Need help figuring out PCIE lanes and M.2

[NubCak]

Hi guys, 

I had a question about my setup, and potentially adding more drives.

I'm running a 3900x on an Asus X570 TUF mobo.

For PCIE devices, i currently have:
-5700 XT,

-1 Corsair MP600 PCIE gen 4 NVME

-1 Adata SX8200 Pro PCIE gen 3 NVME

I'm looking to ditch platter based hard drives in general, so i wanted to add more M.2 drives.

I came across the Asus Hyper M.2 which supposedly has four more M.2 slots, but i was reading that it would only allow me to plug in 2 more drives as my mobo does not support PCIE bifurcation.

The mobo has 1 more PCIE x16 slot which is linked to the chipset and several PCIE gen 4 1x slots. 

What would be the best way to add lets say 4 more M.2 NVMEs without impacting speed too much?

 

Thanks for any advice in advance.

[Electronics Wizardy]

5 minutes ago, NubCak said:

What would be the best way to add lets say 4 more M.2 NVMEs without impacting speed too much?

You not running 4 more on that board without a board with a plx chips. The hyper m.2 needs the full 16 lanes to work as it is using pcie bifurcation. That bottom slot is only a x4

 

How many mor drives do you want? Id get sata ssds, or fewer bigger drives. 

 

Id get a cheap pcie x4 to m.2 adapter for the bottom slow to add anouther drives.

[Chiyawa]

I don't think it is possible with X570 chipsets. The Ryzen has 20 usable PCIe lanes and the chipset has 16 (which many motherboard manufacturer only allows up to 8 for usage, as the rest are configured for audio, SATA controller and USB),

 

Unless you wants to sacrifice your x16 slot (where your graphic card sits) for a 4 M2 slots, you should get Threadripper and TRX motherboard (X399 or TRX40) instead, as they have more PCIe lanes which can handle more M2 SSD.

 

Anyway, do you really need that speed for file transferring? If not, like @Electronics Wizardy said, It is better to get SATA SSDs. You can RAID 0 the SSDs.

[NubCak]

17 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

You not running 4 more on that board without a board with a plx chips. The hyper m.2 needs the full 16 lanes to work as it is using pcie bifurcation. That bottom slot is only a x4

 

How many mor drives do you want? Id get sata ssds, or fewer bigger drives. 

 

Id get a cheap pcie x4 to m.2 adapter for the bottom slow to add anouther drives.

With the available PCIE GEN 4 1x slots, GEN 4 PCIE 1X slots are capable of theoretically 2gb/s which is still much faster than Sata 3 at 550ish mb/s 

Would i be better off running PCIE gen 4 1x to M.2 adapters?
 

[NewMaxx]

19 hours ago, NubCak said:

I came across the Asus Hyper M.2 which supposedly has four more M.2 slots, but i was reading that it would only allow me to plug in 2 more drives as my mobo does not support PCIE bifurcation.

I cover the Hyper extensively in a Reddit thread here. Be sure to read the linked Preview thread before diving into the Quick Look. Your motherboard can't support it and a discrete GPU simultaneously, or at least not effectively, but it can still support three NVMe devices with the two M.2 sockets and an adapter. Other drives would have to be over USB (enclosure) with the three 10 Gbps ports. Be aware there's limited bandwidth over the chipset (bottom M.2 + adapter + USB) of 64 Gbps.

[NubCak]

On 1/16/2020 at 12:57 PM, NewMaxx said:

I cover the Hyper extensively in a Reddit thread here. Be sure to read the linked Preview thread before diving into the Quick Look. Your motherboard can't support it and a discrete GPU simultaneously, or at least not effectively, but it can still support three NVMe devices with the two M.2 sockets and an adapter. Other drives would have to be over USB (enclosure) with the three 10 Gbps ports. Be aware there's limited bandwidth over the chipset (bottom M.2 + adapter + USB) of 64 Gbps.

Thanks so much, that was actually the thread i had read previously and found out about the bifurcation issues. 

With the knowledge that you have, would I be able to run multiple PCIE Gen 4 1x adapters? IE run 1 nvme drive per PCIE Gen 4 1x? Without impacting the GPU performance?

 

Sorry for all the questions, I still have a some lapses in understanding of the split. I understand that if i'm running multiple drives off the 4 lanes from the CPU to the chipset, that i would experience a slower performance than if the NVME drive is communicating with the CPU directly. But in this case, i'm only looking to achieve better performance than a typical sata drive because Sata SSDs are only a little cheaper than NVMEs.