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Hi everyone, TLDR: I just want to warn all homelab enthusiasts that APUs like the 5600G or 5700G, and apparently also the newer 8000G series can have issues with some PCIe cards, when paired with some motherboards. In my case, with a 5700G + B550 + E10M20-T1 (Synology), the card is not detected at all. I expect the same with the QM2 cards from QNAP with an integrated NIC. When buying the Cezanne 5700G, and using a B550 motherboard, I saw that PCIe was going down from PCIe 4.0 to PCIe 3.0. What I didn't know is that the bifurcation options also go from x8/x8 x8/x4/x4 x4/x4/x4/x4 to x8/x8 x8/x4/x4 This apparently breaks compatibility with cards like the E10M20-T1. Beware ! Maybe it is not linked at all, but the coincidence is too big. It's sad, because this config makes for an excellent Ryzen SFF homelab machine with very fast NVMe storage, avoiding IPMI powered server MB by having an APU with a graphics output. It certainly helps with the budget, as server grade stuff is expensive. For now, I'm using a 5900X without graphics, because luckily AM4 boards can boot without a graphics card installed.

Hey there, I'm wondering if my ASRock B550M-C supports bifurcation or if there's any way for me to find out if it supports it through the bios or smth, I looked at the spec sheet on ASRock's website but i couldn't find any information on it, I need it specifically for running 4 nvme ssds in a card. Any help would be appreciated

Looking to build a new home server based on ITX. PCIe bifurcation is important because I intend to run a bunch of NVME drives an other peripherals (SATA/GigE cards). I'm probably looking at AM4 because Intel has restricted the the desktop LGA1700 chipsets to x8x8. I would consider LGA1200 since they can do x8x4x4 but z590 ITX boards are almost impossible to find these days. AM4 has no such limitation and can in theory do x4x4x4x4 but it is up to the board vendor to add support in the BIOS. Unfortunately it is tricky to work out what most can support because it isn't the sort of thing they put on the specs page. Does anyone here have any of the following ITX boards (with recent BIOS) and can confirm what they can support. Please respond with the model of board, BIOS version and level of support (x8x8, x8x4x4 or x4x4x4x4). ASUS ROG STRIX B550-I GAMING ASUS ROG Strix X570-I Gaming MSI MPG B550I GAMING EDGE MAX WIFI MSI MPG B550I GAMING EDGE WIFI ASRock Phantom Gaming-ITX/Ax ASRock Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3 ASRock B550M-ITX/ac Gigabyte X570SI AORUS PRO AX Gigabyte X570 I AORUS PRO WIFI ASUS publish this guide which shows their B550 supports x8x4x4 and the x570 does not but I always wonder if this is up to date? I could look at a card that can do x16 bifurcation (using an ASMedia PCIe switch) but I am not aware of many that don't cost $$$. The QNAP QM2-4P-384 QUAD M.2 Card is one option but it only uses x8 to x4x4x4x4 which is a bit of a waste of bandwidth. Thanks,

I am trying to set up 4x4 bifurcation on my PCIe 16_1 slot that will allow me to use the Asus Hyper m.2 V2 with 4x NVME SSD's, as of now I can only get 2x of the drives to show. I am using these as scratch drives to dump files on too. Specs: Asus Crosshair VII Hero Wifi (X470) R9 3900xt 64GB Corsair Vengeance - 3200Mhz CL16 Boot drive - WD SN750 NVME 1TB + 5 sata drives EVGA GTX 1080Ti EVGA P2 850W Asus Hyper m.2 V2 w/ 4x Corsair MP600 1TB I have already done the following: I disabled my main m.2 slot (m.2_2), moved the Hyper m.2 to my PCIe 16_1 slot. enabled NVME RAID (will not run in RAID though), my 1080Ti is in my 16_2 slot for now. And I am updated to the latest Bios. I have verified compatibility via the product page. https://www.asus.com/us/support/FAQ/1037507/ And gone through all the required steps (as far as I know). Am I limited by lanes or is there another setting I am missing? Right now I can see 2 of the 4 m.2 drives. Any help is greatly appreciated!

