@Cipher, you’re welcome - when you figure out a solution, it would be interesting to hear about it.
About the m.2 SSD, I have another piece of advice. On the G20CB (and G20CI), the m.2 slot is located next to the core voltage regulators, which get quite hot. This means that the SSD, when installed there, operates in a rather hot environment and can easily reach a critical temperature (which leads to throttling, throughput decreases significantly).
In case you no longer need the 2.5" slot (in which a SATA SSD is installed usually), there is an elegant solution. You can simply relocate the m.2 slot upwards using an m.2 riser cable (I used a Delock 64136 + double-sided tape and a cable tie). The additional space allows to use a heatsink and another advantage is that it is much easier to access.
@vega , that’s an elegant solution indeed, I will consider it if i find a fix.
I put the m.2w SATA SSD back in and installed windows 11 and interestingly, windows update started installing many PCIe and nvme drivers, which could actually make an NVMe usable but not as a boot drive
I assume you are on a G20CI which is way easier to mod, but I will inform you in case of any new developments.
@Cipher, to make booting from an NVMe SSD possible, it needs to be recognised by the BIOS/UEFI. As far as I know, the operating system uses the information about the configuration/topology of the PCIe peripherals from the BIOS/UEFI, so the NVMe drivers on Windows also depend on it. I think the solution for both would be to adjust the PCIe configuration in your crossflash BIOS/UEFI. With HWiNFO you might be able to get more information about how your operating system sees the PCIe peripherals.
I actually also have a G20CB, but I continue to use it with the default CPU. After reading about the Coffee Lake mod, I thought about whether I should try to mod my G20CB or purchase a G20CI as a second machine. I decided in favour of the latter, as I can tinker with the G20CI a bit, while (until I am sure everything works well) I can simply keep using my G20CB without worrying about something to break. I knew from the ROG forum that the G20CI should work with a Coffee Lake CPU, but stability issues occured that took me a long time to find the reasons for, so it was a good decision.
