X99 Taichi not seeing 950 Pro

[dt7693]

Hello. I have an ASRock X99 Taichi with an i7-5820K and a Samsung 950 Pro 256GB. My board will not see the NVMe SSD, but it sees standard SATA SSDs without a problem. I was reading the manual (linked here) and found on page 4 that, "If you install a CPU with 28 lanes, the M2_1 only supports SATA type M.2 module." I believe the 950 Pro is PCIe (not SATA)... if so, does this mean that my SSD won't work with my CPU? Is there a way I can get this to work? Thanks in advance.

[spark12072001]

It will not work. The 950 pro is pci-e so unless you buy a pci-e 4x to m.2 adaptor you won't be using that ssd soon.

[done12many2]

6 minutes ago, dt7693 said:

if so, does this mean that my SSD won't work with my CPU?

 

That's exactly what that means.

 

Strange that ASRock chose that configuration as most x99 boards will still let you run on-board M.2 with 28 lane CPUs.  They only start cutting on-board M.2 support when you start populating more than one PCIe x16 slot.

[dt7693]

3 minutes ago, spark12072001 said:

It will not work. The 950 pro is pci-e so unless you buy a pci-e 4x to m.2 adaptor you won't be using that ssd soon.

That's so frustrating... I guess my other option is to upgrade to a 40-lane CPU. Is this a common compatibility issue?

[spark12072001]

1 minute ago, dt7693 said:

That's so frustrating... I guess my other option is to upgrade to a 40-lane CPU. Is this a common compatibility issue?

 

1 minute ago, dt7693 said:

 

Or you could buy a pci-e 4x tot m.2 adaptor. They are realy cheap.

[done12many2]

Just now, dt7693 said:

Is this a common compatibility issue?

 

Nope.  We're starting to see the limitations of that new board.

[dt7693]

Just now, spark12072001 said:

 

Or you could buy a pci-e 4x tot m.2 adaptor. They are realy cheap.

I think that's exactly what I'm going to do. So irritating that ASRock doesn't support PCIe M.2 on 28-lane CPUs.

[spark12072001]

2 minutes ago, dt7693 said:

I think that's exactly what I'm going to do. So irritating that ASRock doesn't support PCIe M.2 on 28-lane CPUs.

You could buy this one: https://m.newegg.com/Product/index?itemnumber=9SIA4M53SS6788

[dt7693]

1 minute ago, spark12072001 said:

You could buy this one: https://m.newegg.com/Product/index?itemnumber=9SIA4M53SS6788

That's one of the enclosures I'd considered actually. Thanks for the suggestion.

4 minutes ago, done12many2 said:

 

Nope.  We're starting to see the limitations of that new board.

And all this time, I thought X99 would be fixing those types of limitations.

 

[Enderman]

9 minutes ago, dt7693 said:

That's so frustrating... I guess my other option is to upgrade to a 40-lane CPU. Is this a common compatibility issue?

No it's not.

There are even Z170 motherboards with less lanes that support PCIe M.2.

This is just crappy ASrock being crappy.

[SnowyMus]

29 minutes ago, dt7693 said:

That's so frustrating... I guess my other option is to upgrade to a 40-lane CPU. Is this a common compatibility issue?

Unfortunately, that's the way it is. X99 is kind of archaic with its 8 PCIe 2.0 chipset lanes compared to the newer Z170 and H170 chipsets which have 20 and 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes (respectively) from the chipset itself and are more than happy to dump them on all of the M.2 and PCIe x1 slots. That, and how ASRock handled it is pretty lame.

[done12many2]

9 minutes ago, dt7693 said:

And all this time, I thought X99 would be fixing those types of limitations.

 

Well to be fair, it's not a "x99" problem.  It's how ASRock opted to utilize lanes on its new board.  When using 28-lane CPUs, Asus x99 boards, and most other x99 boards for that matter only limit the on-board M.2 slot when the second PCIe x16 slot is used.  ASRock seems to be limiting it right off the bat with only one PCIe x16 slot being used.  Pretty dumb if you ask me.

