SSD Expansion Compatibility Question

[Temlaa]

Hello Everyone,

 

I am planning to increase my storage capacity without throwing away old SSDs, as I have used up all the M.2 slots on the motherboard.

Therefore, I am look at the option of a SSD Expansion card.

 

Before I look at buying one, I would like to check if my current configuration is able to support the SSD Expansion card.

My Configuration:

Motherboard - ASUS Crosshair Viii Hero (Wifi) X570

GPU - ASUS TUF RTX3080

CPU - Ryzen 7 5800X

RAM - G.Skill Neo 32 GB RAM (8GB x4)

Storage used:

• 970 Evo Plus (500Gb) - (M.2_1)
• 970 Evo (500Gb) - (M.2_2)
• 850 Pro (512Gb) - (SATA)
• WD 4TB - (SATA)
• WD 1TB - (SATA)

The motherboard has 3 PCIE lanes and the GPU is using the top slot (16x_1), I am planning to put the SSD Expansion card at the lowest slot (16x_3) as the 2nd slot would block the airflow of the GPU.

Is anyone able to help verify if I could add an SSD Expansion card at 16x_3 slot, and how many SSD (Gen 3) would I be able to add?

 

Thank you very much for the help!

 

 

Budget (including currency): $500

Country: Singapore

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Games 

 

[SupaKomputa]

You can get a pciex4 nvme adapter. Should be enough.

Of x8 for 2x m2 drive at the same time.

The GPU should always on the top slot, you can fill the next empty one.

[will0hlep]

Note: Using PCIe x16_2 or PCIe x16_3 will reduce the bandwidth of PCIe x16_1, luckily this shouldn't affect the performance of your GPU, PCIe 4.0 x8 should be enough.

 

The PCIe x16_2 slot runs at x8 and could take 2 NMVe drives, while the PCIe x16_3 slot runs at x4 (using this slot counts as triple PCIe mode even if PCIe x16_2 is vacant) and can only take 1 NVMe drive with a standard PCIe to NVMe add in card (you could buy a very expensive PCIe card with PCIe switching capabilities, but that would be a waste of money).

 

All that said: My advice would be to just buy a larger M.2 drive to replace the 970 Evo. It will be cheaper (cause you won't need a PCIe card) and mean less points of failure in your machine. You can always get a USB m.2 dock to help you clone the old drive.

 

[mariushm]

The top two pci-e x16 slots are using pci-e lanes  from the CPU ...  first slot gets 16 pci-e lanes if the second slot is empty,  or both slots get 8 pci-e lanes each. 

 

So if you plug a card (anything) in that second pci-e x16 slot, the first slot is automatically downgraded to 8 pci-e lanes and the second slot gets 8 pci-e lanes, so in theory, IF the motherboard supports bifurcation, you would be able to plug  a SSD Expansion card for 2 nvme SSDs. 

 

The third pci-e x16 slot receives only 4 pci-e lanes from the chipset, so you could plug a M.2 to pci-e adapter card, but only one m.2 SSD would work on that card, and would get all those 4 pci-e lanes. 

 

(edited ... not 3 m.2 connectors, only 2, advice is still valid) The motherboard has   3    2 M.2 connectors, two pci-e 4.0 x4 , the second m.2 gets pci-e lanes from chipset .... instead of buying a SSD expansion card you would probably be better off buying a 2 TB m.2 SSD to replace all 3 SSDs you currently have - put those 3 on ebay for half the price and sell them fast, use the money to buy more SSDs that you can put in those 2 m.2 connectors you now have available.

 

edit:   You can spend less than 10$ on an adapter card  to plug in that bottom pci-e x16 slot (only x4 electrically) : https://www.ebay.com/itm/144858415012

 

The above adapter has 2 m.2 slots, one for a nvme SSD that will use the pci-e lanes in the slot, and one SATA m.2 (you use a regular SATA cable to connect to a standard SATA connector on motherboard). 