I'm planning on getting a 6900XT or 6800XT, and I'm planning on reusing my GTX 1060 6GB for hardware passthrough with VMs. How will bifurcation work? Will the 2 PCIe slots end up running on 3.0, or will it be possible to run 4.0 at the top and 3.0 at the bottom (or flip)? I currently have an Gigabyte X570S Aorus Master.

Hey Guys, I tried running my RTX 3080 Ti OC card from Asus Strix series on x8 by enabling bifurcation on my Asus Dark Hero Motherboard and found almost a 10-15% loss in performance while testing in Unigine Heaven benchmark. Has anyone tried running their 3080 Ti cards in x8? Did you have the same performance deficit or am I doing something wrong? If you must know why I'm trying to do this, its so that I can run my 2 Samsung 980 PRO Gen4 SSDs on the CPU lanes rather than chipset lanes. My Main System Specs : Ryzen 9 5950x Asus X570 Dark Hero 2 X G Skill Trident Z Neo 16 GB 3600CL16 2 X Samsung 980 PRO Gen4 SSD 1 TB Asus Strix RTX 3080Ti OC 1 X Seagate 7200RPM 4TB HDD 1 X Samsung 860 QVO 8TB SATA SSD

I have an ASRock Rack TRX40D8-2N2T motherboard and I need to take one of the X16 PCI-E slots and bifurcate it to two X8 slots but I am having a real hard time finding something that would do the job. I am using the Fractal Meshify 2 XL Case so it has 3 vertical slots which would work great for holding the 2 HBA PCI-E cards I want to use with the adapter. Do any Bifurcation Adapters exist that would work for what I am trying to do?

I already use UEFItool to extract the menu and I got this setup.txt and after looking at relative entries in the txt, I suppose that I have to change this three entries default value: One Of: CPU PCIe Lanes Configuration, VarStoreInfo (VarOffset/VarName): 0xC9F, VarStore: 0x1, QuestionId: 0xF27, Size: 1, Min: 0x0, Max 0x3, Step: 0x0 {05 91 24 30 25 30 27 0F 01 00 9F 0C 10 10 00 03 00} One Of: Support PEG Bifurcation Card, VarStoreInfo (VarOffset/VarName): 0x67B, VarStore: 0x1, QuestionId: 0x2AC, Size: 1, Min: 0x0, Max 0x1, Step: 0x0 {05 91 4C 1F 4D 1F AC 02 01 00 7B 06 10 10 00 01 00} One Of: CFG Lock, VarStoreInfo (VarOffset/VarName): 0x3E, VarStore: 0x11, QuestionId: 0x11B3, Size: 1, Min: 0x0, Max 0x1, Step: 0x0 {05 91 DF 01 E0 01 B3 11 11 00 3E 00 10 10 00 01 00} I use RU to change their value, though the computer boot, nothing happened, the second pcie card on my 8x+8x bifurcation riser card just not showing up. Does anyone has any idea how to solve this? or maybe I should just switch to other brands as they support bifurcation out of box? setup_extr.txt

I am looking to buy a motherboard with bifurcation function on it, anyone knows which mobos support that? I am looking for a server related build. Also i was looking for this expension card for my build but it says it is GEN 3. Will it work in GEN4 mode if i put it on Gen4 mobo with Gen4 NVMe?

Hi everyone! I just bought this PCI-e with 1TB of m.2 total in it ( https://www.amazon.com/Dell-Ultra-Speed-Drive-Quad-Adapter/dp/B0714MMD6M ) and I was planning to put it in my Poweredge R710 but it's not compatible because there's no bifurcation. So, I tried to put it in my personnal pc to do a raid-0 with it. I have an Asus Prime Z490-P. When I go look on the Asus forum, my motherboard is supposed to be compatible with bifurcation with up to 3x m.2. But, in the bios, I only see 1 m.2 and in windows, I don't see any! How do I activate the bifurcation in this motherboard?! I've been looking online but nothing is really clear like go there, click on that, Bifurcation ---> Active. Can someone help me please?! I'm a bit lost right now and I don't really want to ask for a refund without having tried everything that I could. Thanks a lot guys! :)

I have found an ITX X570 motherboard that supports bifurcating the x16 slot into x4x4x4x4. Does the Ryzen 3 3200g support the same x4x4x4x4 bifurcation, or should i go with a newer processor?