[Enderman]

2 minutes ago, Kavawuvi said:

Unfortunately, that's the way it is. X99 is kind of archaic with its 8 PCIe 2.0 chipset lanes compared to the newer Z170 and H170 chipsets which have 20 and 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes (respectively) from the chipset itself.

This is not an issue with X99. It is not archaic to have 28 PCIe 3.0 lanes, that is more than Z97, Z170, and all other consumer motherboard chipsets.

There are Z170 and Z97 motherboards that run CPUs with LESS LANES that do not have this limitation.

This is 100% due to the board design from ASrock.

 

Also, X99 motherboards from other brands such as asus or gigabyte do not have this "limitation".

[SnowyMus]

16 minutes ago, Enderman said:

This is not an issue with X99. It is not archaic to have 28 PCIe 3.0 lanes, that is more than Z97, Z170, and all other consumer motherboard chipsets.

There are Z170 and Z97 motherboards that run CPUs with LESS LANES that do not have this limitation.

This is 100% due to the board design from ASrock.

 

Also, X99 motherboards from other brands such as asus or gigabyte do not have this "limitation".

I'm talking about the 8 meager PCIe 2.0 chipset lanes from X99 that is archaic, not CPU lanes. Never once in my post have I even mentioned the number 28. I'm talking about the chipset itself, not the CPUs, which I haven't said once at all are in any way not superior.

 

On Z170, yes, your CPUs are limited to 16 PCIe lanes, so basically only 2-way SLI. However, the chipset provides an additional 20 PCIe 3.0 lanes which can be used for your M.2 devices and PCIe x1, x2 and x4 devices, and are independent from how you populate your x16 slots.

 

With a 28 lane CPU, yes, you get 28 lanes. That's 12 more lanes than 16, and that is no doubt superior. However, my point was that the X99 chipset is still only going to provide 8 PCIe 2.0 lanes, which is quite inferior to what's possible in the mainstream platform.

 

And yes, ASRock is still at fault. Having the M.2 slot not function optimally when there are 12 more lanes that can be used is silly, which I'm not disputing, but I may as well include that in my post.

[dt7693]

Thank you all for your comments on this. I wish I'd been more thorough before I purchased these parts. Even PC Part Picker didn't foresee any sort of compatibility issues. I think I'll be upgrading to a 40-lane i7 CPU. Does anyone have any suggestions between the 59XX, 68XX or 69XX series?

[done12many2]

11 minutes ago, Kavawuvi said:

I'm talking about the 8 meager PCIe 2.0 chipset lanes from X99 that is archaic, not CPU lanes. Never once in my post have I even mentioned the number 28. I'm talking about the chipset itself, not the CPUs, which I haven't said once at all are in any way not superior.

 

On Z170, yes, your CPUs are limited to 16 PCIe lanes, so basically only 2-way SLI. However, the chipset provides an additional 20 PCIe 3.0 lanes which can be used for your M.2 devices and PCIe x1, x2 and x4 devices, and are independent from how you populate your x16 slots.

 

With a 28 lane CPU, yes, you get 28 lanes. That's 12 more lanes than 16, and that is no doubt superior. However, my point was that the X99 chipset is still only going to provide 8 PCIe 2.0 lanes, which is quite inferior to what's possible in the mainstream platform.

 

It's not about x99 being inferior.  Z170 and x99 just go about things differently.

 

The 8 PCIe 2.0 chipset lanes on x99 handle all of the SATA type business.  PCIe 3.0 type devices are routed directly to the CPU.  This has advantages in total throughput when configuring RAID 0 with 2 or more PCIe M.2 SSDs, but disadvantages with regards to using up CPU PCIe lanes.

 

Z170 routes on-board M.2 slots through the chipset which is piped through DMI 3.0 to the CPU.  The problem with this is 2 or more high speed PCIe M.2 SSDs can and often will completely saturate DMI 3.0.  Advantage is you're not using up CPU PCIe lanes, but the disadvantage is the limitation on total throughput, which is limited to roughly 3 GB/sec 3.5 GB/sec of actual throughput.

