Hi,

In a previous thread, I asked about sound cards. I've made my pick and yesterday I had a new arrival of Creative Sound Blaster AE-9.

Now, upon setting everything up, the first start of the box was somewhat weird. It rebooted spontaneously three times on boot before it started going. Things kept working. The sound card worked. I could install the drivers and utilize the card both with the ACM. Everything worked on that start and on the next restart. The first issue appeared when I attempted to change the boot sequence (that is how I switch between Windows and Ubuntu). On that boot, the BIOS wouldn't pick up the change. On the next boot, one SSD and one HDD disappeared from the boot options, and neither Windows nor Ubuntu could see them. In [much] later testing, these disks were accessible, but I keep them outside the box for now.

What else I found out is that the PCIe cable I used to power the AE-9 was loose. I blamed the event on it. However, after that is out of the way, the box is still rebooting when the AE-9 is in. I've tried to run it both with and without the PCIe power attached. The outcome is the same: the box has a hard time booting up.

At this moment, it is possible that:
- the power supply is damaged, and,
- that some SATA connectors are dead,
- maybe more,

I also thought that maybe the power supply doesn't have enough power. However, I did the math before purchase:

- X299-E: 40 W
- RAM: 12 W
- i7-7820X: 140 W
- Dark Rock Pro 3: 30 W?
- GTX 1080 Ti Strix: 350 W
- HDD, 2x SSD, M2 SSD: say 20 W
- AE-9: 75 W

Total: 667 W
Supply: 1000 W

Any thoughts on what is up? Thanks in advance.