Setup bifurication. Motherboard support?

[ianm_ozzy]

Hello

I am using older 'gaming' hardware as a home server.

The motherboard is the MSI B450 tomahawk.

 

I want to use  pcie bifurication.

I want  a 4x pcie card  with 4 x nvme in there.

It will be in the slot  connected to the CPU.

 

I am unsure where the BIOS option to turn it on is.

Different manufacturers have different terms for things.

So I need to know how to turn it on.

If not supported, will look at other options.

 

Firstly this:

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/221360502781

Is anyone using one of these?

 

 

Maybe I need to buy with the cheapest AM4 motherboard that supports bifurication + my 3600X cpu.

 

So have the ebay item in the nvme slot, with a 12 port sata adapter in that (already owned)

The 16x pcie will have the  4x nvme adapter. It presently has the 12 port sata adapter.

 

The active 4x nvme cards are very expensive & possibly iommu compatibility problems.

 

 

Useful info appreciated.

 

Thanks

 

 

[Eigenvektor]

The motherboard's manual says nothing about PCIe bifurcation, so likely not supported

https://download.msi.com/archive/mnu_exe/mb/E7C02v1.4-GSE-LITE.pdf

[FlyingPotato_is_taken]

Asrock likely supports it.

[ianm_ozzy]

1 hour ago, Eigenvektor said:

The motherboard's manual says nothing about PCIe bifurcation, so likely not supported

https://download.msi.com/archive/mnu_exe/mb/E7C02v1.4-GSE-LITE.pdf

 

That certainly sucks.

No MSI motherboard for me then in the future.

I understand the also block ECC memory support.

 

[ianm_ozzy]

27 minutes ago, FlyingPotato_is_taken said:

Asrock likely supports it.

After  a quick, search, it seems they are well above what I wish to pay.

 

I wanted to get a cheap nvme x4 adapter and use  4 x cheap 16GB intel optane.

They are for truenas scale 'special devices'

It would have sped things up quite a bit, but  there is the cost & changing out the motherboard.

 

[Bersella AI]

You may not need PCIe bifurcation for such tiny Optanes, as they only take advantage of up to 2 PCIe lanes, and never run beyond 1GB/s. Since the B450 Tomahawk board has plenty of PCIe x1/x4 and M.2 slots, a workaround is to purchase a couple of PCIe x1 to M.2 riser cards to adapt these Optanes, leaving other x4/x16 slots for more bandwidth-hungry peripherals like faster NVMe SSDs, GPU or optical NICs.

[ianm_ozzy]

On 4/12/2024 at 5:13 PM, Bersella AI said:

You may not need PCIe bifurcation for such tiny Optanes, as they only take advantage of up to 2 PCIe lanes, and never run beyond 1GB/s. Since the B450 Tomahawk board has plenty of PCIe x1/x4 and M.2 slots, a workaround is to purchase a couple of PCIe x1 to M.2 riser cards to adapt these Optanes, leaving other x4/x16 slots for more bandwidth-hungry peripherals like faster NVMe SSDs, GPU or optical NICs.

Nearly all slots taken, so no.

I do need bifurication to work if I want 4 x nvme + 10Gb networking, gpu, & sata adapters.