question ASRock Z790 PCIe Bifurcation

[PhazzeeYeehaw]

I'm looking into buying the Z790 PG Lightning/D4 and was wondering if the PCIe 4.0 x16 slot supports PCIe Bifurcation as this is the deciding factor. I'll be pairing the board with 13600KF (will swap if it provides better support). The PCIe slot would be running a PCIe to M.2 card with four M.2 drives. Thanks for any answers!

[Shimejii]

5 minutes ago, PhazzeeYeehaw said:

I'm looking into buying the Z790 PG Lightning/D4 and was wondering if the PCIe 4.0 x16 slot supports PCIe Bifurcation as this is the deciding factor. I'll be pairing the board with 13600KF (will swap if it provides better support). The PCIe slot would be running a PCIe to M.2 card with four M.2 drives. Thanks for any answers!

Do you actually have a use case where using that m.2 Card is actually going to matter? Generally you can put your GPU into PCIE 4.0 8x mode and try that. But do you really have a use case in which the 3-4 m.2 drives on the Motherboard arent enough? Especially with a 13600KF, what exactly do you need that many NVMEs for

[PhazzeeYeehaw]

3 hours ago, Shimejii said:

Do you actually have a use case where using that m.2 Card is actually going to matter? Generally you can put your GPU into PCIE 4.0 8x mode and try that. But do you really have a use case in which the 3-4 m.2 drives on the Motherboard arent enough? Especially with a 13600KF, what exactly do you need that many NVMEs for

I’m already running two on my current system but got a great deal ($90) on the PCIe card and 4 2tb M.2’s. It would mostly be used as a university project archive as I tend to need to pull data from it regularly, I would also put a lot of my steam library on it too. Also wildly cheaper and probably quieter than an 8tb Sata SSD or HDD. 

 

For the PCIe Bifurcation it’d be running the PCIe 4.0 slot in 4x4x4x4. 

 

Edit: if it can’t do it i’d take the two best performing drives and sell the card and other drives.

Edited June 11, 2023 by PhazzeeYeehaw

[Shimejii]

1 hour ago, PhazzeeYeehaw said:

I’m already running two on my current system but got a great deal ($90) on the PCIe card and 4 2tb M.2’s. It would mostly be used as a university project archive as I tend to need to pull data from it regularly, I would also put a lot of my steam library on it too. Also wildly cheaper and probably quieter than an 8tb Sata SSD or HDD. 

 

For the PCIe Bifurcation it’d be running the PCIe 4.0 slot in 4x4x4x4. 

 

Edit: if it can’t do it i’d take the two best performing drives and sell the card and other drives.

Sata SSDS are Silent what do you mean? HDD sure.

 

I dont think you will use more then 6 TB of SSD space thats on your board with the 3 slots

[PhazzeeYeehaw]

8 hours ago, Shimejii said:

Sata SSDS are Silent what do you mean? HDD sure.

 

I dont think you will use more then 6 TB of SSD space thats on your board with the 3 slots

I appreciate your input on this but I was originally asking if the ASRock Z790 PG Lightning/D4 supported PCIe bifurcation in the gen 4 slot

[r00tb33r]

I did not see it in the BIOS manual, meaning if the options aren't there you wouldn't be able to set it.  This strongly implies that the board does not support it.

 

In fact none of the z790 boards I looked at appear to support it.

 

My z590 board supports up to x8+x4+x4, meaning at most 3 NVMes in that slot.  That's about the picture that ASUS paints in their 4 NVMe breakout board documentation, few consumer boards with bifurcation support will let you use all 4 in there.

[PhazzeeYeehaw]

1 hour ago, r00tb33r said:

I did not see it in the BIOS manual, meaning if the options aren't there you wouldn't be able to set it.  This strongly implies that the board does not support it.

 

In fact none of the z790 boards I looked at appear to support it.

 

My z590 board supports up to x8+x4+x4, meaning at most 3 NVMes in that slot.  That's about the picture that ASUS paints in their 4 NVMe breakout board documentation, few consumer boards with bifurcation support will let you use all 4 in there.

That sucks, looks like the best way to get 4x4x4x4 bifurcation is with a X99 + Xeon combo sadly 

[Blue4130]

2 hours ago, PhazzeeYeehaw said:

That sucks, looks like the best way to get 4x4x4x4 bifurcation is with a X99 + Xeon combo sadly 

I wouldn't call it "best". Cheapest maybe...

[r00tb33r]

Seems like there's more luck with x299 boards compared to z790 but I never researched that part of the market.

[PhazzeeYeehaw]

3 hours ago, r00tb33r said:

Seems like there's more luck with x299 boards compared to z790 but I never researched that part of the market.

I’d love to jump to X299 as a platform but the buy in is way to high to even be a consideration. Apparently 10th gen X99 LGA 2066 CPU’s will do 4x4x4x4 bifurcation if they have 48 lanes.

 

Thanks all for your knowledge but it seems the best option for me is a small Sata SSD array. 

[Blue4130]

6 minutes ago, PhazzeeYeehaw said:

I’d love to jump to X299 as a platform but the buy in is way to high to even be a consideration. Apparently 10th gen X99 LGA 2066 CPU’s will do 4x4x4x4 bifurcation if they have 48 lanes.

 

Thanks all for your knowledge but it seems the best option for me is a small Sata SSD array. 

Or just use a nas/das. Why do you need so much in the workstation?

[PhazzeeYeehaw]

1 hour ago, Blue4130 said:

Or just use a nas/das. Why do you need so much in the workstation?

already got on “off-workstation” backup, i’ve been needing to pull/use large files (80-300gb) way more than anticipated so having a reasonable speed and cost solution makes sense 

 

Edit: Should clarify I need these files on a workstation to put into active projects that my network/backup wouldn’t be fast enough for

[jd680]

The ROG Strix boards use PCIe Bifurcation I'm close to positive.