 

You can have all the PCIe 3.0 chipset lanes in the world, but it doesn't mean that DMI 3.0 will allow you the simultaneous use of all of them.  

 

If you are going to do something like configure a PCIe M.2 SSD RAID 0, you are better off with a configuration that ties straight to the CPU, which is exactly what x99 does.

 

[SnowyMus]

1 hour ago, dt7693 said:

Thank you all for your comments on this. I wish I'd been more thorough before I purchased these parts. Even PC Part Picker didn't foresee any sort of compatibility issues. I think I'll be upgrading to a 40-lane i7 CPU. Does anyone have any suggestions between the 59XX, 68XX or 69XX series?

If you don't need more than 6 cores (you probably don't), get whichever is cheaper. The 6850K and 5930K will set you back a few hundred dollars more than their cheaper equivalents (frankly, I think these prices are terrible), but they're the cheapest 28-lane CPUs you can get.

 

And yeah, PCPartPicker is wonderful for finding compatibility issues, but even so, just because something turns on doesn't mean there aren't any issues.

 

53 minutes ago, done12many2 said:

It's not about x99 being inferior.  Z170 and x99 just go about things differently.

 

The 8 PCIe 2.0 chipset lanes on x99 handle all of the SATA type business.  PCIe 3.0 type devices are routed directly to the CPU.  This has advantages in total throughput when configuring RAID 0 with 2 or more PCIe M.2 SSDs, but disadvantages with regards to using up CPU PCIe lanes.

 

Z170 routes on-board M.2 slots through the chipset which is piped through DMI 3.0 to the CPU.  The problem with this is 2 or more high speed PCIe M.2 SSDs can and often will completely saturate DMI 3.0.  Advantage is you're not using up CPU PCIe lanes, but the disadvantage is the limitation on total throughput, which is limited to roughly 3 GB/sec of actual throughput.

 

You can have all the PCIe 3.0 chipset lanes in the world, but it doesn't mean that DMI 3.0 will allow you the simultaneous use of all of them.  

 

If you are going to do something like configure a PCIe M.2 SSD RAID 0, you are better off with a configuration that ties straight to the CPU, which is exactly what x99 does.

The DMI 3.0 link is equivalent to a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface (around 3.9 GB/s total) and uses only four lanes which is why you're only limited to x4, x2, and x1 here. Even so, PCIe 3.0 x4 is very fast, compared to most of the devices that use this, which is why you're not likely to see any bottleneck outside of, as you pointed out, multiple SSDs in RAID 0 or multiple M.2 devices, which yes, you're probably going to want to use the X99 platform and take advantage of titanic CPU lanes if you're going to do anything more extreme than this.

 

However, my point still stands in that 8 PCIe 2.0 lanes is bad, and that being limited to only the 28 lanes on your CPU isn't very good when it limits the amount of connectivity you can get.

[done12many2]

1 minute ago, Kavawuvi said:

The DMI 3.0 link is equivalent to a PCIe 3.0 x4 interface (around 3.9 GB/s total) and uses only four lanes which is why you're only limited to x4, x2, and x1 here. Even so, PCIe 3.0 x4 is very fast, compared to most of the devices that use this, which is why you're not likely to see any bottleneck outside of, as you pointed out, multiple SSDs in RAID 0 or multiple M.2 devices, which yes, you're probably going to want to use the X99 platform and take advantage of titanic CPU lanes if you're going to do anything more extreme than this.

 

However, my point still stands in that 8 PCIe 2.0 lanes is bad, and that being limited to only the 28 lanes on your CPU isn't very good when it limits the amount of connectivity you can get.

 

At this point, we are both saying the same thing.  We're just disagreeing to whether or not the 8 PCIe 2.0 lanes provided by the x99 chipset are good or bad.

