NVMe in PCI-e x4 adapter in x4 slot causes panic

I added an NVMe SSD with a PCIe x4 adapter in my hackintosh and successfully cloned the system on it, however, the NVMe card in the adapter works fine only in the primary PCIe x16 slot, the first writing byte made through the x4 slot instantly freezes the system and not letting the system boot from the x16 slot.

The video card is now in the x4 slot but I would be glad to use it in the x16 slot because it's pretty laggy in x4.

The bootloader is OpenCore, which boots from another disk, since the latest official BIOS version of my Z77-DS3h doesn't seem to be able to recognize NVMe, but it works with it in that way with no issues. In what direction should I dig?

I'm not sure the problem is in the BIOS. Should I try using another PCI-e adapter?

Thanks!

eLDeus said:

Thank you, I appreciate your help! I just noticed I misspelled the model of my motherboard, it's Z77-DS3H, not D3H, that's why this modded BIOS was denied by the flash utility.
I made a new thread if you have other ideas about this issue please reply there:

NVMe in PCI-e x4 adapter in x4 slot causes panic

I added an NVMe SSD with a PCIe x4 adapter in my hackintosh and successfully cloned the system on it, however, the NVMe card in the adapter works fine only in the primary PCIe x16 slot, the first writing byte made through the x4 slot instantly freezes the system and not letting the system boot...

www.tonymacx86.com

Click to expand...

ohh.. the Z77-DS3H, well here you go ;

The issue is less likely to be the PCIe adapter, as it is to be how your PCIe x16 slot is configured in the bios.

• The Sandy Bridge CPU restricts the PCIe x16 slot to 2.0 Standard.
• An Ivy Bridge CPU allows the x16 port to work at 3.0 standard.

You are using a Sandy Bridge CPU with an Ivy Bridge motherboard, so some limitations on the full capabilities of the motherboard should be expected.

1. Does the motherboard use a UEFI or Legacy Bios?
2. Are you using a bios that allows you to boot from an NVMe drive?
3. Does your Sandy Bridge CPU allow you to boot from an NVMe drive?
4. Does the bios have any options for how the PCIe x16 or x4 slots are configured?

Thanks for your suggestion. I just would like to put back my video card in the x16 slot so I could be able to do some graphics in Figma, while the speed of NVMe would be the same since the adapter's speed is x4.

1. Z77 has UEFI and can be booted using both modes, but with the configured OpenCore OS type is set to Windows 8 WHQL and CSM is disabled because booting with enabled CSM loads up a black screen with the mouse cursor and it's not moving on further.
2. I boot from a SATA SSD where an EFI partition with OpenCore can see my NVMe (both in x16 and x4 slots) and boot it up (only in x16 slot so far).
3. I can boot from another drive with Windows 11 (MBR) where I can see my NVMe drive using Paragon APPS for Windows.
4. It has the only option of specifying the Gen of PCIe, 1, 2 or 3. In my case, it is set to Auto, but changing to other versions didn't make any changes.

I'll be honest and say I don't know why this is happening.

Other than having the Windows 11 install set as MBR the answers you provided make perfect sense.

You should have used Rufus to create your Windows 11 installer, and selected GPT over MBR when creating the Windows 11 installation drive.

I have a number of the same PCIe NVMe adapter cards, and they work as expected in an x16, x8 or x4 PCIe slot. In fact I have just used two of these adapters to upgrade my son's Hack to dual boot MacOS Ventura and Windows 11 on a pair of WD SN570 1TB drives.

Here is a picture of two more I am going to use in another Hack. As you can see I add heatsinks and thermal tape to the drives. They have slightly different Slot covers, but the adapter cards are identical.



So I don't know what else to suggest.

Thanks! How about this model? It's currently installed in my Hack with no writing access in the x4 slot. Is it compatible with macOS? I don't know what controller is used here and googling shows nothing too.

As far as I can tell you have a 2 Lane M.2 2030 NVMe SSD. That uses a Kioxia 96-layer BiCS FLASH SSD Controller. So not one of the Controllers that are known to work in macOS.

The reason I think your drive only has 2 x PCIe Lanes is because the card only works with a Link Speed of 5.0 GT/s. As you can see from the screenshot below, the 500GB WD SN570 NVME drive I have on this Hack has a Link Speed of 8.0 GT/s as it runs on the full 4 x PCIe Lanes available.



Your Kioxia drive has 4 x PCIe lanes available but doesn't utilise the full capabilities of the connector.

As to why your drive is seen but not useable in macOS, I would have to say it is probably down to the Kioxia SSD Controller not being fully compatible with macOS.

Here are a couple of links providing information about the Kioxia GB4 series of drives.

@Edhawk Hi, can you point me to some compatible PCIe NVMe adapter cards please?
Or which chip model is supported that I should look for?
Thanks!

This glotrends x4 PCIe adapter works well. I have at least three of the adapters in use.