Q1: The 3090 pulls about 400W if I'm correct, and not 350 like Nvidia says. A PCI.e slot gives 75W so that leaves 325 Watt for 2 8-pin cables which are rated for 300W total. Does the card simply pull an extra 25 Watts from the cables? Not that an extra 12,5 Watt each matters that much but still, maybe it's 25W extra for only 1 of the 2 8-pins. Q2: I want to bifurcate 1 PCI.e x16 Gen 4 slot to 1x16 running at x8 speeds and 1x8 (prefer) or 1x16 running at x8 speeds. The x16 slot for the 3090 and the x8 slot for a x8 PCI.e SSD (or x16 but I think the controllers are specifically built for x16, so by that logic it probably would be slower than x8 on x8 speeds). How does the power delivery work? Because there's 50W coming at 12V and 25W at 3V & 5V. Are both simply split in half? Or does the SSD pull that 3V&5V 25 Watt and leave 50 for the GPU? But the GPU also uses that to communicate, I think. And would the GPU just pull the missing 12V power from the 2x8 pins? And does the splitter also use power? And if there's only 1 x16 to 2 x16 splitters, I put in the 3090 and I only use half of 1 splitted x16 for the x8 SSD, can I still get about 15GB/s assuming the splitted x16 slot is able to handle Gen 4 at x8 speeds? Q3: Can I use that x8 SSD in bifurcation, in Raid 1 with another PCI.e SSD on a m.2 pci.e motherboard slot, even if they're not the same speed or size. (Assuming it would work while using the lowest speed and size of the 2). And how would that affect real world performance? Would Smart Acces Memory still be possible without any comprimises? Wonder what will happen with a so named "400W TDP" Titan RTX 2... Thanks in advance!

So I have an Intel 12600K system that I'm using for some projects. I don't need a dedicated GPU and have been using the iGPU, and I already own a case that only fits mATX boards. I initially got an Asus Hyper M.2 PCIE 4.0 x16 to four NVME Gen 4 M.2 adapter card to use as fast storage for some of my projects. Issue is that it seems that 12th gen CPU's and the related Z690 motherboards only support bifurcating the PCIe 5.0 x16 slot into x8x8 mode, and doesn't support x8x4x4 or x4x4x4x4. I can still use two of the four drives, but obviously that's not ideal. I've been looking around for a solution and could only come up with two solutions, but actually finding the hardware to go through with them has been pretty difficult. The cards I have found are some combination of being too expensive, not being really reviewed online, and typically only being PCIe 3.0 and not 5.0 or 4.0 Here are my ideas so far: 1. A PCIe 5.0 / 4.0 x16 to x8x8 splitter, as well as getting two x8 to two NVMe M.2 SSD adapters. I can't seem to find any sort of splitter that I feel confident would work, nor can I find any PCIE 5.0 / 4.0 x8 to dual M.2 adapters that don't require bifurcation 2. A PCIe 5.0 / 4.0 x16 non-bifurcation four M.2 adapter card. I believe I've found a few, but they're either not well reviewed or insanely expensive. If anyone has recommendations for these pieces of hardware or some alternative solutions, I'd be happy to hear them!

