Dual M2 PCI-E Card

jellybeard999 · 11 Feb 2021 at 19:06

I've looked at the various card readily available and I'm still at a bit of a loss as to whether they'll do what I want....

I'm after a PCI-E card to host 2x m2 SSDs.

These can be either SATA or NVME, speed isn't too much of a concern, but it would be nice if I could drop in any type of m2 SSD for flexibility.

I'd like to be able to retain ALL my motherboard's SATA connections and run solely from the PCI-E slot and have both drives as seperate disks.

What I don't want is anything that requires a SATA cable connected to the motherboard and uses the motherboard's SATA controller, only operates in RAID or is only compatible with a certain motherboard or CPU combo.

The closest I've found is the ASUS HYPER M.2 PCIe x16 NVMe VROC RAID Card V2

Does this do what I'm after, but give me up to 4 disks?

Any advice appreciated. Thanks.

jellybeard999 · 13 Feb 2021 at 00:13

@Guest2 @Penfold101

Motherboard is only PCI-E 3.0. It's an Asrock B365m Pro4. https://www.asrock.com/mb/intel/b365m pro4/index.asp

This is just for a home server which is for file storage and a couple of VMs (nothing too intensive). It runs headless and has no GPU. The only current PCI-E device is a network card and TV tuner card.

Speed isn't a concern within reason - obviously I want it to be fast, but it doesn't need to be NVME fast. I have saturated all the onboard SATA with hard drives and one is taken up by the second SATA m2 slot. I'm hoping to reclaim this by moving the SSD to a PCI-E card.

I have some sata m2 drives lying around and only really need 2 m2 slots. Any extra would purely be a bonus. NVME would be nice, but isn't required.

I hope that helps.

jellybeard999 · 13 Feb 2021 at 10:13

I have an NVME drive for the OS which I'd like to retain as a separate drive. I'd like to use a different SSD as a write cache to the server. I need to use 2 drives for the write cache as the data is duplicated. I don't want to use the OS drive for this purpose. I'd like to reclaim the SATA connector, therefore, I see no other option than moving to a PCI-E card. In my main PC, I'd agree with you, but for my use case, it won't work.

For the second SSD, I'll probably just look for a used drive on the MM. It doesn't need to be enormous - I have a spare 500gb m2 drive, so will probably just get another the same size.

The SSDs will move data to the hard drives overnight and I won't be writing huge amounts of data. It's the speed and responsiveness, mainly for small writes, that I'm interested in - though relative to a normal hdd, even a slow SSD is magnitudes faster.

The 2 spare slots would give the option to expand in future for a different purpose if necessary.

jellybeard999 · 13 Feb 2021 at 13:12

I currently only have 2x PCI-E 1x devices. Sounds like the Asus Hyper X does what I need. Thanks all.

A couple of final questions;
I presume the newer PCI-E 4.0 card is backwards compatible with 3.0?
I presume the m2 slots also support SATA ssds without taking up any of the onboard sata ports? ie they don't just supply power and require a SATA cable to the motherboard like some of the cheaper cards I've seen?

jellybeard999 · 14 Feb 2021 at 22:42

Gunslinger said:
Would this Addonics card do what you're looking for ?

https://www.addonics.com/product/intro/25

Edit:
if you can't find that here in the uk, Startech re-brand it, and sell it under the part number PEX8M2E2

It looks like it would, but it's £150-£200 for whatever reason.

The Asus Hyper is under £40!

jellybeard999 · 19 Feb 2021 at 17:35

Thanks all. I've ordered the Asus card

jellybeard999 · 20 Feb 2021 at 22:07

https://www.asrock.com/mb/intel/b365m pro4/index.asp#Specification

- 2 x PCI Express 3.0 x16 Slots (PCIE1/PCIE3: single at x16 (PCIE1); dual at x16 (PCIE1) / x4 (PCIE3))*
- 1 x PCI Express 3.0 x1 Slot (Flexible PCIe)
- Supports AMD Quad CrossFireX™ and CrossFireX™
- 1 x M.2 Socket (Key E), supports type 2230 WiFi/BT PCIe WiFi module

*Supports NVMe SSD as boot disks

We'll soon see!

jellybeard999 · 21 Feb 2021 at 08:55

Yes, I need it to work with 2 drives initially.

I might as well give it a go with my current board.

Ive googled extensively and can't find many boards that seem to mention 4x4 or bifurcation at all.

I'd rather not replace the mobo/CPU, but if I need to, is there a list of compatible chipset or CPUs anywhere?

I don't need much power, but I'm limited to MATX.

jellybeard999 · 24 Feb 2021 at 20:23

We'll it only works with one drive. I've had a rejig of drives and can use the 2x onboard and 1x in the Asus Card for now.

I've had a reply from Asrock

Hello,

With Intel desktop platforms, only boards with Intel Z-series chipset can bifurcate the 16 PCIe lanes connected to the CPU:

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/u...productIds=133348,189763,133284,125903,133293

And then only on motherboards that do not bifurcate to 2 or 3 slots already.

So for example here PCIe bifurcation is possible:

https://asrock.com/MB/Intel/Z390 Phantom Gaming-ITXac/index.asp

“Riser Card Support” option already available in BIOS.

With a custom BIOS version for example these models might also be able to support it:

https://asrock.com/MB/Intel/Z390M-ITXac/index.asp

https://asrock.com/MB/Intel/Z390M Pro4/index.asp

But this one not:

https://asrock.com/MB/Intel/Z390 Extreme4/index.asp

Because the lanes are split to x8/x8 already to connect 2 slots to the CPU.

And for example B365M Pro4 cannot support it either, because the chipset does not allow it. Same for all other B365/B360/H370/H310 motherboards.

Kind regards,

ASRock Support

It looks like I'll need to upgrade to use the other m2 slots and expand further.

jellybeard999 · 25 Feb 2021 at 11:33

Penfold101 said:
I will take some blame for this - I assumed that because it had access to 8 lanes to could speak to two 4-lane drives without any issue, and it wasn't related to bifurcation in this situation. Apologies dude...

Well you knew more than me. I presumed all 16x slots were equal and assumed it would just work somewhat similar to a sata controller.

I have what I need for now