Is it possible to install 4 NVME drives on this motherboard?

lovelyhead

lovelyhead

lovelyhead

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Hopefully some more knowledgeable people can assist me. I got a really good deal on 4x 1TB gen 4.0 NVME's and was hoping to install all four on my gigabyte b550m ds3h ac motherboard. Even though the drives are gen 4 I am ok with running them at gen 3 speeds.

The motherboard has a gen 4.0 nvme slot and a gen 3.0 slot so that covers 2 of the drives.

Does the motherboard have sufficient PCI lanes to attach the other 2 drives? I have a two slot GPU in the x16 slot so I assume I will need an adapter of some sort to make use of the slot underneath it.

Is it possible using this motherboard and if so what adapters will I need?

Thanks in advance.
 
My initial reaction is "nope", but I'll check the manual.

M.2 slot 1 (CPU connected) has no restrictions, supports PCI-E 4.0 or 3.0 (depends on CPU).
M.2 slot 2 is PCI-E 3.0, but 2 lanes only. This is generally fine, but I think there are some controllers/firmware that don't like 2 lane operation (Samsung is not one of them).

The second PCI-E full length is 4 lanes only and it's also rather close to the primary slot, so depending on graphics card cooler, it might not be feasible to install an adapter without using an extension cable.
There don't appear to be any restrictions on the use of this slot, so you should be able to install an adapter for 1 extra M.2 slot and still use the other 2 M.2 slots.

The 1 lane slot is too close to the graphics card, I think and most adapters want you to use 4 lanes.

You can get adapters to use M.2 slot drives on SATA ports, but I think they only support SATA drives, not NVME.
 
Thanks a lot for your help. Sounds like 3 drives might be feasible but not 4.

I got these drives for £14 each from an Amazon price mistake which is the deal of a century so I would quite like to make use of them rather than try to profiteer and sell them.

Are there any AM4 motherboards that could take 4 NVME's? I would be willing to buy one if the price wasn't too crazy.

The other option would be to use a USB 3.0 PCI e expansion card which I already have alongside a couple of nvme enclosures and externally mount them but that would leave a lot of performance on the table.
 
X570 maybe? I don't think you can get enough lanes out of a B550 board without splitting the primary PCI-E, which is what the MSI Unify did to get 4, 4 lane slots.

If you fancy an upgrade to Z690/Z790 it's pretty common.
 
Tetras said:
My initial reaction is "nope", but I'll check the manual.

M.2 slot 1 (CPU connected) has no restrictions, supports PCI-E 4.0 or 3.0 (depends on CPU).
M.2 slot 2 is PCI-E 3.0, but 2 lanes only. This is generally fine, but I think there are some controllers/firmware that don't like 2 lane operation (Samsung is not one of them).

The second PCI-E full length is 4 lanes only and it's also rather close to the primary slot, so depending on graphics card cooler, it might not be feasible to install an adapter without using an extension cable.
There don't appear to be any restrictions on the use of this slot, so you should be able to install an adapter for 1 extra M.2 slot and still use the other 2 M.2 slots.

The 1 lane slot is too close to the graphics card, I think and most adapters want you to use 4 lanes.

You can get adapters to use M.2 slot drives on SATA ports, but I think they only support SATA drives, not NVME.
Click to expand...
quick related question ... got two of the three m.2's on Z490 Unify filled, does adding another one beef gpu lanes up? Ta :)
 
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