Asus Sabertooth X79 and NVMe PCIe Gen4 M.2

pugheaven · 17 Apr 2020 at 00:23

Hi All,
I have two options to get in on the NVMe world:

1). I update my BIOS to enable to boot off an NVMe drive through a PCI-E adaptor. Don't really want to do it, as tbh, my system is rock stable and it's just tempting fate with BIOS updates nowadays. Last thing I wanna do is brick my system now. So I'll stay with the Samsung Evo's in RAID0 for my Windows drive.

2). I buy a PCI-E adaptor and then chuck in a couple of these fancy new drives. I'd be putting in the 2nd PCI-E 16x slot, so that in theory should handle the bandwidth upto 16GB if I remember rightly?

So, based on option 2, I'm possibly looking at two of the these badboys, https://www.overclockers.co.uk/team...cie-gen4-m.2-solid-state-drive-hd-008-tg.html.

So, question:
What is a solid PCI-E adaptor with at least two M.2 slots on it that I can connect two of these to? I was looking at this, and then use Windows 10 RAID0 on them? Any other good options anyone seen or used?

Cheers guys.

pugheaven · 26 Apr 2020 at 02:40

So, my new card comes on Monday and will clone windows onto it and hopefully should then boot, will report back with speeds. Ended up going with the following due to people having problems with the ASUS quad card, I decied to go balls deep and just ordered:

* ASRock Ultra Quad M.2 Card
* Sabrent 2TB Rocket Nvme PCIe 4.0 M.2 2280 Internal SSD

Even though I know PCIE-3.0 will limit the speeds of 3400 MB/s (read) and 2750 MB/s (write) instead of 5000 MB/s (read) and 4400 MB/s (write) using 4 lanes, I'm future proofing for when I move rigs to more modern equipment. However if this gives anywhere near these speeds in a few benchmarks I'll be more than happy. Before I buy the 2nd Sabrent card, I'll make sure this is all bootable etc. Will report back Monday once it's in and working. Will be very nice if I manage to get 4 of these drives all working nicely together. One step at a time though.

pugheaven · 26 Apr 2020 at 11:56

edgedemon said:
Wow, perfect timing, I am just starting to look at options for upgrading my X79 rig. Photo editing is slowing down for me with the bigger file sizes. I think I might take the same route as you and go for the gradual upgrade as the 2.5K replacement cost is a lot of money. I might go for the Asus hyper quad rather than the Asrock as it might be a better fit for an Asus board?

I have an Asus Rampage 4 with dual 290's so I don't think I have a spare x16 slot but I could move them to x8, will look into it.

I will be very interested to see how you get on with this and look forward to hearing your results. Thanks for giving me an option that I wasn't previously thinking about..

Mate, everyone I know can't get the ASUS working for more than 2 drives, this is why I went ASROCK as personally I think there's something wrong with the ASUS, I wanted the ASUS as I have the Sabertooth. This is a great little post is this one mate, it'll let you know the details of what people have done. Yours may well even be the same BIOS, I'm running 4701 on my Sabertooth?

https://www.win-raid.com/t3325f44-O...pport-w-optional-Bifurcation-uCode-OpROM.html

All I did was use the edited 4701 BIOS which enables bifurcation to split the PCIE lanes. You dont' have to do this if you just want to use as a storage device, however I want to use the M2 drive as a boot device like modern boards!!!

So tomorrow, what I'll be doing is plugging in the new M.2 drive, cloning my current RAID0 array to it, hopefully this will then mean I can boot from it selecting from the BIOS so it should in theory be the easiest way. However like I say mate, I'll post some benchmarks etc, can't wait. So excited should really give this PC a new lease of life. The X79 boards are incredible.... I bought mine in 2011/2012 and to be riocking even today with all these other cards... can even put a 12/24 core E5 Xeon in it if I wanted to...

This is a good watch for X79 owners....

Also, don't forget the M.2. cards use 4x lanes... so what you do is take any PCIE-3 slot and allocate the lanes. So for example, you could take a 8 lane and set to 4x4 and it'll be full speed M2. What I'll be doing now I've got rid of tri fire is use PCIE-3 slot 1 for the 5700, and PCIE-3 slot 2, setting it to 4x4x4x4 lanes for this ASROCK to enable 4xM2 cards to be used. I could even have 6 M2 cards in total if I used the 3rd and final PCIE-3 slot using a 4x4 config....

pugheaven · 27 Apr 2020 at 20:19

All I can say is, wow these things are rapid and bear in mind, I can't go any quicker on this one due to PCIE-3 limitations, this bad boy will cruise upto 5,000MB/S plus on a PCIE4.0 board on moderns chips... I'm impressed. Now, I need to somehow get this to be my boot drive, this could be a pain lol.

