up as time goes on. I have 2 secondary HDDs for game and file storage and one of them randomly and intermittently vanishes after sleep or restart (completely gone from bios) getting it back usually takes switching between the multiple bios on the system (one of three) This whole thing is extremely weird.
You could try extracting the drivers from the Intel installer and then installing them manually. Run the Intel chipset driver *.exe from the command prompt with the "-extract <path>" and "-overall" switches. Then when updating the driver in device manager point it to where you extracted the drivers. Probably asking the obvious, but you are using version 10.0.13 of the chipset drivers i guess.
You sound like you know what you're doing, but I would adopt the following approach 1. Install the latest BIOS /UEFI 2. Pull all power to the board including CMOS battery for at least 30 minutes 3. Re seat memory 4. Disconnect all Sata devices 5. Connect only the ssd to a Sata 3 port with a new Sata 3 cable 6. Download all drivers from the evga site and install all the drivers, including things you think you may not need like audio. 7. If all this fails I would consider a reinstall Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk
Corky, any chance of a step by step on that? Don't do many command prompt workarounds normally (usually don't need to). the chipset is 10.0.13. and it is at location C:\Users\Mike\Desktop\SetupChipset.exe I have updated the bios to latest version also, but unfortunately it made no difference. The hard drive that disappeared has just tripped smart, so not sure if its faulty or not, will test in a bit. Sods law if moving it from one PC to another has ruined it
SMART trip caused by spin up time = 1, other identical drive is 76. Looks like drive is failing to initialise maybe. Links in with the occasional sleep or from boot disappearances. I'm presuming its connected to the mobo issues as both drives were tested ok before coming out of old system.
To do a manual install first you need to extract the drivers from the SetupChipset.exe, I'm guessing that's the name of the file you have downloaded. Open an elevated command prompt (START MENU button > All Programs > Accessories > then right click on Command Prompt and choose Run As Administrator) Change directory to the Desktop by typing in "cd desktop" (without the quotes), type: "SetupChipset.exe -overall" (without the quotes) then hit enter, run through the install like before. Reboot and see if that installed the missing SM BUS controller drivers, if not there is another way to try installing them but try the simpler of the two first and let us know how it goes.
Still the same unfortunately. Seemed to take a bit longer this time though (used to instantly say complete) if that is relevant. It did create a log file
Darn, OK. Try running it again but this time use the following command "SetupChipset.exe -extract C:\Users\Mike\Desktop\Intel -overall" (without the quotes) then hit enter. This should extract the drivers into a folder on the desktop called "Intel" Once the drivers are extracted go into devices manager > right click the SM BUS controller and choose "update driver software" > choose the "Browse my computer for the driver software" > Browse to the Intel folder on the desktop > OK > Next. It will either say the driver updated, or that the driver is up to date. If it says the driver is up to date, go back to device manager and right click the SM BUS controller again but this time choose properties > Driver Tab. Does it list the driver provider as Microsoft, or Intel, if it says Intel what does it say the driver version is ?
That one worked, my SM Bus Controller is now installed. In the meantime I have been hearing my E drive clunking away, so I am going to put the disappearing drive issue to that being a failing drive. The XHCI and Razer Megalodon not being recognised issue appears to be something I can't do anything about. Just have to disable XHCI and do without usb 3 or do without this headset. However, with XHCI enabled, some other USB 2 devices are not recognised by the USB 3 ports. I was presuming this was the USB 3 driver not being installed, but I can't see anything in device manager about missing drivers, and when I try run the driver from EVGA I supposedly don't meet the requirements. Unfortunately no further info on what those reqs are. As for the SSD I havent noticed the system "feeling" slow, but the AS SSD benchmark is kinda worrying. I did try ATTO but I had no idea what the thing was telling me. Any thoughts on this one? Oh and plus rep Corky, you've been a great help so far.
Glad you got the SM Bus Controller driver working, as for the XHCI and Razer Megalodon not being recognised issue. I think you may have the best solution already, annoyingly Razer doesn't list Windows 8 as being supported, maybe someone reading this has had similar issues and can suggest what to try. The SSD benchmark being slow, could you provide the info from the top right corner, just what it reports on the two lines above the size of the drive, the text that is either red or green.
Yes, just wanted to know if the partition was aligned and what storage driver you were using, both check out OK. Going on what I've looked up for the kind of results you should be getting in AS SSD with an Intel 530 the read speed seem to be around the same as other get, although the write speed seem a bit low when compared to other results.
I'm starting to think that its a dodgy AS SSD read. Other benchmarks completely match up to others found online, and there are 0 noticeable issues, just a funny reading in benchmarking. As it currently stands I'm considering this resolved (mostly) keep running up with other odd issues, but It's mainly been resolved after walking away and looking at it again later. So much money put into this makes it soo much more stressful if it feels like something is wrong. Thanks for all your help!
