Quad PCIe NVMe M.2 Expansion Board?

[Tufi]

I am looking at purchasing 4 of these:

Corsair MP510 960 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive

SSD LINK

 

Tentative Motherboard:

https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/TUF-Z390-PLUS-GAMING-WI-FI/specifications/

 

Tentative CPU:

Intel Core i5-9400 2.9 GHz 6-Core Processor

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/134898/intel-core-i5-9400-processor-9m-cache-up-to-4-10-ghz.html

 

Are there any quad pcie x 4 expansion boards I can use to fit all my juicy SSDs onto that are compatible with this CPU?

I've read that some of intel's cpu's dont have a direct connection from pcie lanes to the cpu which seems to be necessary in order to maximize the use of all four of these SSDs.

 

This ASRock Ultra Quad M.2 Card 16-lane AIC was the first model I saw, but is, unfortunately, incompatible with my CPU

https://www.asrock.com/mb/spec/product.asp?Model=ULTRA QUAD M.2 CARD
 

 

[Guest]

You need PCIe lane bifurcation support which does not come with most non-HEDT boards.

[Tufi]

Den Fi,

 

I need a motherboard with the following capabilities:

 

4 X 32GB DDR4, DIMM ECC, REGISTERED, 2666MHz = 128GB RAM

4 X M.2 PCIe SSD, 960 GB ea

 

[Belezebub]

On ‎10‎/‎13‎/‎2019 at 1:22 PM, Tufi said:

I am looking at purchasing 4 of these:

Corsair MP510 960 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive

SSD LINK

 

Tentative Motherboard:

https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/TUF-Z390-PLUS-GAMING-WI-FI/specifications/

 

Tentative CPU:

Intel Core i5-9400 2.9 GHz 6-Core Processor

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/134898/intel-core-i5-9400-processor-9m-cache-up-to-4-10-ghz.html

 

Are there any quad pcie x 4 expansion boards I can use to fit all my juicy SSDs onto that are compatible with this CPU?

I've read that some of intel's cpu's dont have a direct connection from pcie lanes to the cpu which seems to be necessary in order to maximize the use of all four of these SSDs.

 

This ASRock Ultra Quad M.2 Card 16-lane AIC was the first model I saw, but is, unfortunately, incompatible with my CPU

https://www.asrock.com/mb/spec/product.asp?Model=ULTRA QUAD M.2 CARD
 

 

I have two machines with PCIe X16 NVME boards now, like Den-Fi said you need "bifurcation" which means X299 or Thread ripper? and a CPU with enough PCIE Lanes to run it, you can get single x4 PCIe cards and put one NVME drive in each and do a software raid (normally NO OS boot for software) or you could use a Gigabyte Z390 AORUS Motherboard and do bios hardware raid of two NVMEs (other motherboards might support it but I know the Z390 AORUS Motherboard does I build that for my son.

I guess if you didn't need anything more then on board video and could find a non X299/TR Motherboard that supported Bifurcation (if one even exsists you could try but I have never seen one.

 

 

 

[mariushm]

Get a Threadripper board then. Has 8 DDR4 slots, so you can go with 8 x 32 GB or 8 x 16 GB if it's cheaper.

 

An 1900x (8 core 16 threads) is 200$ and it's much faster than 9400 : https://www.newegg.com/amd-ryzen-threadripper-1900x/p/N82E16819113457

You may find 1920x (12 core, 24 threads) at around 250$.

 

ASRock X399 Phantom Gaming 6 is $240 : https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16813157861

has 3  m.2 connectors on board, has 3 pci-e x16 slots in which you can insert  2-4 m.2 adapter cards as the board most likely supports bifurcation... worst case scenario you can insert a pci-e x4 adapter card into a x16 slot for a total of 4 m.2 connectors

Not that much more expensive.

Note though that the page says the board can do maximum 128 GB, so 8 sticks of 16 GB... not 32 GB sticks, but who knows, maybe they just didn't test 32 GB sticks.

 

What will cost you extra is the cooler

[Zando_]

1 minute ago, Belezebub said:

I guess if you didn't need anything more then on board video and could find a non X299/TR Motherboard that supported Bifurcation (if one even exsists you could try but I have never seen one.

X99 boards with a modded BIOS can. According to @Damascus most (or was it all?) ASRock boards do, and there's a modded BIOS for them made by an actual ASRock engineer. The MSI Godlike has or had a modded BIOS available as well, some others you can enable it on if you know how to mod the BIOS yourself (I think people have enabled it on some of the EVGA boards I have as well). 

But if you're buying new, don't really see the point of an X99 rig. I mostly run it because I enjoy the X platforms and like the CPUs for this gen, I think Damascus runs it for similar reasons. They can offer some good value if you buy used though, and later boards aren't much behind X299 boards feature-wise. 

[Tufi]

I DONE GOOF'D

 

The reason for my request is due to the fact that I bought 1 stick of this RAM:

Crucial Technology 32GB DDR4 PC4-21300 2666MHz RDIMM, Dual Ranked Registered ECC Memory (CT32G4RFD4266)

https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Technology-RAM-Memory-CT32G4RFD4266/dp/B01N5HME0X/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Crucial+Technology+32GB+DDR4+PC4-21300+2666MHz+RDIMM%2C+Dual+Ranked+Registered+ECC+Memory+(CT32G4RFD4266)&qid=1571090980&s=electronics&sr=1-1

 

And, I don't feel like returning it to the vendor. Problem is, the CPU that I chose an intel core i5 9400, which doesn't support ECC memory, so, I basically scrapped my build and am now building around my memory stick. So far, the ASrock board that @mariushm suggested seems like a worthy contender if I remove one of the 4 PCIe SSDs.