Good day readers. What I want to do is spit a PCIE slot 4 ways. I know my mother board can do it (Asrock Rack ROMED8-2T, (https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=ROMED8-2T#Specifications)) On these four slots I want to have: 2 USB expansion cards 1 Sound card But from what I've seen everything as rare or expensive. Some examples are: (No idea about cost, availability or if it shill ship to South Africa) - https://www.amfeltec.com/gpu-oriented-x4-pcie-4-way-splitter/ (No idea about cost, availability or if it shill ship to South Africa) - https://www.ioi.com.tw/products/proddetail.aspx?CatID=106&DeviceID=3050&HostID=2108&ProdID=1060249 (A bit too expensive and i would still need a riser cable, increasing costs) - https://www.ebay.com/itm/133733632988 So my question is would this (https://www.ebay.com/itm/114846479420) give me full access to my hardware? I am running Unraid and would like to Pass one USB card through to a VM Pass individual ports on my other USB card to different VM's (I already know this card can do it, it is a (https://www.ebay.com/itm/293380970040)) Pass the Sound card to a different VM So there is my question, would this (https://www.ebay.com/itm/114846479420) give me full access to my two USB cards and sound card? It's cheap, can be retro fitted to my 4U server chassis, Is available for me to ship to South Africa. Thank you

My compact NAS build makes use of a motherboard with only one x16 slot (ASRock X570D4I-2T). Based on the manufacturer's manual, it should support bifurcation to x4x4x4x4, which is excellent for an array of NVMe drives to experiment with. However, when it came to actually enabling that setting in BIOS, it turned out the options I see are different than what the manual says. The most the slot can be bifurcated to is x8x4x4. Also, the settings on the page are named a bit differently than what I see in the manual. I am sure the model of the mobo is correct, it's spelled out on the PCB. I came across the same issue somewhere else on the Internet, as of now still unresolved. OP expressed the idea it might have something to do with the CPU, which in his case was a Ryzen 4650GE. My CPU is Ryzen 5750GE, i.e. Both CPUs have a built-in GPU, and they support ECC memory, which might have something to do with the situation. ASRock explicitly state, the mobo behaves diffently with such CPUs - PCIe slots are downgraded to PCIe 3, but nothing else is mentioned. So my question is, in addition to BIOS support, does the CPU also have to support a particular bifurcation config? E.g., does the BIOS for AMD CPUs only list supported bifurcation configs enabled by the CPU? And if so, is there somewhere I can verify this for AMD CPUs, cause Intel's Ark helpfully did list some supported PCIe configs, but I don't see anything like this neither on AMD's site, nor on Wikichip. I could contact ASRock support, but I'd rather make sure the issue could indeed be on their end, before I engage in a communication likely to span a lot of time. And I'm aware I can make some accommodations to work with a x8x4x4 bifurcation card, however that's an expensive option, and if I have the opportunity to do some investigation/receive support to make use of 4 drives instead of 3, I'd use it.

Hey all! Looking to try and get a 7900xtx, asus hyper m.2 expansion card, and possibly sound card (considering external dac for music/audio interface instead if necessary). The am5 platform has 28 pcie lanes with the gpu using 16. So NVME ssds use up 4 lanes each maxed out? Is it possible to use the expansion card without limiting all 4 drives? Some mobos say that using a pcie slot will disable an m.2 slot, and using a certain m.2 slot may disable a sata port. I've been looking at the asus proart x670e creator mobo and it says 2 x PCIe 5.0 x16 slots (support x16 or x8/x8 modes) 1 x PCIe 4.0 x16 slot (supports x2 mode)** ** PCIEX16_3 shares bandwidth with M.2_3 slot. Please adjust in BIOS setting to enable PCIEX16_3. What does this mean? So I can put the gpu in one of the 5.0 16x slots? If the 4.0 slot supports x2, then does that mean I cannot split it into 4x4x4x4 for the ssd expansion card?

