Thanks all. I've ordered the Asus card 
Dual M2 PCI-E Card
- Thread starter jellybeard999
- Start date
@jellybeard999 have you checked your motherboard BIOS on the x16 slot that it can split the 16 lanes into x4/x4/x4/x4 mode? Without that I don’t think the asus Hyper M.2 card will work.
I got a dual slot card in my secondary x16 slot and I had to configure my pice lanes as x8; x4/x4 to get my drives detected. And also my GPU card ran in x8 mode.
I got a dual slot card in my secondary x16 slot and I had to configure my pice lanes as x8; x4/x4 to get my drives detected. And also my GPU card ran in x8 mode.
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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.
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.
if a board has 2 pciex16 slots linked up to CPU then it should be able to split the lanes. however my experiece is that if there is only a single x16 slot or single x16 slot linked to CPU, BIOS wont have the option to split lanes as they are not expecting you to run it headless.
I think bifurcation should be a standard feature on consumer grade motherboards from the cheapest to the most expensive rather than as a standard feature for server or workstation boards alone.
its not like it cost them anything to implement it either.
I think bifurcation should be a standard feature on consumer grade motherboards from the cheapest to the most expensive rather than as a standard feature for server or workstation boards alone.
its not like it cost them anything to implement it either.
Soldato
If you e-mail ASRock support and ask them they will tell you if any BIOS supports bifurcation for your board.
They are pretty progressive and we're one of the first manufacturers to enable it on older boards, especially Mini-ITX models, like the Z87. The reason they can add it so easily is the support is in the BIOS from the Industrial/commercial segment boards. If they don't have an official release you can ask them if they have a Beta BIOS they can supply at your own risk obviously.
Associate
I can a test to ASrock customer service being good, I had a BIOS sent on request to support the samsung sm951 drive on a z87 board, so well worth contacting them
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
It looks like I'll need to upgrade to use the other m2 slots and expand further.
I've had a reply from Asrock
It looks like I'll need to upgrade to use the other m2 slots and expand further.
Associate
ah, bad luck.... pcie lane allocation, tracing and configuration can be a real pain the rear to work out at times
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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
SATA controllers has a piece of IC that aggregate the SATA lanes into a total bandwidth data and then put down the PCIe lanes for data transfer. the key in that is the word "CONTROLLER"
NVME is native to PCIe these cards dont have such IC that act as a "Controller" to sort data. there are raid cards which support multiple NVME drives but they are way way way expensive...like the cost of a top end motherboard kind of expensive.
NVME is native to PCIe these cards dont have such IC that act as a "Controller" to sort data. there are raid cards which support multiple NVME drives but they are way way way expensive...like the cost of a top end motherboard kind of expensive.