Watercooling - Problem!

Hello

 

I decided to try my hand at watercooling. It isn't going very well so far :mad:.

 

My main components are - I7-6700K; ASUS Z1701 PRO GAMING mini itx; 2 x 16 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4; SAMSUNG 960 EVO 500GB M.2 & Seagate Barracuda 2 TB HDD.

 

I recently bought a Corsair H150i PRO and a new case so have done a full rebuild. Problem is it just loads the BIOS. And if I go 'Save and Exit' it restarts, you guessed it, into the BIOS. I cannot get beyond the BIOS.

 

Now it wouldn't have occurred to me that adding a water cooler would require BIOS changes but this is my first watercooled build! So can someone more experienced please let me know if they do or if anything else is required.

 

To date I have tried

 

unplugging and replugging everything

holding down power key with mains lead out for 10 seconds

Clearing the CMOS

 

Any help would be really appreciated!

When it flips you back around to the American Megatrends BIOS screen “press F1”, is there a message at the bottom? Playing the percentages here, make sure you have the “fan connector like” motherboard lead from the cooler going to cpu fan. Something has to be on cpu fan to boot up. It’s actually just a 2 wire run that reports pump speed to the bios and solves this issue.

Thanks for your reply. No message of BIOS screen. Cooler fan cable is on CPU fan header.

 

One thing I noticed - probably not relevant - between the BIOS logo screen and the bios loading there are are a couple of brief cursor blinks in the middle of the screen. That didn't happen before.

 

I see other peoples' boot managers as 'Windows Boot Manager' followed by the name of the drive. Mine lists the name of the drive only. Pretty sure this is a red herring as apart from fitting the new cooler and putting them in a new case/psu I haven't done anything else.

 

I see other peoples' boot managers as 'Windows Boot Manager' followed by the name of the drive. Mine lists the name of the drive only. Pretty sure this is a red herring as apart from fitting the new cooler and putting them in a new case/psu I haven't done anything else.

 

Not necessarily and with the easy solution gone, we are into the next rung of about 20 things that can cause this. No BIOS error message may narrow it down and it is definitely possible your system is trying to load the OS from a location where it is not. I have done this myself and the end result is as you are describing. If you moved the system into a new case, it is definitely possible the SATA cables do not connect to the exact same locations or otherwise caused the BIOS to do a remuneration of drives.

 

Do you know if your OS was installed in UEFI mode? Or Legacy? For a Win 10 new install it surely should be in UEFI secure boot form and that is why it reads "Windows Boot Manager: Drive Brand Name". In legacy mode, it is just the drive name "Samsung 860 EVO". If you last bought an OS from MS back at Win 7 and have been taking the free upgrades all along, then it is possible you are still in legacy mode. Do remember what it was before? You have to be really careful with booting a UEFI secure system in legacy or vice versa. Best case scenario is it doesn't work. On the other hand, it can start writing Master Boot records to other drives and make a total mess of your system.

 

From either the Asus EZ BIOS main screen (lower right corner) or perhaps preferably the Advanced BIOS (F7) -> Boot Tab Menu -> scroll down to boot order. See if you have any of the "Windows Boot Manager: Drive name" entries. If so, move it to the top, save and exit, THEN deliberately mash the DEL key to get back to BIOS. Check on the main screen to make sure the change took. Now exit again ("you did not make any changes") and hopefully it boots up. In the past on Asus boards, not looping directly back to the BIOS prevented the change from taking place.

Bit of everything I'm afraid...

 

I also have a 2.5" SSD installed. The BIOS sees that but not as a 'boot device' presumably as it has no OS on. The only drive it sees as a boot device is the M.2 (which I have been able to confirm has all the files still on) but that is just listed as 'Samsung 860 EVO'. Shrinkwrap copy of Win10 for original new build, so this was probably just that I set it up wrong.

