ITX or mATX with multi M2 slots

Christo

Christo

Christo

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I am looking at building a new UNRAID rig since my existing one is so noisy with x4 spinning HDDs so want to make an SSD/NVME alternative but having issues finding a future proof board. Does anyone know of an ITX or mATX mobo with x4 M2 slots? Ideally not expensive (ha).


Needs to cater for a graphics card for transcoding of course.

Thanks!
 
You'll struggle to find an ITX board with 4 M.2 slots. The most I've seen on ITX boards from the main manufacturers is 3 and that's at the higher end cost-wise, the MSI Z790i for example.

I did look into mATX boards for a build but they seemed to max out about 3. There's likely to be more choice with 4 given the larger board size but again, I would imagine they would be at the more premium end of the pricing scale.

But with mATX, you get the additional PCIe slot/s, so you could add a multi M.2 card to expand upon the ones that are baked onto the board already.
 
The only way I can see 4x M.2 slots on ITX would be placing 2 the rear. MATX does just about have the room, but X670/X670E and Z790 MATX boards aren't very common and you really need the higher-end chipset to have enough lanes.

Z790M Aorus Elite has 3x M.2 and 6x SATA.
 
Christo said:
Does anyone know of an ITX or mATX mobo with x4 M2 slots?
Click to expand...

You could put four drives in the PCIe x16 slot. I also saw recently either in an article or a YT video a motherboard that was an elongated ITX form factor - same width, different length - which gave it room for extra M.2 drives. Unfortunately Google is not being helpful.
 
All really good suggestions - thank you.

an iGPU and using the PCI-e for NVME's makes sense - in that case x2 slots is acceptable (x3 better of course!)

I am dreaming of my perfect UNRAID/Plex server here. x4 NVME's in a fanless case with x1 3.5" drive to chron job backup the NVME's.
My existing UNRAID setup is a racket (all those spinning drives).

Last chance is a massive SSD cache to have the drives spin down..
 
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