Well… now I beginning to think this won’t work on the Dell Precision T5600 I’m working with. I think your directions and guide are all good. Great work, and thanks again Fernando! My issue is I can’t get the modification flashed back on the T5600.
So I’d like to put the question out there… Is it possible to flash a modified bios to a machine that has "signed firmware update" option enabled?
It’s actually an interesting read Signed Firmware Update That’s great! Who doesn’t want protection from root-kits and alike. However, it seems as the owner of the device, I should have some means to turn off this feature at least temporarily, by jumper or some other means. But I can’t find it anywhere. My intentions are certainly not malign. I just want to boot off this awesome PCIe ssd drive I have!
Getting Dell to back-port the feature to an older platform seems even less likely than the talented membership figuring out how to circumvent this feature. So I’m calling my effort a failure unless someone out there has other ideas. I’d like to hear them, and I’ll certainly give them a try.
EDIT byFernando: Unneeded blank lines removed (to save space)
@Zeitz : I am sorry, but I cannot help you, because I don’t have any experience with the flashing of a modded BIOS into the BIOS chip of a Dell system. Maybe our BIOS Guru CodeRush knows how to circumvent the BIOS integrity protection of Dell systems. Good luck!
I think an external SPI programmer is the best option here. I don’t know if your SPI chip is soldered down or socketed (I hope for the second, as it’s a workstation, not laptop), but you need to perform dump-modify-flash cycle on it to get your changes applied without having Dell private key.
Going to give this a go on my Lenovo D30 board (acquired from eBay to drive my 2 x Xeon 2670’s). As far as I can see it’s an AMI UEFI BIOS board with the latest update just applied. It has no mention of booting from PCI-e so far. I assume that comes when I mod the BIOS?
Also… I saw earlier instructions that mentioned needing a similar but newer board to source the BIOS from. Is that no longer needed? I notice your instructions only require the BIOS for the board in question and the downloadable module to be added.
Unfortunately I just can’t get it to work Fernando I tried the exact instructions but it just refuses to see the device in BIOS to boot from. I’ve tried changing a few BIOS options but not really sure which ones would matter beyond enabling UEFI
The SSD may not be shown within the BIOS, but you should be able nevertheless to boot off it in UEFI mode.
Open the BOOT section of the BIOS and look for settings related UEFI or take a screenshot of the BIOS section and post it here. Important is, that you have to install the OS in UEFI mode. Otherwise the inserted NVMe module cannot be used by your system.
I was amazed at how well this worked for me. I am pretty good at hardware but had never modded a bios before. I bought a Samsung NVMe 512gb - MZPV…and was fairly disappointed that it would not boot in an Asus z87-pro no matter what I tried. I also have an Asrock Extreme6 in another PC with an SM951 M.2 256gb ACHI in it, so I wouldn’t have been right out of luck either. I looked around and found your site, followed the detailed instructions (except I had cloned my ACHI M.2 onto the NVMe using my Extreme6 and Macrium with Windows 10). So after the bios modification (Bios version 2103) and using the USB flashback and then starting it up with all drives attached including the cloned NVMe in the machine plus 3 other drives, it was up on the Windows 10 desktop within seconds. It was quite incredible. Further there were absolutely no issues.
Thank you so much for providing this information and the level of detail. All I can say is it works - at least it did for me I was very impressed. Perhaps the stupidest thing I did while doing this is I didn’t realize for awhile I had to rename the Bios CAP to Z87P.CAP to use the USB flashback method - you might want to put this in your details. Crystal Disk shows about 2200 read and 1600 write, Samsung Magician the same. I suppose I should try Anvil too.
Anyways this was just great thanks again.
System: Asus Z87-Pro, I7 4770k, 16gb GSkill 2400mhz, Asus GTX 780, Samsung 850 pro 256gb, Sandisk Extreme II 480gb, WD Black 1TB EVGA 850w gold power supply.
EDIT by Fernando: This post has been moved here from >this< thread, because mr.skialot’s report has been about the Samsung SM951 NVMe and not about the AHCI variant.
@mr.skialot : Welcome at Win-RAID Forum and thanks for your feedback!
It is fine, that you succeeded and are happy with the result.
Writing a user-friendly guide is always a balancing act: The guide should be as detailed as needed, but simultaneously as compact as possible. >This< guide contains a link to >this< thread, where I pointed this out very clearly.
