ok I really messed around with things tonight.. I moved my two storage drives to m.2 2 and 3 only to find those are strictly for nvme drives... so the only sata options are slots 4 and 5 which are on the PCH.. which I feel like i am overloading with USB devices.. that was fun... but got things back together and decided to plug my SteelSeries DAC into the front USB (the only device there) and re-enabled XHCI ... I also plugged in my second 8pin CPU power cable for grins.. I was told with a 13700kf it was not required but I had everything apart and was like "what the heck".. things seem to be working now but not super liking a cable hanging off the front of my PC... but this was how I had things before because my z270 didn't support enough rear ports.. lol! irony. Part of the reason I bought this board was the plentiful amount of rear USB ports.. anyways.. I was able to boot cold with everything plugged in this way.. I am so tired I don't want to deal with it any more... BUT I did find a pci-e USB3.0 card I had stashed which I might install tomorrow... it requires SATA power but not too big of a deal. That end up might being my solution.

​

Apologies for the thread hijack about all of this .... it just kind of happened.

​

Hope your build runs solid for ya! re the ram, it's on sale rn for $135 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09Y16CDLG - but you won't notice any real world difference.. still a good price for it.