So, here we go this is what we got and will post the current setup stats as well so you can compare:

Sabrent 2TB Rocket Nvme PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD gives:

My Samsung 840 Evo Pro in RAID0 (SATA6) using Intel RAID Controller gives:

My Intel P240W in RAID0 (SATA3) using INTEL RAID Controller gives (BTW not using the Marvell RAID Controller because it's dog slow in SATA6 even slower than using SATA3 INTEL):

My 32GB RamDrive gives:

pugheaven · 28 Apr 2020 at 01:54

HOLY MUTHA OF GOD, 4.5 HOURS it took me to get the drive bootable, but did it and didn't have to replace my current Windows 10 installation which I really didnt' want to do... christ, never ever had to amend so many details in teh BIOS and make so many mistakes, however I managed to keep my original RAID0 array which I was told would NOT work so now I've got NMVe bootable with my original drives still on RAID0 and have to say it was a lot of work BUT wow, what a system this is now... it's brought it upto 2020 again now... the X79 is simply the greatest chipset ever made! Simple!

pugheaven · 30 Apr 2020 at 11:56

edgedemon said:
Damn so Im a world of pain when i give it a go then.
Completely agree about X79, I have never kept a system for so long as I have this one

As I have Raid 0 on my drives now Im thinking of copying the whole drive to exernal backup and blowing the RAID 0 away (it is only 256GB) and then starting fresh with the card, Im hoping that will make things easier.

Now I know mate, I can help you set it up if you required. You can run with RAID, however the main setting is UEFI booting ONLY, once that was set hey presto, I had to amend a lot, but now I've done it, it's actually easy mate so if you do go the same way as me i.e. wanting to boot of the NMVe but keeping raid, just PM me and I'll give you the low down, I could do it in 5 minutes now I've worked out how to do it lol This drive is seriously rapid... boot up times are so good now and general running. Might pick another up as a games drive now lol

pugheaven · 1 May 2020 at 17:06

Meddling-Monk said:
What Ramdisk software and RAM are you using there when that benchmark was taken? Seems a little slow there.

I'd hop onto this train too personally if I didn't have a PCIe slot Exhaust Fan operating (so can't install anything else into my motherboard that uses a PCIe slot). And of course, not sure I want to mess around with the BIOS either (Rampage IV Extreme here, so a sister/brother x79 board to what you guys are rocking. But probably the more forgotten one, as it was left out of the 16GB DDR3 Module update ).

Actually... Hmmm. Could a riser cable work here? Like for a GPU, but instead of GPU, I install this? Hmmm...

AMD Ramdisk software, yeah I thought that now you've just mentioned it, however handy to have when processing MKV files etc. Mmm, I've just done fresh install of qwindows and it's now where it should be and was, amended the pictures!!! See above for new RAM speed!"

pugheaven · 26 May 2020 at 00:26

yeah matey, PM me and I'll send some instruction by email, had a coupel of people ask the same thing :-)

pugheaven · 7 Jul 2020 at 10:33

Anyone else runniing the rockets? On full chat they're idling around 25C on one of the drives and 30C on the other which doens't get as much airflow. However on full load for 15 minutes they have a max temp of 42C and 52C respecitivly with their standard heatsinks on... well within tolerence, just wondered what others are getting on their M2?

pugheaven · 12 Oct 2020 at 10:14

BS Dave said:
check out the ROS archive motherboard forums. i was running a custom bios from there on my x79 rog formula that allowed me to boot from my 950pro. it was super solid.

ALSO i the samsung drives have a bios module in them that allows you to boot from them in CSM compatibility mode without a bios mod.

Edit just seen you managed it. agree about x79, if i didn't scratch my motherboard when i swapped in a xeon from a mac pro i'd still be on it now. that and samsung green really flew...

Do you have 8 core xeon pug? Yes. Nice setup

Soz mate didn't see this. Yeah I did run a 3970x I7 6 core and switched out for this 8 core XEON and it's running like a weapon around 3700x Ryzen speeds so it's fine for me, have no intension of upgrading the CPU and board etc... it's working like a dream.

BTW anyone worried about using riser cables with PCIE adaptors, don't be, I've just tested one in my rig and it performs EXACTLY the same with riser as goign straight into the board!

pugheaven · 27 Jul 2021 at 23:00

Sarx said:
Dude, I've been taring my hair out all day trying to get the bios to boot to the NVME m.2 card in my Sabertooth X79. No matter what I do, no matter what settings I try, no matter what advice I follow on the net, I can't do it. I'm at my whitts end and I tried to PM you, but i can't as the site simply doesnt allow me to. (possibly as Im a newb account?)

help me PUGHEAVEN, You're my only hope.

hey buddy, it's pretty easy once you flashed the bios... so, to start, what have you done and what versions etc so we know where to start?

pugheaven · 28 Jul 2021 at 10:12

Hi mate,
So, this is the link to everything I used as well. Post #295 is where I churped in with questions etc

https://www.win-raid.com/t3325f44-O...pport-w-optional-Bifurcation-uCode-OpROM.html

All the instructions that I used are on there. Also, how are you connecting the NVME drive to your PCI slot? is it an adaptor and if so, which one?

Also, if you've followed the inctrustions that they've given, let me know and I can go into my BIOS and get some screen shots that I've got to get it working,.