Enjoy the Samsung SM951 NVMe SSD with your updated Z87 system! Dieter (alias Fernando)
EDIT: This post has been moved here from >this< thread, because mr.skialot’s report has been about the Samsung SM951 NVMe and not about the AHCI variant.
Thanks for all your hardwork, and posting this up for everyone! So I have a few questions, I understand that this mod will add the UEFI drivers to allow the BIOS to boot form the NVME drive. I have 2 P3700 Intel’s I only have 1 PCI-E slot free to use 1 of the 2 I have.
I’ve tried adding the card to my machine but I’m unable to post and see any video. I do not believe this hack resolves this correct? If I can’t even post with the drive inserted into my secondary PCIE slot that simply means my hardware cannot recognize the device? Or do I have this all wrong? By adding in this hack, it will allow my hardware to detect AND boot from to my NVME?
A second question is I keep getting “file size exceeds the volume size” I saw somewhere in other posts that just means that I will have to remove some other modules to free up some space. Can you recommend any modules that I can remove without bricking my device. I was thinking the TCG commands which are used for the TPM which I’ll never use anyways on my desktop.
I’ve attached the report, any help is appreciated!
Yes, this problem will not been solved by inserting the NVMe BIOS module. I suspect that your discrete graphics card uses too many PCI lanes. To find that out I recommend to temporarily disable resp. to remove the discrete graphics card and to use the iGPU of the processor instead.
Since you obviously are running the on-board Intel SATA Controller in AHCI mode, I recommend to remove the Intel EFI RAID module named "SataDriver" and to save the altered BIOS module before you try to insert the NVMe BIOS module.
I actually didn’t buy the PCIe drives, I work in the encryption field and these are sample drives that i’m “long term testing”
Regarding the PCIE lanes, I suspected the same as well, and pulled out the Video Card and installed a cheap one found in one of my spare Dell machines, with no more luck either. Since the motherboard does not have a video port on the back of the board, there is no ability to use the onbaord video that would be in the CPU.
I don’t see why the machine will not post with a p3700 installed, I’m guessing it just has to be a compatibility thing. The only other machine that has a capable PCIe slot is my server, but it only has one PCIe slot and my raid controller is installed there
I guess I’ll have no choice but to upgrade to a Skylake if I want these drives to work. Makes me sad.
I agree with you. "Enterprise Storage" NNMe SSDs like the P3700 have not been designed by intel for being used with a P67 consumer desktop system. Maybe the SSD in combination with the graphics card needs more power than your P67 system can give. You may get better results with Intel’s 750 PCIe SSD.
I’ve gone through 10+ pages on this subforum and i couldn’t find the solution for my problem.
Is it possible at all to run nvme SSDs on my Asus H87-Pro motherboard and maybe even use it as boot drive? It doesn’t have m.2 slot but i was thinking about some m.2 to PCIe adapter.
Oh wow, i can’t believe i missed the original post. Impressive info there, i even have Asus motherbaord for which you have included a tutorial how to flash it.
I might even try this whole thing, hopefully i won’t do something stupid
Thanks for the reply Fernando… I’ve taken loads of BIOS screenshots and put the ones that I think are relevant here: imgur album First image shows the F12 boot selection options when I have the USB win10 install on it. This one I prepared with Rufus with the GPT UEFI option Second image shows F12 boot selection when the USB is removed (after install) and I’ve removed other options like PXE etc as u can see it doesn’t see anything.
First shows the no OS error message. Is this type of error and font a UEFI BIOS one? It looks a lot different to the regular font/resolution/message I used to see (the No Operating System Found etc one) Next is the BIOS south bridge menu… prop not relevant?
After that is the BIOS Startup menu - has CSM options, and UEFI Boot options.
Does "after install" mean, that you were able to get the OS installed onto the NVMe supporting SSD? If yes, this would verify, that the SSD is bootable (the OS installation requires several reboots). Maybe the hidden partition with the boot sector has been created by mistake outside the SSD.
When I say install I just mean the first part (before the first reboot). It recognises the drive fine and seems to create all the necessary partitions (heaps for some reason) I see the activity light on the 950 Pro as the machine goes through initial post phase so I know it’s doing something.
Alternatively what is the CSM option for the 950 Pro? Is that a way of booting from the 950 without UEFI?
EDIT by Fernando: Unneeded part of the fully quoted text removed (to save space)
So, assuming its socketed (which I think it is) What sort of hardware am I looking at?
I tried the exact instructions but it just refuses to see the device in BIOS to boot from. I’ve tried changing a few BIOS options but not really sure which ones would matter beyond enabling UEFI 