 

Like I mentioned early, with x99 it's all about the CPU.  The 8 PCIe 2.0 lanes routed via DMI 2.0 to the CPU are really only there for simple things like SATA devices, USB and networking stuff that do not require anything more than that.  Everything else is routed straight to the CPU.  This includes the on-board M.2 slots which is what why OP is having such a problem right now.  

 

I for one have plenty of CPU lanes (40) and would prefer going right around DMI 2.0 or DMI 3.0 if possible, which I do.

 

I do agree that for a CPU with limited lanes, Z170 / DMI 3.0 is the way to go.  

 

When using a 40 lane CPU though, you don't want any limitations in your way.  

 

With all of this said, this debate goes away with the upcoming Basin Falls X platform as it will use the Kaby Lake-X chipset with 24 PCIe 3.0 lanes combined with those of the Sklylake-X CPU (up to 44 PCIe 3.0) for a whopping 68 lanes.  Somehow I think that motherboard manufacturers will find a way to screw that up.  

[Sintezza]

Asrock X99 taichi has Two m.2 slots on the motherboard.

And only one of those 2 slots, (if i´m right the bottom one) will support NVME SSD´s with a 28 lance cpu installed.

So you can totaly use pci-e m.2 nvme SSD´s with a 28 lane cpu 5820K / 6800K on this board.

You just need to put it in the right m.2 slot.

If you have a 40 lane cpu then you can populate both m.2 slots with nvme drives if i´m right.

 

3 hours ago, done12many2 said:

 

That's exactly what that means.

 

Strange that ASRock chose that configuration as most x99 boards will still let you run on-board M.2 with 28 lane CPUs.  They only start cutting on-board M.2 support when you start populating more than one PCIe x16 slot.

No the Asrock X99 taichi has dual m.2 slots on the board.

With a 28 lane cpu you can only utilize one of those m.2 slots for pci-e nvme storage.

If i´m right the bottom one.

 

The only thing that topic starter should do is populate the 950 pro in the correct m.2 slot.

And install the driver if needed.

 

[RxL]

install the nvme driver from samsung and restart you're computer and make sure you have the 950 pro in the first m.2 slot

[Mr.Meerkat]

3 hours ago, Enderman said:

There are even Z170 motherboards with less lanes that support PCIe M.2.

As I found out, Z170 m.2 is chipset...not CPU  (unless it has more than one)

[Sintezza]

4 hours ago, Enderman said:

No it's not.

There are even Z170 motherboards with less lanes that support PCIe M.2.

This is just crappy ASrock being crappy.

 

Its just you being wrong about Asrock being crappy.

Asrock simply offers options.

Seriously i think you should realy learn your stuff about motherboards, or any other hardware for instance, before writing comments like this.

No offense but come on this is a bit rediculous.

And nonsense aswell.

I get it if you dont like Asrock as a brand.

But still....

[done12many2]

12 minutes ago, Sintezza said:

No the Asrock X99 taichi has dual m.2 slots on the board.

With a 28 lane cpu you can only utilize one of those m.2 slots for pci-e nvme storage.

If i´m right the bottom one.

 

Good catch.  Now we just need the OP to test this out.  

[Sintezza]

 

This review might help.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Sintezza said:

Asrock X99 taichi has Two m.2 slots on the motherboard.

And only one of those 2 slots, (if i´m right the bottom one) will support NVME SSD´s with a 28 lance cpu installed.

So you can totaly use pci-e m.2 nvme SSD´s with a 28 lane cpu 5820K / 6800K on this board.

You just need to put it in the right m.2 slot.

If you have a 40 lane cpu then you can populate both m.2 slots with nvme drives if i´m right.

 

No the Asrock X99 taichi has dual m.2 slots on the board.

With a 28 lane cpu you can only utilize one of those m.2 slots for pci-e nvme storage.

If i´m right the bottom one.

 

The only thing that topic starter should do is populate the 950 pro in the correct m.2 slot.

And install the driver if needed.

 

Exactly what I was thinking. It even states NVMe boot support in the manual.