2 x M2 drives and 6 x Sata drives?

[Katanga]

Starting to plan my next build with a 8700K if it clocks as well as rumored, (I don't wish to discuss the excellent newer AMD CPU's, please) I have peculiar needs though, ideally would like a board that can do me 2 M2 drives, an OS one and a larger 1TB M2 one for my dedicated FSX/P3D/Xplane and their scenery's, ETC, then 2 other SSD's, for Games, Military sims , and 3 large mechanical HD's for back up, also a SATA CD drive, though could go a USB CD drive for that if need be ... I still need a CD drive as proof of purchase for some FS add-ons to update and to reinstall.

Considering this forthcoming MSI board below, says it can do up to 5 x M2 drives, I see it has the usual 6 normal SATA ports, not to switched on as to how it all works, read M2 drives steal normal SATA port usage or something?

So my question is, would my list and mix of 2 x M2 drives an 6 normal SATA drives work on this board?

Thanks.

MSI board link ...

https://videocardz.com/newz/first-look-at-msi-z370-godlike-gaming

 

[Danny75]

The motherboard manual should confirm when its released, if they follow usual practice. Somewhere in the manual, MSI provide a "PCIe Bandwidth table" showing what, if anything, gets cancelled out or has bandwidth lessened, depending on PCIe slot and SATA port configurations.

Since its one of their top range boards there's a very good chance all six SATA ports will be usable with two M.2 sockets in use at minimum, and likely more given that Z370 and Coffee Lake will have 16 (on processor) + 24 (on motherboard chipset) PCIe lanes in total, but you really have to wait for confirmation through the official manual to see all the details.

You likely wouldn't need to spend so much to achieve your aims (assuming the Godlike Gaming is as expensive as usual), other boards will surely provide enough too. For your purposes, maybe a board with 8 SATA ports and 2 or 3 M.2 sockets would be preferable, if they make one like that. Not a bad idea to have a couple SATA ports free in case you end up having to add another drive or one of the ports goes faulty and you'd rather not send back and just continue using it.

For very fast M.2s like Samsung 960 EVO/Polaris you want PCIe 3.0 x4 for each, if you want the full speeds.

 

[Katanga]

Thanks for good advice, yep will look out for other boards upon release, this is just one of the first high end ones I've noticed so far, am partial to good MSI boards though.

Will wait until the 8700 CPU and a good selection of boards are out before deciding, still pretty good to go with what I have just now, this upgrade would be about wants, not needs.

 

[adrichardson81]

It's more likely that they will be sharing bandwidth with PCIE slots than with SATA. I can't tell if they're using a Plex chip to add more lanes, which is a possibility. Also bear in mind that 2 of the m.2 slots are mounted on an 8x expansion card.