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Slow boot times on NVME boot drive after switching to Z370 Maximus X Hero

Zammin
Level 9
Hi everyone,

Before anyone starts asking, if you need my full system specs they are in the drop down menu under my name.

I have recently upgraded from my old 4790k system on a Gigabyte Z97X-Gaming 7 motherboard to a 8700k system on an ASUS Z370 Maximus X Hero motherboard. I have re-used the Intel 600P M.2 boot drive from my old system however I have formatted it and done a clean reinstall of Windows 10 pro after building the new system. Both systems have fast boot disabled in the BIOS and in windows.

On my old system I used to see boot times (after POST) of less than 10 seconds, even though the M.2 boot drive was running in SATA mode. On my new system the M.2 boot drive has been running in PCIE x4 mode (NVME) since the first startup and i usually see boot times of over 30 seconds (after POST).

The times are being measured from the point at which POST ends to the point where you reach the login screen.

I can see that in AIDA 64 the SSD is recognised as NVME.

Does anyone have any idea why my boot times are much slower when in theory they should be faster on the new system with PCIE mode? I have another system that is using the same type of Intel 600P SSD but on a Gigabyte Z270 with a 7600k, fast boot disabled, PCIE mode, and it reaches the login screen in under 5 seconds after post.

If you need any more information please ask.

Thank you.
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60 REPLIES 60

S4vant
Level 7
I had this issue initially as well. Same basic system, except I have a Samsung 960 Evo M.2 as the boot drive.

Do you know if your boot partition is MBR or GPT?

You can check by:

Right click start button>disk management

Then LEFT click on the part where it describes your boot drive: DISK #, BASIC, Online
Then Right click this and hit properties

Click the Volumes tab, and look at the partition style. If it says "GUID Partition Table (GPT)" then you are ok, but if it says "Master Boot Record (MBR)" then that might be the issue.

That's the problem I had, and after converting to GPT, I was able to disable Compatibility Mode CMS in the BIOS and enable UEFI booting first.

I think you can convert easily if you have one of the last few Windows 10 updates (might be Fall creators update) .

Should be able to right click the start button>command prompt (administrator)

and then type: mbr2gpt.exe /convert /fullos

it should convert your mbr boot partition to GPT. then reboot to BIOS and disable CMS and have it enable UEFI booting.

Hope this helps.

S4vant wrote:
I had this issue initially as well. Same basic system, except I have a Samsung 960 Evo M.2 as the boot drive.

Do you know if your boot partition is MBR or GPT?

You can check by:

Right click start button>disk management

Then LEFT click on the part where it describes your boot drive: DISK #, BASIC, Online
Then Right click this and hit properties

Click the Volumes tab, and look at the partition style. If it says "GUID Partition Table (GPT)" then you are ok, but if it says "Master Boot Record (MBR)" then that might be the issue.

That's the problem I had, and after converting to GPT, I was able to disable Compatibility Mode CMS in the BIOS and enable UEFI booting first.

I think you can convert easily if you have one of the last few Windows 10 updates (might be Fall creators update) .

Should be able to right click the start button>command prompt (administrator)

and then type: mbr2gpt.exe /convert /fullos

it should convert your mbr boot partition to GPT. then reboot to BIOS and disable CMS and have it enable UEFI booting.

Hope this helps.


Hey, thanks for the advice.

I checked and my boot partition is set to GPT. I went into the BIOS and disabled CSM and enabled Windows UEFI Mode under the Secure Boot section. Upon exiting the BIOS and resetting, there was still about 30 seconds between POST and the login screen, however i then shut down the computer and started it again twice and both times I got boot times of around 9 seconds. Not as good as my other Z270/7600k system which still boots in about half that time, but much better than before. I'll see if it continues to hold those boot speeds over the next couple days. Thanks again!

Zammin
Level 9
Just booted up again and got 20 seconds boot time. Seems to vary. Still better than 30+ but it seems excessive for an NVME drive in PCIE x4 mode..

To be clear, when I say "boot time" I'm referring to the time spent displaying the windows spinning circle thing only.

Zammin wrote:
Just booted up again and got 20 seconds boot time. Seems to vary. Still better than 30+ but it seems excessive for an NVME drive in PCIE x4 mode..

To be clear, when I say "boot time" I'm referring to the time spent displaying the windows spinning circle thing only.


Yep, that does seem longer than normal. I just timed mine 3 times and after it posts its averaging 8-10 seconds from spinny circle to log-in/spalsh screen.

Zammin
Level 9
Yeah it's still varying between 10 and 20 seconds generally. Too slow for NVME. Does anyone have any other ideas?

Zammin wrote:
Yeah it's still varying between 10 and 20 seconds generally. Too slow for NVME. Does anyone have any other ideas?


Only ideas I have are (1) see if your NVME drive is sharing bandwidth with any other PCIE device. The manual describes bandwidth sharing among PCIE slots, sometimes they even share bandwidth with SATA ports. and (2) is the NVME driver up to date? Hope you get it solved.

R5Eandme wrote:
Only ideas I have are (1) see if your NVME drive is sharing bandwidth with any other PCIE device. The manual describes bandwidth sharing among PCIE slots, sometimes they even share bandwidth with SATA ports. and (2) is the NVME driver up to date? Hope you get it solved.


Hey thanks for chiming in.

I have checked the manual and I'm 100% sure it is not sharing bandwidth with any other device. I know what you mean though since I had this issue on my old system when I installed the M.2 drive and it disabled 2 SATA ports since it was sharing bandwidth.

In regards to the driver, you don't mean Intel Rapid Storage Technology by any chance? I have not installed that because I was under the impression it was only required for RAID setups. Please correct if I'm wrong though.

Hello Zammin.Extreme tweaker-dram timing control-mrc fast boot-enable-f10save.

marius4313 wrote:
Hello Zammin.Extreme tweaker-dram timing control-mrc fast boot-enable-f10save.


I tried this just now and although it booted in 10 seconds windows bugged out when trying to login and wouldn't display the login screen, only the background. By default this feature was set to "Auto".

Are you able to elaborate on what this feature does? I did a bit of a search but I don't entirely understand. Something about memory training?