I want to use an HYPER M.2 X16 GEN 4 CARD with my MSI X570 Gaming Plus motherboard. I believe my motherboard does NOT support pcie bifurcation. If I want to see all 4 nvme drives on the card can I use the main x16 slot of the motherboard? Will this allow me to see/use all 4 SSDs in the Hyper M.2 Card? Or does my motherboard NEED to support pcie bifurcation? My plan is to have all 4 SSDs in Raid0. Currently my x16 slot is used for my Plex transcoding GPU with a Quadro P1000. If I put that into my x4 slot, I imagine this wouldn't limit bandwidth for transcoding too much? This would turn the GPU from x16 down to x4 lanes. Thanks,

So, I understand what bifurcation is but I'm new to making it physically work. I've got an X399 Phantom Gaming 6 board, there are 3 physical X16 slots that can be set to either x16 or x4x4x4. I've got a potential 64 lanes, and I'm using maybe 36, I don't think I'll 'cap' that out if I try. However in my voyage across google I've learned that while you can technically just use a 4-way riser/splitter performance will be poor unless the riser/splitter supports bifurcation via some extra component that remained nebulous the entire time I was researching the process. Have any of you done this? At this point I'm just trying to find a riser/splitter that does it, Or information that will help me determine if said riser/splitter is viable purchase.

So, I happen to be in the unfortunate situation where I have to find a way to get another PCIe x8 slot, I'm one shy atm. Currently I have: 1 - x16 @ x16 1 - x16 @ x4 2 - x1 Plus 3 PCI slots I have one x4 slot device and two x8 devices that I need to connect to this motherboard. Speed is very important to each of these devices: 10Gbe NIC & 2 LSI Sata HBAs. I figured it would be possible to find an adapter to split the first x16 lane into two separate x8's, like this device. However, I keep running into the term bifurcation, but I can't find any useful info on how to figure out what supports it. Any ideas on that? Or any other sort of way I can possibly get another PCIe slot? One of my HBAs is dedicated to a HDD RAID config which is a backup to the other HBA that has a RAID config of SSDs, so I'm not really concerned at all about the speed on the HDD array. So if some sort of PCI to PCIe x16 slot adapter exists, then I'm game.

Hi! I recently bought an ASUS x16 to 4x m.2 nvme to use my 4 x 1TB intel 660p as NAS storage. I thought about putting this card into my 24/7 PC (Ryzen 2200G ASRock X370 mini-ITX). EDIT: my "24/7" PC does not have a dedicated graphics card, what it has got is an, 2200G, ASRock X370 mini-ITX, 120GB SSD, some HDDs, 8GB Ram Its used as an testing server for websites, ftp servers, databases and so on... After some testing I got to the point of realization that that is not as easy as I thought... At first only one SSD worked after some searching in the BIOS I found an option to split the x16 PCIe into one x4 Slot or into two x8 slots. That made an second SSD work. After some researching I found out that this techology thats used here is called PCIe bifurcation. Apparently I was very lucky with my motherboard to get two SSDs working, because in this reddit post some guys said that only ASRock impliments bifurcation on some of their AM4 Boards (with that one beeing the only one besides its Brother the B350 Version of his board) Is there a very slime chance of getting a 4x4x4x4 bifurcation on this Board (or even another AM4 Board) working? If that is not possible, which consumer platform/Mobos implements PCIe bifurcation for that what I need?