[Kilrah]

24 minutes ago, Tufi said:

And, I don't feel like returning it to the vendor.

You probably won't have a choice. Nothing in consumer space supports Registered ECC memory, that's server stuff.

[mariushm]

You can use adapter cards like these, you can insert them in any of the x16 slots and you get the full x4 speed out of the m.2 SSD.

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/M-2-NVME-NGFF-SSD-to-PCI-e-PCI-Express-X4-X8-X16-Adapter-Converter-Card-C/143255137034

https://www.ebay.com/itm/M-2-NVME-NGFF-SSD-to-PCI-E-Express-X4-X8-X16-Expansion-Converter-Adapter-Card-AM/283336333569

https://www.ebay.com/itm/M-2-NVMe-SSD-M-Key-Slot-TO-PCI-E-3-0-X4-adapter-card-for-2280-2230-2242-2260/323495456496

 

I'd suggest you go with Threadripper and buy MB, CPU and cooler and try to see if it works with 32 GB stick you have.

if it doesn't, maybe just suck it up and sell it with 20-30% off on eBay or somewhere...

 

edit: latest bios says "2. Correct memory size information with specific 32GB memory module." so maybe the board actually supports 32 GB sticks, at least with some memory sticks.

[Kilrah]

Everything I find says TR only supports Unregistered.

EPYC apparently supports registered, but...

[mariushm]

Sigh yeah, it's 1:30 am here... yeah, Threadripper doesn't do registered, but it does ECC.

Sorry, yes, the stick won't work in this case.

[Tufi]

OK. Cancelled my RAM order. New rig specs....

 

4 x 32 GB Corsair DDR4 2666MHz C18 DIMM (have not confirmed whether or not they are non-ECC/un-Registered, website doesn't say)

https://www.corsair.com/us/en/Categories/Products/Memory/Mainstream-Memory/CORSAIR-Memory-—-32GB-(1-x-32GB)-DDR4-2666MHz-C18-DIMM/p/CMV32GX4M1A2666C18#tab-tech-specs

 

1 x CPU Intel Core i7 9700k

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/processors/core/i7-processors/i7-9700k.html

 

Now, all I need is a motherboard that will run 128GB and support 3 X PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 SSDs

[AKBrian]

TL;DR: What is your goal with the system?

 

Are you still wanting to utilize a four way NVMe M.2 PCI-E x16 card, or are you now just wanting to build a system using three separate PCI-E M.2 drives?

 

If you've abandoned the quad NVMe M.2 card idea, and are specifically wanting to use an i7-9700K, choose a motherboard like Gigabyte's Z390 Aorus Master / Ultra or ASRock's Z390 Taichi / Taichi Master. They are solid motherboards which feature three NVMe M.2 slots.

 

However, if you are going into this expecting to combine your drives into a RAID 0 array for high bandwidth, you'll be very disappointed. As the three M.2 slots will be partially sharing bandwidth across the chipset's DMI link, which operates at PCI Express 3.0 x4 (~4GB/s). You'll also likely lose a few SATA ports due to potential lane sharing with M.2 slots, although the specifics vary by board and for most people four SATA ports are still fine. If you are using the M.2 drives individually (eg, formatted separately and with their own access patterns) this DMI link limitation typically won't be an issue.

 

If you're looking to combine (for example) three 3GB/s drives in RAID 0 and hope to achieve a 9GB/s read rate, though, you're not going to like the results. A ~4-4.5GB/s rate is what you're likely to see due to the DMI bottleneck between chipset and CPU. Consumer platforms simply don't offer enough CPU connected PCI Express lanes, and it is for that reason X399 (Threadripper) or X299 (Intel HEDT) platforms are essentially required. They support both the quantity of PCI Express lanes needed to achieve high transfer rates from multiple storage devices, and support the lane bifurcation necessary for four-way NVMe cards such as the Asus Hyper M.2 or ASRock's similar adapter.

 

There are a few ways to try and sneak around this limitation, such as utilizing PCI Express adapter cards to plug an M.2 drive into a CPU-connected expansion slot. The downside here is that it will kick your GPU down to x8 mode. At least one motherboard, Gigabyte's Z390 Designare, offers a mode switch to split the CPU-connected slots into an x8/x4/x4 configuration. Some boards may have a modified BIOS available that allows slot bifurcation, which would let you use a quad M.2 card in the top x16 PCI Express slot, but would necessitate plugging your GPU into a slow (x4) chipset connected expansion slot. These aren't ideal solutions, obviously, and are more of a side effect of specific boards that happen to support odd operating configurations.

[Kilrah]

Yep. Start from the beginning and state what your goals are with this since at this point it makes no sense. 

In any common use 128GB of RAM will just serve as leaving about 100 of them sitting unused, and storage bandwidth beyond single NVMe will just not be noticeable.

[Tufi]

I need to be able to open up a second google chrome tab.

Also need to play Oldschool runescape.

 

I'm actually not looking for a RAID configuration, so, the 3 NVMe's will do, I am a bit OCD, so I wanted to match my 4 RAM sticks with 4 SSDs for the pretties....but, I can sacrifice one for this build since these motherboards all seem to be from the 8th century.

[Kilrah]

OK, just trolling then.

[Tufi]

3 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

OK, just trolling then.

No, but a fair accusation. Most people think I'm trolling when I say this, but, I'm sick and tired of my current PC, I literally cannot do anything.

 

[LogicalDrm]

1 minute ago, Tufi said:

No, but a fair accusation. Most people think I'm trolling when I say this, but, I'm sick and tired of my current PC, I literally cannot do anything.

 

TLDR, you are infact trolling. You know enough about tech to make valid thread. Try again.