Aspire TC-885-EB11 crashes with NVMe, the computer will randomly fully freeze (no BSOD)

I have a TC-885 that i installed a 980 pro 1TB NVMe but the computer will randomly fully freeze (no BSOD, just completely frozen, cannot turn on/off caps lock or num lock, no mouse, etc.) Only way is a hard reset. Samsung doesn't provide NVMe drivers for this device and its own tooling says the firmware is up to date.

Since I've upgraded NVMe drives in my other Acer products (Veriton M6660G), i used its old and working NVMe in my TC-885 but same result (these are SK hynix P/N HFW256DJTNG).

When running off of a SATA SSD without an NVMe installted there are no issues with crashing, so i have narrowed it down to being related to the NVMe. If the boot drive is the SATA SSD but i also have the NVMe installed as a secondary drive, the computer still crashes.

Crashes are random and generally while AFKing on a Roblox game over night.

Machine has an upgraded CX550M power supply to run my GTX 1660 super, so PS should be the culprit.

Any thoughts or suggestions? BIOS has RST turned off and i also set windows to full power mode and not to disable PCIe slots with in activity.

Thanks.

[Edited the topic title to include the topic issue.]

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benjydog83

Here is more info on the device (nvme is NOT installed currently)

billsey

Nothing I can think of, unless there is an issue with the M.2 slot itself. That drive is gen 4 and your slot is gen 3, but that shouldn't affect anything except give you slower speeds than the drive can handle. Here's a snippet form the block diagram:

As you can see the slot is supposed to support SATA or NVMe x4…

benjydog83

@billsey - is there any driver or update you think I may have missed or not considered? I have windows update saying fully up to date, including optional updates. MB Bios seems to be most current version on the ACER website, not clear if there is a BIOS from the actual maker or not (I am assuming it is ACER custom MB). I could go and use the intel tooling to get the latest b360 chipset drivers (Intel® B360 Chipset), but I've had odd experiences getting drivers outside of windows update. Any other driver maybe to look at or specific BIOS setting? Between these 'crashes' the NVME ran as expected, good speeds and everything. Couldn't find a way to reproduce the issue and of course due to the type of crash there are no Windows event logs to give clues.

StevenGen

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/709737/aspire-tc-885-eb11-crashes-with-nvme-the-computer-will-randomly-fully-freeze-no-bsod

Just some additional information to assist you further, the below are all the Acer listed M.2 SSD drives suggested for the Aspire TC-885 desktop, this desktops M.2 SSD slot is SATA/PCIe type M.2 SSD slot and does run on PCIe3x4 and Acer uses NVMe drives with this desktop (see caption below) so its not the NVMe that is affecting your desktop.

It could be that the Gen4 x4 Samsung 980 Pro M.2 SSD is not compatible with this desktop as a Gen4x4 M.2 SSD drive does not give you any performance advantage using that type of drive and it could be incompatible, so use the M.2 SSDs that Acer suggests which are mainly PCIe3x2 or PCIe3x4 NVMe type drives like the drives listed below. You can use 1TB and 2TB size drives as size in a windows OS is determined by the format of the drive if its an MBR/Legacy format it has max of 2.2TB capacity or GUID (GPT) format that has an 8-petabyte capacity. Good luck

If this answers your question and solved your query please "Click on Yes" or "Click on Like" if you find my answer useful👍

benjydog83

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1288627#Comment_1288627

StevenGen - thank you. I did try the SSD out of a Veriton M6660G which has the barcode of kn2560g0279xxxxxxxxxxxxxx. based on the first few digits, it matches one of the listed drives in your list. I was still experiencing the same freezing with this as a secondary (non-boot) drive.

So it appears it may not be related to drive compatibility?

Commodore_1995#

Hello! There is another possibility! Connect the ssd to another computer and try to update the ssd firmware through samsung magician. The ssd firmware can only be updated if rst with optane or vmd controller are disabled.

billsey

What screw are you using the physically hold the drive in place? On another machine that has similar issues I found they had just used a normal M2 screw, and the screw head was too small to reliably hold the drive down. Just a little bit of lift was enough to cause bus errors. The standard M.2 screws have a wider than normal head on them to better grip the drive.

Larryodie

https://community.acer.com/en/discussion/comment/1288683#Comment_1288683

Perhaps you're just overloading your computer ? The slower Sata is aiding in reducing the overload. How much RAM do you have ?? Have you looked at Task Manger's process page. Are you overloading the unit ?

Look at the process's and performance. Especially check if you have a unwanted virus scan running in the back ground. Good Luck.

Larryodie

The screw is 2MM x 3MM. Most local hardware stores should have them.

https://www.onecomputerguy.com/m2-ssd-screw/

benjydog83

interesting comments going to try to answer all together:

-Samsung magic says firmware is up to date

-screw was purchased off Amazon I cannot confirm the size or anything like that but purchase says it was m.2 but drive was securely held down when installed. link: https://a.co/d/i3vUa6O)

-32 gb of ram, all task manager resources shown well under used No spike or anything at time of crash (screen would be frozen so I could see what everything had looked like)

based on this the one possible is the screw I have a hard time with that as it crashed not when someone would have knocked the machine but at like 4am when nothing and no one would have been around it

I could compare it to my other machines to see what screw it uses or could I use the one holding down the built in wifi card? That card is flaky in another Acer machine so I use a usb adapter instead

Larryodie

Is the ventilation GOOD and no dust or lint inside of the unit ??/

Sorry about the repeat link but I can't delete ?

https://www.onecomputerguy.com/m2-ssd-screw/

benjydog83

Larryodie - case is surprisingly clean, but runs off floor behind monitors and is currently running without side panel as i've been troubleshooting this issue. Been running for 48hours+ now (AFKing a game) and CPU is reporting max temp 70 Celsius, my current HDDs at 40, GPU 70 while playing,

Larryodie

Perhaps, you've found your problem .

Add a fan or leave the cover off as you're overworking an not made for 24 hour gaming work load.

benjydog83

if i'm not mistaken, non of those temps are out of normal ranges for the CPU/GPU combo…. What am i missing? The cover is off only because i kept adding/removing the HDDs.

benjydog83

Here are my temps during a more intense game, everything seems reasonable for the hardware. I do not believe there is a temp issue:

those were current speeds, what i listed before were max reported by hdwinfo

Larryodie

Has it failed since you removed the covers ???

Larryodie

I have a TC-895 that did strange things for a while under warranty like yours BSOD and I never took the covers off and the problem disappeared after a few days. 3 years ago then in the last few weeks, it'd had been slow booting and hung a couple times that I had to power off. Then one day I unplugged an external hard drive and it took off. I plugged the EHD back in the next day and all is well. The HD diagnostics ran OK,

benjydog83

thanks again for all the replies

I never got any bsod. System would fully freeze, including not able to turn off/on num lock or caps lock.

The cover has been off for months now will troubleshooting. Issue seems to have gone away by not having any nvme installed.

I don’t know if I should try updated intel chipset drivers or just not use an nvme. I cannot find if that chipset driver manages the nvme ports or not.

I do need more fast storage so I could replace the traditional hdd with a 2.5” ssd or upgrade my current 250gb ssd to 1tb. The goal was to use the 1tb nvme (980 pro) but right now the best answers seems to be an issue with the port, or even the screw suggestion. This is assuming the issue is the port and nothing else I haven’t tried!