Budget (including currency): Variable, Probably $4,000+ Country: Central USA Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: CAD, Photo Processing, Games - WOW, ARK, Metro, CSGO, Minectraft, Etc... , & home media server Other details : Build in Progress July 2020 ASUS ROG Strix X299-E Gaming II LGA 2066 Intel X299 SATA 6Gb/s ATX Intel Motherboard Intel Core i9-10900X Cascade Lake 10-Core 3.7 GHz LGA 2066 (Already Purchased) (OC is definitely happening) ASUS ROG Ryujin 360 RGB AIO Liquid CPU Cooler 360mm Radiator (Three 120mm 4-pin Noctua iPPC PWM Fans) with LIVEDASH OLED Panel and FanXpert Controls (Using stock Fans) G.SKILL TridentZ RGB Series 128GB (8 x 16GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3600 (PC4 28800) Intel X299 Desktop Memory Model (Might splurge for 256GB if I do a RAMdisk) Sabrent 1TB Rocket NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 Internal SSD (Already Purchassed) (Boot Drive) ASUS Hyper M.2 X16 PCIe 3.0 X4 Expansion Card V2 Supports 4 NVMe M.2 (2242/2260/2280/22110) Upto 128 Gbps for Intel VROC and AMD Ryzen Threadripper NVMe Raid (NOT using for Bootable RAID) (4) Seagate 4TB Enterprise Desktop Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 128MB 3.5" (For ASUS Hyper M.2 card) (Plan is to run them in RAID-0) Seagate 4TB Enterprise Desktop Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 128MB 3.5" ASUS GeForce RTX 2070 Super Overclocked 8G EVO GDDR6 Dual-Fan Edition HDMI DisplayPort Gaming Graphics Card RAIDMAX Cobra Series RX-1200AE-B 1200W ATX 12V v2.3 / EPS 12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Semi-Modular Power Supply ASUS AURA SYNC 5V 3-pin RGB 10 Hub Splitter w/ PMMA Case (Already Purchased) LG Black 16X with Cyberlink Software BD-R 2X BD-RE 16X DVD+R 5X DVD-RAM 12X BD-ROM 4MB Cache SATA Blu-ray Burner (Already Purchased) (Used for Movies and Long-term Storage) SAMSUNG C43J890 43" 3840 x 1200 Double FHD 5ms (GTG) 120Hz HDMI DisplayPort USB Type-C 32:10 Curved Super Ultra-Wide Monitor Microsoft Windows 10 Pro - Full Retail Version (USB Flash Drive) Wavlink ST334U-Red Updated Hard Drive Docking Station - USB 3.0 to SATA Dual Bay HDD Docking Station in Red for 2.5" & 3.5" HDD/SSD SATA I/II/III - Support Offline Clone / Duplicator / Backup / UASP Functions (for drive duplication and easy removable drive access) PC case will be a custom wooden vertical open-air design (See diagrams) (Still being refined ATM) EZDIY-FAB 2-Port USB3.0 Type A and USB3.1 Type C GEN 2-5.25 inch Front Panel USB Hub with 20 pin Connector- 73 cm Cable, Metal Front Panel USB Hub (Already Purchased) (For Front USB 3.1c) ICY BOX Multicard ib-863 a-b Drive 5.25 "Black (Already Purchased) (For Front Audio, eSATA, & Card Reader) Extended Computer Magnetic 5V 3 Pin PC LED Strip - 2 PCS RGB PC LED Strip Light for ASUS Aura SYNC/MSI Mystic Sync/ASROCK Aura RGB/GIGABYTE RGB Fusion (5V 3 Pin addressable LED headers ONLY) (Already Purchased) (For under case lighting effect) (2) anidees AI Aureola Duo 80mm 3pcs RGB PWM Dual Light Loop Fan Compatible with 5V 3pins addressable RGB Header, for PC case Fan, Cooler Fan, w/Remote(AI-AR-DUO8) (Already Purchased) (For Side lighting Effects) CORSAIR - Gaming K70 RGB MK.2 RAPIDFIRE Mechanical Wired CHERRY MX Speed Switch Keyboard with RGB Back Lighting – Black (Already Purchased) NO im not a huge RGB fan. But I am using them for a specific effect in this build Case Diagrams: Woodie.PDF Current System Built in May of 2013 ASUS Sabertooth X79 LGA 2011 Intel Core i7-3930K Sandy Bridge-E 6-Core 3.2GHz (3.8GHz Turbo) LGA 2011 (Overclocked to 4.1GHz) CORSAIR Hydro Series H100 (Push & Pull fan Configuration) G.SKILL Ripjaws Z Series 64GB (8 x 8GB) Quad Channel Memory G.SKILL FTB-3500C5-D Fans (Because they look COOL) Seagate Desktop HDD 3TB 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" (Mechanical Storage) EVGA GeForce GTX 670 FTW+ 4GB 256Bit (Already using NEW EVGA RTX 2070super that will go in new system) LG DVD Burner 24X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 8X DVD+R DL 24X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 16X DVD-ROM 48X CD-R 32X CD-RW 48X CD-ROM Black SATA (Used for Permanent Storage and movie watching) COUGAR Solution Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case (Heavily moded in Steampunk theme) (1) HyperX 3K 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) (No longer used) (2) Kingston KC600 2.5" 512GB SATA III TLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) (Boot and Programs disks) Thermaltake SP-1000M 1000W ATX 12V 2.3 & EPS 12V 2.92 SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Full Modular Active PFC Power Supply Microsoft Windows 8 Professional 64-Bit (Full Version) – UPGRADED to Windows 10 Samsung - UE590 Series 28" LED 4K UHD Monitor - Black CORSAIR - Gaming K70 RGB MK.2 RAPIDFIRE Mechanical Wired CHERRY MX Speed Switch Keyboard with RGB Back Lighting – Black (recent upgrade to go with new system) Pictures: ( See Attached ) Questions: (1) Can you set up the RAMdisk to be stored to the Nvme RAID on the Hyper M.s card with 4 drives in RAID-0? ( yes i know its a crazy idea ) ( I also know that nothing will need that much speed ) reason for doing so is so that i can get the best speed from the RAMdrive without being slowed down by access to the data on the Nvme RAID. This should "theoretically" allow the startup and shutdown times of the RAMdrive to be faster by taking advantage of the 4 Nvme M.2s in RAID-0 on the Hyper M.2 card. This is just something that came to me and sounded too good to be true. Thought i would run it by the forum to see what others think. My plan at the moment is to use the 1TB Sabrent Rocket M.2 as my boot / OS drive. The Hyper M.2 Raid will be my Application / Game drive. The Seagate 4TB Mechanical drive will be for data storage and stuff i don't want to risk on the RAID-0. (2) Any recommendations or problems you might see with this build? (3) Should i go with 2 LARGER 4K Monitors ( 34" maybe ) One primary screen and one for "other" open applications instead of the 43" Ultrawide Monitor? That would allow me to work in both CAD and Photo programs in 4K instead of the lower resolution of the Ultrawide. The downside is that it would take up more desk space (which i am ok with) but would allow me to game in 4k. The Ultrawide would be better for gaming and use up less desk space. (4) I am open to changing out the motherboard, but want to stay with ASUS as i have planned to use AuraSync to controll the LED lighting. (no i dont want rainbow puke) but i do like accent lighting.

