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Motherboard ASRock X370 Gaming-ITX/ac and AB350 Gaming-ITX/ac

TheHig

King of Cable Management
Oct 13, 2016
951
1,171
Ok so you must have purchased the L9i which requires that AM4 mount kit. The L9a is AM4 out of the box. Easy to mix the two as both show up as ‘AM4 compatible’ on some searches.

Good luck with the build!
 

Teddy

Caliper Novice
Oct 21, 2015
26
47
Ok so you must have purchased the L9i which requires that AM4 mount kit. The L9a is AM4 out of the box. Easy to mix the two as both show up as ‘AM4 compatible’ on some searches.

Good luck with the build!
The L9a is not compatible with am4 out of the box and would require the separate mounting bracket, the L9a-AM4 is the one that is compatible out of the box
 
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TheHig

King of Cable Management
Oct 13, 2016
951
1,171
The L9a was the original AM3 /FM series and replaced by the L9a-AM4. You are correct sir! It seems that the naming got me too. ;)
 

hyperboarean

Case Bender
Mar 11, 2018
2
0
Any potential problems with this board and my config:
1: Intel 760p M.2 256GB SSD + 2x Crucial MX300 525GB Sata in RAID.
2: DDR4 8GB PC 3600 CL17 G.Skill KIT (2x4GB) Ripjaws F4-3600C17D-8GVK
3: Ryzen 5 2400G
4: GTX 980 (only until i get my primary rig set up, waiting for the new gen Ryzen chipset and CPU)

Is it possible to boot 2400G with older BIOS if you have PCI-E graphic card in? I also have a hardware BIOS flasher, but the BIOS on the page is not in a .ROM format, so flashing is questionable. Can somebody post a pic of the BIOS chip on this board (Is it removable)?
 
Last edited:

stree

Airflow Optimizer
Dec 10, 2016
307
177
not a removable bios. You cannot boot the 2200 or 2400G with or without discreet GPU if you do not have minimum BIOS 4.40, you will need an AMD bootkit, or the APU they ship in it, to achieve a BIOS update. You must flash the bridge BIOS ( 3.60) before 4.40 or higher.
Currently BIOS 4.50 or 4.51 BETA are latest stable ( ish ) BIOS` on X370gaming ITX/ac. Please do a FULL CMOS clear between each flash, and F9,F10 to exit.
I would leave out the GTX 980 until you have established all drivers and BIOS updates, or this could cause much driver confusion.
Once you havean APU friendly BIOS installed preferably 4.50, install the latest AMD chipset drivers then Radeon graphics drivers, both from AMD website. Must be in this order........ if you install graphics drivers first the chipset drivers will overwrite with older non APU drivers and it gets messy.......
Use XMP settings for ram clocking, not Ryzen master.

Is it established that the GTX 980 is a superior performer to the 2400G graphics?
Only other thing is, I would double that ram to 16GB (2 x 8)
 

hyperboarean

Case Bender
Mar 11, 2018
2
0
So no problems with M.2 as boot and "storage" on sata raid? So much confusion out there, for some it works, for some not.

This will be just an itx setup for browsing and videos, so GTX980 will stay in only till I build my main PC. And yes, it's a much faster GPU than the 2400G.
 

stree

Airflow Optimizer
Dec 10, 2016
307
177
I have Samsung EVO 960 Nvme as boot, but no idea on the raid aspect, not a raid user so cannot comment.
However, Win 10 boot on M.2...... is it SSD or Nvme? Nvme must be done a certain way......
Maybe I can find a concise guide.
 
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microking4u

Efficiency Noob
Feb 4, 2018
7
0
Phuncz, Sorry I missed this for some reason, yes the drives and all the hardware including the drives are brand new and nothing from any older systems and fresh install of windows 10 pro 64 but. Yes followed that guide and it is working. But you cannot update the raid drivers or it will kick up the error that your boot drive cannot be NVME and may not boot if installed. Also, I’m not a rookie at this stuff, been in IT since 1995, built lots of systems in my day. I fact this reminds me of the Windows 98 Days with the pickiness of these drivers. lol

The most likely reason is that it does work but somehow it doesn't in your situation.

Are you trying to use the RAID drives from another motherboard while keeping the data ? You need to set these up as RAID 0 and you will lose all data on those drives. The way to set these up is explained in the ASRock's RAID installation guide. It's not through Windows, you first need to configure a RAID array the way the manual describes it.

