X470 AORUS GAMING 7 WIFI - How to use two m.2 drives?

chickadee

chickadee

chickadee

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I have the Gigabyte X470 AORUS GAMING 7 WIFI motherboard, in the specifications it states two m.2 slots, one PCie3.0 + SATA support and then another that is a PCie2.0 with no SATA support. Well i have a 250gb Samsung evo 250gb NVME drive and just bought a 500gb SATA drive. I changed my NVME to the slower slot and installed the SATA in the SATA slot.

That all sounds fine and dandy but its only the PCie3.0 slot that recognises any drive, the bottom PCie2.0 doesnt recognise the NVME drive at all and obviously not the SATA.

Now im wondering if its a lane issue? I dont really know much about that but is there anything special i would have to do to get both recognised? Maybe change my graphics card slot?

Any help would be great. I also have 5 SATA HDD's installed too if that matters.
 
I have 2x nvme drives, 1 x sata ssd and 2x hard drives on my board with a 3700x. Dont know if its your 2700x thats the problem
 
Griff7520 said:
I have 2x nvme drives, 1 x sata ssd and 2x hard drives on my board with a 3700x. Dont know if its your 2700x thats the problem
Click to expand...
Ok so a little bit more info, i got a m.2 to PCIe just to see, it was only £12 and i can use it in my other machine anyway. Well nope, tried ALL my PCIe slots....well both, nope, nothing, it doesnt recognise it at all. The thing is when the board came out the 2700x was the top dog really, there wasnt any other CPUs above mine really, well not that i remember, the ryzen 3XXX series wasnt out so i dont think it could be the 2700x.
 
just noticed you have 5 sata drives as well....i think that stops you using the bottom m.2 slot, check your manual

i saw this on the gigabyte page
  1. 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x16 (PCIEX16)
    * For optimum performance, if only one PCI Express graphics card is to be installed, be sure to install it in the PCIEX16 slot.
  2. 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x8 (PCIEX8)
    * The PCIEX8 slot shares bandwidth with the PCIEX16 slot. When the PCIEX8 slot is populated, the PCIEX16 slot operates at up to x8 mode.
    (The PCIEX16 and PCIEX8 slots conform to PCI Express 3.0 standard.)
  3. 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x4 (PCIEX4)
    * The PCIEX4 slot becomes unavailable when a device is installed in the M2B_SOCKET connector.
  4. 2 x PCI Express x1 slots
    (The PCIEX4 and PCI Express x1 slots conform to PCI Express 2.0 standard.)
https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/X470-AORUS-GAMING-7-WIFI-rev-10/sp#sp
 
Griff7520 said:
just noticed you have 5 sata drives as well....i think that stops you using the bottom m.2 slot, check your manual

i saw this on the gigabyte page
  1. 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x16 (PCIEX16)
    * For optimum performance, if only one PCI Express graphics card is to be installed, be sure to install it in the PCIEX16 slot.
  2. 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x8 (PCIEX8)
    * The PCIEX8 slot shares bandwidth with the PCIEX16 slot. When the PCIEX8 slot is populated, the PCIEX16 slot operates at up to x8 mode.
    (The PCIEX16 and PCIEX8 slots conform to PCI Express 3.0 standard.)
  3. 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x4 (PCIEX4)
    * The PCIEX4 slot becomes unavailable when a device is installed in the M2B_SOCKET connector.
  4. 2 x PCI Express x1 slots
    (The PCIEX4 and PCI Express x1 slots conform to PCI Express 2.0 standard.)
https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/X470-AORUS-GAMING-7-WIFI-rev-10/sp#sp
Click to expand...
All the lane talk has confused to me to no end. From what i gather im just out of lanes, an idea i had was what if i reduced the GFX card from x16 to x8 in the bios, i wonder if that would open more lanes allowing for more drives......
 
If I got the specs of your drives correct, then as I understand the manual the 250gb Evo 970 M.2 NVMe should go in the M2A socket and the 500gb SATA M.2 (like the Samsung 500gb 850 EVO M.2 SATA?) should go in the M2B socket.

The NOTE on page -19- (-20- online .pdf) says "(Note) The M2B_SOCKET connector supports only PCIe SSDs." as it supports only SATA SSD and not PCIe NVMe. A bit poorly written, but kind of makes sense as the 3rd PCI Express x16 slot "running at x4 (PCIEX4) * The PCIEX4 slot becomes unavailable when a device is installed in the M2B_SOCKET connector."

Unfortunately I can't verify on my board as I'm trying to sort a dual BIOS fault......
 
I ran 2 nvme drives on my board. the wd-black sn750 and the samsung 960 evo. the second slot did run slower at x2 speed as opposed to x4
But I only have 2 mechanical sata drives on the sata ports.
 
Last edited:
this may help. from anandtech
https://www.anandtech.com/show/12647/the-gigabyte-x470-gaming-7-wifi-motherboard-review

this bit here explains
In regards to storage, the GIGABYTE X470 Gaming 7 Wi-Fi features a total of six SATA 6 GB/s ports which allows users to run RAID 0, 1 and 10 arrays. While the X370 predecessor to this board (GIGABYTE AX370 Gaming K7) did feature a single U.2 port, GIGABYTE has omitted to implement one onto the X470 Gaming 7. Instead, two M.2 slots are present with both offering support for NVMe PCIe x4 and SATA SSDs with both slots featuring their own individual stylish and functional M.2 heat sinks.
 
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