Expansion Card for DX58SO

[Naabjenia]

Hello, everyone!

 

I am currently looking to get the best out of an X58 system I've had for 9 years and I need advice.

The motherboard I have is an Intel DX58SO, which has 6 SATA II (3.0 Gb/s) ports and that's it, no SATA III ports or M.2 slots. Therefore, the SSD I currently own (Kingston A400 480 GB, SATA III) is connected to one of these ports, which yields about half of the possible performance of that SSD.

I was looking for possible ways to work around that issue and I came across expansion cards that are connected to the PCIe slots of the motherboard and have SATA III ports on them. The thing is: which model of expansion card could I use on a DX58SO so that the SSD connected to it is bootable (so that I can install Windows 10 Pro x64 in it) and actually gives me a performance boost?

One of the models I came across is the ASUS U3S6, which should be connected to a PCI-E 2.0 x4 slot (by the way: DX58SO has only PCI-E 2.0 slots and below, no 3.0 at all), but I have no idea if it is bootable on a DX58SO, since it is not on the compatibility list given by ASUS.

 

Is there any model of expansion card that could help me do that or any other way to work around this issue?

 

The only PCI-E 2.0 slot currently in use in my motherboard is the primary PCI-E 2.0 x16, for the graphics card. The rest of them (1 PCI-E 2.0 x16, 1 PCI-E 2.0 x4 and 2 PCI-E 2.0 x1) are free.

 

Here are a couple of links that may be useful:

https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboard-Accessories/U3S6/

https://ark.intel.com/pt-br/products/36888/Intel-Desktop-Board-DX58SO

 

P.S.: if there is a way to use NVMe SSDs on that board, I'd like to know as well.

 

Thank you very much!

[Naabjenia]

Anyone?

 

I managed to see that DX58SO actually has an option for UEFI boot, I'm just not sure how well that works and if it's actually useful for this matter.

If anyone could help me, I'd be glad.

 

Thanks in advance.

[eivrah]

You could use NVME but you need custom BIOS check with noInk at win-raid forums, he helped me with this board which I brick. Now it works flawlessly.

[Naabjenia]

Hey! Thanks for your reply! I'll definitely check it out.