Check that you have the latest drivers, there is the AMD chipset drivers and RAID drivers (latest). Are you trying to load the drivers for a new Windows install ? It's not clear from your post that you are using an existing install or trying to do a new install.
 

microking4u

Efficiency Noob
Feb 4, 2018
7
0
Hi, Have you tried running the latest raid drivers EXE from AMD, do you get any pop ups saying you can’t run the raid driver with NVME as boot drive?

I have a NVME SSD as my boot drive, yesterday I added 2 HDD's in RAID 0 following step 1.3 in the guide Phuncz mentioned and everythings working fine, perhaps windows has to be installed on the NVME drive before you setup the RAID?
 

nick_w

Caliper Novice
Jun 13, 2017
27
29
Hi, Have you tried running the latest raid drivers EXE from AMD, do you get any pop ups saying you can’t run the raid driver with NVME as boot drive?
Hi , I don't think I installed any raid drivers, I just followed the legacy RAID configuration section in the manual and its working fine.
 

microking4u

Efficiency Noob
Feb 4, 2018
7
0
Hi , I don't think I installed any raid drivers, I just followed the legacy RAID configuration section in the manual and its working fine.

Maybe you can try and load the AMD Raid drivers from their website. - https://support.amd.com/en-us/download/chipset?os=Windows 10 - 64

Let me know if you get an error message, this is the one that I got. - "Windows is currently installed to an NVMe disk;upgrading the RAID driver will make this OS unbootable. Please load Windows on a non-NVMe disk. RAID installation will now abort"
 

nick_w

Caliper Novice
Jun 13, 2017
27
29
Maybe you can try and load the AMD Raid drivers from their website. - https://support.amd.com/en-us/download/chipset?os=Windows 10 - 64

Let me know if you get an error message, this is the one that I got. - "Windows is currently installed to an NVMe disk;upgrading the RAID driver will make this OS unbootable. Please load Windows on a non-NVMe disk. RAID installation will now abort"
yep I just tried it and got the same error, I'm curious this is the first raid array I've setup what benefit is there to updating the raid drivers?
 

ChinStrap

Cable-Tie Ninja
Sep 13, 2017
202
179
NVMe Raid 0 (Add-In Card)

With the forthcoming Vega enabled APUs, I have been thinking about NVMe Raid 0 on my x370 Gaming/itx. Would it be bootable with an add-in card like Asrock's Ultra Quad M.2 Card? I know the x370 Gaming/itx supports Bifurcation to a 8x/8x level. The Ultra Quad M.2 card does not have any switches onboard, so would m.2 ports 1 and 3 (on the add-in) work for this request?

Is this something that has ever been considered?

(also, I know Dell and Asus make a 4xM.2 add-in that might work)

Edit: (Asrock's pin layout)


the newest official x370 chipset drivers are coming with a little something extra... (now all we need it better bifurcation support)

 

Phuncz

Lord of the Boards
SFFn Staff
May 9, 2015
5,947
4,953
Maybe this means PCIe bifurcation support is potentially coming an AGESA update and we just have to wait for the board manufacturers to flick the setting. It'd make those quad M.2 cards so appealing, even though it's limited in use. But then again, RGB is mandatory on everything.
 

ChinStrap

Cable-Tie Ninja
Sep 13, 2017
202
179
The frustrating part, for me at least: 2200/2400G has only 8x PCIe lanes active, not the full 16x. When I was breaking this down for myself before the APU release, I wanted to use that Quad M.2 card for a 4x 960evo setup. The ‘best case’ for this support (x370) now is only 2x M.2 Raid 0.
 

Jello

Airflow Optimizer
Nov 15, 2016
376
163
I've run into an issues recently with my AB350 board.
Sometimes when I turn it on, it boots fine, loads Windows quickly, and everything works. But a few seconds later, my mouse and keyboard no longer work, and my monitor goes to sleep, as if it is not sensing signal from my GPU (MSI Aero ITX 1070). I overcome this by pressing the reset button on my case. This has probably happened about 15 times since December.
A few times after pressing the reset button, nothing happened, and I had to power down my system. Upon booting, it did not recognize any of my hard drives, but again, a push of the reset button fixed all of this.

EDIT: I should add I'm on bios 3.40.
 

Phuncz

Lord of the Boards
SFFn Staff
May 9, 2015
5,947
4,953
It sounds like an overclocking issue. Is your CPU overclocked or your RAM set above DDR4-2400 ?