 

However, when booting from USB Windows Installer, it 'sees' windows on drive C: but wants to install it on to disk 0 (although I'm not sure if C: here could be the USB stick).

 

So it was nothing to do with cooling! Any ideas? Thankfully I have backups of data but a whole reinstall is going to take a very long time :(

Ok, if you had to clear the CMOS, it may have fully reset the bios (fan settings, all options, etc). If so, then it likely put the boot sequence back into legacy mode. That is the default board setting, but not what most Win 10 owners are running. I am trying to do this from memory as my system is in pieces running a water test and I cannot access my own bios.

 

If you are SURE your normal boot option is Windows Boot Manager: Samsung 960 512GB, you likely need to put it into UEFI boot mode. Go to the Adv BIOS, boot tab. About halfway down is the CSM compatibly menu. Select it and look at the sub choices. If you know 100% you were in UEFI mode only, disable CSM, save and exit, mash delete to come back and select the Boot Manger drive option. The other thing you could do instead is is leave CSM enabled, then use the sub menu choices to prioritize the “UEFI driver first”. Same thing again-save/exit/go back and verify boot options. It’s possible this might create a Master Boot Record in another drive, but that is not as catastrophic as locking yourself out of the C drive and having to wipe it. It should not do that until you actually reach the Windows loading stage and thus another reason to loop back to the bios to double check. X99 and Z170 were a bit more finicky about booting from the m.2 drive, but obviously you were doing it before and I was an early adopter if this as well on the X99 platform.

X99 and Z170 were a bit more finicky about booting from the m.2 drive, but obviously you were doing it before and I was an early adopter if this as well on the X99 platform.

True, there were some issues with older chipsets and booting from M.2 SSDs.

It could very well be that the boot loader isn't on the M.2 drive, but a different drive instead.

If you install Windows with multiple drives (or on a drive which isn't supported to actually boot by the chipset/BIOS), sometimes Windows will set up the boot record, boot loader and on a different drive even if Windows itself is installed on the M.2, especially when you don't create/select partitions yourself on installation. In such a case you might have to tell the BIOS to boot or do a Windows (repair-) installation with only your M.2 drive connected so everything is set up there. But if the mainboard has trouble actually booting from the M.2 drive this might not be a good option.

 

That said, if the Windows installer doesn't see your M.2 SSD at all, you might not have the proper installation medium (UEFI vs. regular), your CSM/Legacy options in BIOS don't match it (as c-attack already explained), or you might even have to provide the Windows installer with the appropriate NVMe controller drivers to see it.

 

A BIOS update might help as well, if there is one available. Not sure what else you could try.

I've done what you said but can't find a 'boot manager drive' option

I've done what you said but can't find a 'boot manager drive' option

 

It won't appear next to the drive name/options until you reboot to the BIOS again.

 

*Found an image

 

Asus Z170 board? Advance BIOS -> Boot tab -> CSM compatibility options.

 

In ASUS UEFI (BIOS) > Boot change CSM to Disabled, not Auto or Enabled, and in Secure Boot choose Windows UEFI Mode. These two settings set this way will force the BIOS to only show Windows Boot Manager drives after saving changes and exiting the BIOS. After reboot press Del to access BIOS and again go to BOOT. Only Windows Boot Manager drives should appear under both Boot Option Priorities and Boot Override sections. If not, Windows is not being found and running a Windows 10 USB ISO / Recovery drive may be the next option.

Edit: You can also try the above with physically disconnecting SATA data cables from non-boot drives, but shouldn't be necessary especially if the Boot Manager was previously unknowingly installed on one of your non-M.2 drives. Also, check that your M.2 drive slot is enabled if for example you have two onboard slots and your BIOS offers the option to disable them if using PCI-E lanes for additional GPUs instead. On my ASUS X470-F board this option is in BIOS > Advanced Mode > Onboard Devices Configuration.

 

I'm assuming your 960 EVO M.2 is using a motherboard slot and not PCI-E card slot.