Gigabyte Z97x-SLI modded BIOS with NVME module and updated Microcode

BIOS/UEFI Modding Reports: BIOS Modding Results
1

Hi All, I recently succeed in inserting the NvmExpressDxe_4.ffs module and updating the microcode for my Gigabyte Z97x-sli board, following the great instructions here.

Here are the motivation and some notes:
For Gigabyte Z97x-sli, the NVME module (NVME, NVMESMM, NVMEINT13) driver in the official BIOS (latest Z97XSLI.10b) has problems identifying and booting from newer enterprise NVME drives (e.g. Samsung PM1725, Intel P4610, Optane drives, etc). The win-raid module NvmExpressDxe_4.ffs works better for newer drives. The original NVME module needs to be deleted to create space for inserting this 3rd-party NVME driver.

The new NVME driver can now boot with drives that I have, including Optane. Any NVME drive will show up as "PATA SS" in the boot list but UEFI boot manager should get the right name of the device.



Below is the BIOS file with both modded NVME module and updated microcode, with Spectre patch. I so far have zero problem after updating the microcode.

Z97XSLI.zip (5.55 MB)


SHA-1: D2EBBABF56F51C937BB52BDD25B39CAC19177EFC (for the unzipped BIOS file)

I did not update SATA/Graphics ROM since the current works fine for me.

Thanks for reading.

2

@Fernando "The win-raid module NvmExpressDxe_4.ffs works better for newer drives"

3

@triples :

Thanks for this interesting report.
A second reason for the deletion of the natively present NVMe BIOS module(s) is the possibility of a bad interferance between the new and the old NVMe BIOS modules.