So with such adapter board, you could move the 850 Pro SSD to the adapter board and use a SATA cable to connect it to motherboard, and you free the M.2 connector for a nvme SSD.   Could also move one of the other nvme SSDs (the one that's not having the OS) onto the adapter board, and now you have two pci-e 4.0 M.2 connectors on motherboard for bigger drives. 

 

[will0hlep]

9 minutes ago, mariushm said:

The motherboard has 3 M.2 connectors, two pci-e 4.0 x4 , one pci-e 3.0 x4 ...

Actually, it only has 2 (see the manual) (with the first having different speeds depending on the installed CPU)

 

The specs page on the website is borked as you can see from the explansion slots section and the incorrectly placed "3rd Gen AMD Ryzen™ Processors :", "2nd Gen AMD Ryzen™/2nd and 1st Gen AMD Ryzen™ with Radeon™ Vega Graphics Processors  :", and "AMD X570 chipset :" lines.

 

[mariushm]

Yeah, thanks, I've edited previous comment to correct it.  I was looking at the same text on the site, the manual indeed shows only two.

[SupaKomputa]

31 minutes ago, will0hlep said:

Note: Using PCIe x16_2 or PCIe x16_3 will reduce the bandwidth of PCIe x16_1, luckily this shouldn't affect the performance of your GPU, PCIe 4.0 x8 should be enough.

 

The PCIe x16_2 slot runs at x8 and could take 2 NMVe drives, while the PCIe x16_3 slot runs at x4 (using this slot counts as triple PCIe mode even if PCIe x16_2 is vacant) and can only take 1 NVMe drive with a standard PCIe to NVMe add in card (you could buy a very expensive PCIe card with PCIe switching capabilities, but that would be a waste of money).

 

All that said: My advice would be to just buy a larger M.2 drive to replace the 970 Evo. It will be cheaper (cause you won't need a PCIe card) and mean less points of failure in your machine. You can always get a USB m.2 dock to help you clone the old drive.

 

RTX3080 is a gen 3 cards, at pcie 4.0 x 8 it should be the same speed as gen 3.0x16 nothing to worry about pcie splitting.

[will0hlep]

22 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

RTX3080 is a gen 3 cards, at pcie 4.0 x 8 it should be the same speed as gen 3.0x16 nothing to worry about pcie splitting.

1) I believe, the RTX3080 is a gen 4 card, see the description on this video: (it may not saturate the connection, but it does run at PCIe gen 4 speeds)

 

2) That isn't how that works (afaik). You get the lower PCIe gen (as a PCIe 3 device can't understand a PCIe gen 4 signal) and the lowest number of PCIe lanes (as the excess lanes won't be connected to anything). So, If you put a PCIe x16 gen 3 card in a PCIe x8 gen 4 slot, you only get PCIe x8 gen 3 speeds. (this dosn't matter though cause the card and board are gen 4, so it will only drop to gen 4 x8)

It will be fine either way, cause a 3080 dosn't saturate a PCIe gen 4 X8 connection.

[Temlaa]

Thank you guys for all the input!

It seems my only option to not degrade my GPU is to change my M.2 SSDs  or go for more SATA storage.

 

Shall heed your advices and look for some good deals this weekend.

[will0hlep]

1 minute ago, Temlaa said:

Thank you guys for all the input!

It seems my only option to not degrade my GPU is to change my M.2 SSDs  or go for more SATA storage.

 

Shall heed your advices and look for some good deals this weekend.

it's not really about the GPU. That won't behave any differently. It's more about doing it cheaper and having less change of a drive failing in your machine.

[SupaKomputa]

26 minutes ago, will0hlep said:

it may not saturate the connection, but it does run at PCIe gen 4 speeds

Every PCIe GPU can run in any generation PCIe, it doesn't matter, what matter is how much the GPU can utilize the bandwidth.

Every car can run on a 200mph highway, can it reach 200mph?

