PCIe SSD adapter

[Darki]

Hi

I have bought at new M.2 ssd (Samsung 990 PRO 2tb) to upgrade my old pc. Its a PCIe 4.0 SSD however my motherboard, which is (GA-Z97X-UD5H-BK (rev. 1.0)), only have a PCIe 3.0 which half´s the speed I know. But now im considering buy another one.

If I want another m.2 ssd I need to buy a expansion card for PCIe. Im considering the "RaidSonic ICY BOX IB-PCI208-HS". This is a PCIe 4.0.

So my question is: Does it work with my old motherboard? If so, will it they be fast both of them if I find a PCIe 4.0 adapter with 2 slots and not use the one on the motherboard?

Thanks for the help

[Needfuldoer]

PCIe is forwards and backwards compatible. Don't worry about mixing generations and lane count, the computer will figure it out.

 

7 minutes ago, Darki said:

So my question is: Does it work with my old motherboard? If so, will it they be fast both of them if I find a PCIe 4.0 adapter with 2 slots and not use the one on the motherboard?

Whether this will work depends on whether your motherboard and processor support PCIe bifurcation. If they don't, you need an adapter with its own switch chip instead of just a regular passive one.

 

[Dedayog]

31 minutes ago, Darki said:

Hi

I have bought at new M.2 ssd (Samsung 990 PRO 2tb) to upgrade my old pc. Its a PCIe 4.0 SSD however my motherboard, which is (GA-Z97X-UD5H-BK (rev. 1.0)), only have a PCIe 3.0 which half´s the speed I know. But now im considering buy another one.

If I want another m.2 ssd I need to buy a expansion card for PCIe. Im considering the "RaidSonic ICY BOX IB-PCI208-HS". This is a PCIe 4.0.

So my question is: Does it work with my old motherboard? If so, will it they be fast both of them if I find a PCIe 4.0 adapter with 2 slots and not use the one on the motherboard?

Thanks for the help

Do you need a Pro drive? There are much cheaper drives that will perform the exact same for 99% of needs.   Especially since you're not on a modern system.

[Darki]

11 minutes ago, Dedayog said:

Do you need a Pro drive? There are much cheaper drives that will perform the exact same for 99% of needs.   Especially since you're not on a modern system.

Not at all  Bought it uss cheap. The next one will not be a Pro drive 

[Darki]

35 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

PCIe is forwards and backwards compatible. Don't worry about mixing generations and lane count, the computer will figure it out.

 

Whether this will work depends on whether your motherboard and processor support PCIe bifurcation. If they don't, you need an adapter with its own switch chip instead of just a regular passive one.

 

Can you help me figure it out? I have a I7-4790k CPU

[OddOod]

2 minutes ago, Darki said:

Can you help me figure it out? I have a I7-4790k CPU

what mobo do you have?
Also, wow, that's a creaky chip. GG on keeping it going!

[Darki]

22 minutes ago, OddOod said:

what mobo do you have?
Also, wow, that's a creaky chip. GG on keeping it going!

A Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD5H-BK (rev. 1.0)

Ahahah, thanks! 11 years old by now

[mariushm]

Your board has 

 

• 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x16 (PCIEX16)
  * For optimum performance, if only one PCI Express graphics card is to be installed, be sure to install it in the PCIEX16 slot.
  
• 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x8 (PCIEX8)
  * The PCIEX8 slot shares bandwidth with the PCIEX16 slot. When the PCIEX8 slot is populated, the PCIEX16 slot will operate at up to x8 mode.
  
• 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x4 (PCIEX4)

 

If you put a M.2 in the second pci-e x16 slot, it will lower the video card's bandwidth to only 8 pci-e lanes. 

 

In the third slot, you only have 4 pci-e lanes, so you can only plug an adapter with ONE M.2 nvme connector. 

 

The cheap adapter cards that have multiple M.2 NVME connectors  rely on a feature of the motherboard called bifurcation, where the motherboard splits the number of pci-e lanes into groups of 4 pci-e lanes.  So if you were to buy a pci-e card that supports 4 M.2 nvme SSDs, and the motherboard supports bifurcation, only two SSDs would work if you put such card in the second slot (because the motherboard only allocates 8 pci-e lanes to that slot),  and if you plug in third slot only the first SSD would work because the slot only has 4 pci-e lanes (even though it's x16 wide). 

