Putting in a 4xm.2 adapter card; biforcation, PCIe slots and lanes, mobo support?

[Infernalz]

Helping a friend here and I am in the rabbit hole of trying to see if this will work.

 

Mobo:GA-970A-DS3P FX

CPU: AMD FX 6300 6 core

GPU: Radeon RX-560

RAM: 1x8GB (yes, single channel, I couldn't believe it either)

PSU: 750W

 

Looking to put in a ASUS Hyper M.2 X16 PCIe 3.0 X4 Expansion Card

Which exact m.2's we'd pick probably won't be the issue here but he wants like 2TB at least, this problem first though.

 

The story so far:

Friend thought he had an m.2 slot on his board. He does not. He thought he could just buy an m.2 and put it in a PCIe slot lengthwise and it would work. Now we know what tech level we're working with here. I narrowed it towards, and educated him as best I could on, a PCIe adapter for m.2 SSDs, given he wants like 2TB I'm on that ASUS 4xm.2 slot adapter.

 

Then the rabbit hole.

 

I'm trying to find if the mobo can even support this endeavor. The first 16x slot houses his GPU, the other says it runs at just 4x speeds. I've seen the 16x slot needs to be full speed to be biforcated down to 4x/4x/4x/4x, one each for each of the four m.2's we want to populate the adapter with. Being just a 4x speed slot I believe it will either flat out not work or only see the first m.2.

Then will the adapter work as intended? It should see each drive separately right? Unless done in RAID?

Can you add drives later like normal or do these things want it all populated at once for first partitioning?

 

I'm really trying to sort this out and not have him buy the adapter and some m.2's, slot it in the other 16x slot, and it not work as needed.

 

Help my Linus Tech Tips forums, you're my only hope.

[Radium_Angel]

23 minutes ago, Infernalz said:

Helping a friend here and I am in the rabbit hole of trying to see if this will work.

 

Mobo:GA-970A-DS3P FX

CPU: AMD FX 6300 6 core

GPU: Radeon RX-560

RAM: 1x8GB (yes, single channel, I couldn't believe it either)

PSU: 750W

 

Looking to put in a ASUS Hyper M.2 X16 PCIe 3.0 X4 Expansion Card

Which exact m.2's we'd pick probably won't be the issue here but he wants like 2TB at least, this problem first though.

 

The story so far:

Friend thought he had an m.2 slot on his board. He does not. He thought he could just buy an m.2 and put it in a PCIe slot lengthwise and it would work. Now we know what tech level we're working with here. I narrowed it towards, and educated him as best I could on, a PCIe adapter for m.2 SSDs, given he wants like 2TB I'm on that ASUS 4xm.2 slot adapter.

 

Then the rabbit hole.

 

I'm trying to find if the mobo can even support this endeavor. The first 16x slot houses his GPU, the other says it runs at just 4x speeds. I've seen the 16x slot needs to be full speed to be biforcated down to 4x/4x/4x/4x, one each for each of the four m.2's we want to populate the adapter with. Being just a 4x speed slot I believe it will either flat out not work or only see the first m.2.

Then will the adapter work as intended? It should see each drive separately right? Unless done in RAID?

Can you add drives later like normal or do these things want it all populated at once for first partitioning?

 

I'm really trying to sort this out and not have him buy the adapter and some m.2's, slot it in the other 16x slot, and it not work as needed.

 

Help my Linus Tech Tips forums, you're my only hope.

Board is *way* too old to support bifurication.

A single PCIe adapter with an m.2 nVME drive? No problem.

[porina]

Does he want 4x 2TB in that system, or 4x SSD totalling 2TB? Do they know why they want that? It feels like anything we do is going to cost more than that system is worth.

 

There are adapter cards with a chip on them that can get around lack of bifurcation support, but they're really expensive. At that point it'll probably be cheaper to change the system.

[Infernalz]

1 hour ago, Radium_Angel said:

Board is *way* too old to support bifurication.

A single PCIe adapter with an m.2 nVME drive? No problem.

Does it have to be just a 1xm.2 or can he still have the 4x and only populate it with one drive? Have it ready for any future builds. Though 1xm.2's are cheap enough to just get.

 

30 minutes ago, porina said:

Does he want 4x 2TB in that system, or 4x SSD totalling 2TB? Do they know why they want that? It feels like anything we do is going to cost more than that system is worth.

 

There are adapter cards with a chip on them that can get around lack of bifurcation support, but they're really expensive. At that point it'll probably be cheaper to change the system.

2TB total, which, yes, is going to be like $800 easy. He has a 1TB external that's almost full. I'm making sure he's only using these m.2s for important stuff, not what ever the hell he has that filled a TB. Researching this I heard that there are server grade stuff that can do it but come at server grade cost. He's not against upgrading what he needs if he needs it though.

[Radium_Angel]

1 hour ago, Infernalz said:

or can he still have the 4x and only populate it with one drive?

I cannot say for certain, but I'm willing to bet not, since the cards (the "affordable" ones anyway) seem to need the proper supported mobo to function. My guess is the computer won't see any of the m.2 cards, but don't quote me on that.

Given the age of that FX chip, you'd be much better off starting a new system, rather than trying to extend the life of that one. 

[porina]

1 hour ago, Infernalz said:

2TB total, which, yes, is going to be like $800 easy.

No, in that case just get a single 2TB SSD and be done with it. Even a SATA one if they can't give a solid reason why they need an NVMe one. Go back to why the upgrade is needed and work from there. Don't start with a silly upgrade option and trying to make it work.

[Infernalz]

6 hours ago, Radium_Angel said:

I cannot say for certain, but I'm willing to bet not, since the cards (the "affordable" ones anyway) seem to need the proper supported mobo to function. My guess is the computer won't see any of the m.2 cards, but don't quote me on that.

Given the age of that FX chip, you'd be much better off starting a new system, rather than trying to extend the life of that one. 

This ended up being about the final nail for this, his stuff is out dated too much to go through this headache.

6 hours ago, porina said:

No, in that case just get a single 2TB SSD and be done with it. Even a SATA one if they can't give a solid reason why they need an NVMe one. Go back to why the upgrade is needed and work from there. Don't start with a silly upgrade option and trying to make it work.

He finally put his logic into words, he wanted to have a big m.2 setup since it's the newest hotness and wanted it to future proof as much as possible. Top of the line now means it'll hold up longer than a SATA SSD which is a step or two back at this point. Based off that logic I'm pushing him towards some basic ~500GB SATA SSD to hold him over until he upgrades enough parts to get what he really wants as basically standard fare. At that point his m.2 array will cost less and not be this much of a headache to get together and working right.

 

Appreciate the help everyone!

[ewitte]

8 hours ago, Infernalz said:

Does it have to be just a 1xm.2 or can he still have the 4x and only populate it with one drive? Have it ready for any future builds. Though 1xm.2's are cheap enough to just get.

SATA seems to be stalled but m.2 nvme is dropping.  One of my 2 2TB drives was a 860 evo but I found out used I can sell it for more than the nvme drive cost new (not a lot)...

 

So I'm out of slots but 100% nvme now.  If I need more and 4TB drives are not priced good I'll probably do something like this

https://www.icydock.com/goods.php?id=309