 

48 minutes ago, will0hlep said:

That isn't how that works (afaik). You get the lower PCIe gen (as a PCIe 3 device can't understand a PCIe gen 4 signal) and the lowest number of PCIe lanes (as the excess lanes won't be connected to anything). So, If you put a PCIe x16 gen 3 card in a PCIe x8 gen 4 slot, you only get PCIe x8 gen 3 speeds. (this dosn't matter though cause the card and board are gen 4, so it will only drop to gen 4 x8)

most x16 gpu can work in x8, it is physically limited by the slots, what determines the bandwidth is the CPU or Chipset.
It doesn't need to know which pcie version it is put on, as PCIe devices are version agnostic.
there is a slight increase when using version 4.0, 1% at most.

[will0hlep]

1 hour ago, SupaKomputa said:

Every PCIe GPU can run in any generation PCIe, it doesn't matter

Isn't it: the PCIe gen speeds the card can reach are limited by the PCIe gen of the card. A PCIe gen 3 card, can't reach gen 4 or 5 speeds. It will work in the slot, but I believe it will be limited by the PCI generation it was designed for.

 

1 hour ago, SupaKomputa said:

what matter is how much the GPU can utilize the bandwidth.

Every car can run on a 200mph highway, can it reach 200mph?

most x16 gpu can work in x8, it is physically limited by the slots, what determines the bandwidth is the CPU or Chipset.

there is a slight increase when using version 4.0, 1% at most.

I have no disagreement with this, there is little to no performance change and I never said there would be.

 

What I'm saying is that this statement you made:

2 hours ago, SupaKomputa said:

RTX3080 is a gen 3 cards, at pcie 4.0 x 8 it should be the same speed as gen 3.0x16 nothing to worry about pcie splitting.

is wrong on two counts (afaik).

1) The RTX3080 is a gen 4 card, not a gen 3 card. It will work in a Gen 3 slot just fine, but it is a gen 4 card.

2) A PCIe gen3 x16 card plugged into a PCIe gen4 x8 slot, will not recieve full bandwidth. The motherboard would automatically switch the slot to gen 3 signaling to accomadate the gen 3 card. Therfore the card would only get gen3 x8 bandwidth (not gen4 x8 or gen3 x16 bandwidth). (again, won't effect perfomance) (also dosn't apply to the 3080 in this situation as it is a gen 4 card and will get gen4x8 bandwith here)

[SupaKomputa]

41 minutes ago, will0hlep said:

the PCIe gen speeds the card can reach are limited by the PCIe gen of the card. A PCIe gen 3 card, can't reach gen 4 or 5 speeds. It will work in the slot, but I believe it will be limited by the PCI generation it was designed for.

Yeah, in theory your right. But in practice, your statement proved that the 3080 is still a gen3 card since using gen4 has little to no benefit. Check 4090 for a true gen4.

 

1 hour ago, will0hlep said:

3080 in this situation as it is a gen 4 card and will get gen4x8 bandwith here

precisely... 

[will0hlep]

1 hour ago, SupaKomputa said:

Yeah, in theory your right. But in practice, your statement proved that the 3080 is still a gen3 card since using gen4 has little to no benefit. Check 4090 for a true gen4.

The PCIe gen of the card is about the PCIe gen signals it supports, not how much bandwidth it uses.

 

Also the 4090 experiances almost no change on PCIe gen 4 vs gen 3 as well

 

Once again, all I'm saying is that you are wrong to say:

4 hours ago, SupaKomputa said:

RTX3080 is a gen 3 cards, at pcie 4.0 x 8 it should be the same speed as gen 3.0x16

If you'd written "The RTX3080 will perform almost exactly the same on PCIe gen 3 x16 as it will on PCIe gen 4 x16" that would be fine. But you didn't write that, and have instead wrongly stated the PCIe generations the card supports and wrongly stating that a gen 3.0x16 card in a pcie 4.0 x 8 slot will recieve full bandwidth.

 

I know it is nit-picking and unimportant to the current situtation, but we should try not to leave false information on here for someone else to find.