I am currently running an egpu, the HP Graphics Accelerator Shell with an R9-290. This accelerator, in turn, is running off of a Thunderbolt 3 port with 4x pci lanes from my Hp Spectre Laptop with a Intel i7 8550u. I was thinking of upgrading my gpu to a gtx 1070, but to upgrade right now is rather insane with the current gpu prices. This got me searching on used hardware sites and I came upon a $150 R9 290. This, in turn, got me started on pci bifurcation. Would it be possible to use something like this:https://www.amazon.ca/Express-riser-useful-Mini-ITX-single/dp/B06Y5LBY8G to crossfire 2 R9 290s and achieve greater performance, thus, creating myself something like a Frankenstein R9 295x2? According to this article I should be okay on bandwidth: https://www.amazon.ca/Express-riser-useful-Mini-ITX-single/dp/B06Y5LBY8G with PCI x4 gen 3 I know it isn't completely practical or useful really, I could just use my desktop for the crossfire and etc.... but I love frankenmachines and want to know would it be possible?

So it is done a user managed to use 2 Nanos in a mitx motherboard via bifurcation and a pcie Splitter from ami-rack. Its done in a z97 asrock board and an beta BIOS that enables bifurcation. Sooo now what i did, i asked asus germany for an beta BIOS that enables bifurcation in my beloved z97i-plus. So but iam an average Joe and Linus techtips has a nice bond to asus and could bravely ask too if its not to much to ask?Here is a link to that guy who did it first https://smallformfactor.net/forum/threads/custom-case-exchromeleopard.479/ If something good replies from asus on my behalf i will share that BIOS. Dom