 

It's unlikely that the second slot will support bifurcation, so you wouldn't be able to put two M.2 drives onto an adapter card with 8 or more pci-e lanes. 

 

With that processor and RAM , it's unlikely you'll actually achieve speeds higher than what your pci-e slots supports... you're not gonna need to read or write at speeds faster than 3.5 GB/s 

 

 

[PDifolco]

2 hours ago, Darki said:

Hi

I have bought at new M.2 ssd (Samsung 990 PRO 2tb) to upgrade my old pc. Its a PCIe 4.0 SSD however my motherboard, which is (GA-Z97X-UD5H-BK (rev. 1.0)), only have a PCIe 3.0 which half´s the speed I know. But now im considering buy another one.

If I want another m.2 ssd I need to buy a expansion card for PCIe. Im considering the "RaidSonic ICY BOX IB-PCI208-HS". This is a PCIe 4.0.

So my question is: Does it work with my old motherboard? If so, will it they be fast both of them if I find a PCIe 4.0 adapter with 2 slots and not use the one on the motherboard?

Thanks for the help

Pcie gen don't matter it'll work, but in which PCIe slot do you want to plug it ?

You need at least 4 real Pcie lanes , some boards have one in the bottom but on others you need to use the 2nd long "x16"slot and then need to setup Pcie bifurcation in BIOS, plus your GPU will have less bandwidth

[Darki]

3 hours ago, mariushm said:

Your board has 

 

• 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x16 (PCIEX16)
  * For optimum performance, if only one PCI Express graphics card is to be installed, be sure to install it in the PCIEX16 slot.
• 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x8 (PCIEX8)
  * The PCIEX8 slot shares bandwidth with the PCIEX16 slot. When the PCIEX8 slot is populated, the PCIEX16 slot will operate at up to x8 mode.
• 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x4 (PCIEX4)

 

If you put a M.2 in the second pci-e x16 slot, it will lower the video card's bandwidth to only 8 pci-e lanes. 

 

In the third slot, you only have 4 pci-e lanes, so you can only plug an adapter with ONE M.2 nvme connector. 

 

The cheap adapter cards that have multiple M.2 NVME connectors  rely on a feature of the motherboard called bifurcation, where the motherboard splits the number of pci-e lanes into groups of 4 pci-e lanes.  So if you were to buy a pci-e card that supports 4 M.2 nvme SSDs, and the motherboard supports bifurcation, only two SSDs would work if you put such card in the second slot (because the motherboard only allocates 8 pci-e lanes to that slot),  and if you plug in third slot only the first SSD would work because the slot only has 4 pci-e lanes (even though it's x16 wide). 

 

It's unlikely that the second slot will support bifurcation, so you wouldn't be able to put two M.2 drives onto an adapter card with 8 or more pci-e lanes. 

 

With that processor and RAM , it's unlikely you'll actually achieve speeds higher than what your pci-e slots supports... you're not gonna need to read or write at speeds faster than 3.5 GB/s 

 

 

Thank you so much for the absolutely great explanation!
So the best option for me is to keep one of the m.2 in the slot on the motherboard and buy a PCIEx4 ssd adapter card at put the secoud one in the last PCi express slot running x4. Correct?

Also, the one I sent. Is it good enough? Never heard of "RaidSonic"  but its cheap
https://www.proshop.dk/Harddisk-tilbehoer/RaidSonic-ICY-BOX-IB-PCI208-HS/2979058

Thank you all for helping me.

[PDifolco]

4 minutes ago, Darki said:

Thank you so much for the absolutely great explanation!
So the best option for me is to keep one of the m.2 in the slot on the motherboard and buy a PCIEx4 ssd adapter card at put the secoud one in the last PECi express slot running x4. Correct?

Also, the one I sent. Is it good enough? Never heard of "RaidSonic"  but its cheap
https://www.proshop.dk/Harddisk-tilbehoer/RaidSonic-ICY-BOX-IB-PCI208-HS/2979058

Thank you all for helping me.

I use this one, super nice and cool, no Pcie bracket, not that expensive

Can hotswap it easily !

 

 

[kokosnh]

1. 1 złącze PCI Express x16, x16 (PCIEX16) 
    
2. 1 x PCI Express x16, x8 (PCIEX8) 
    
3. 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x4 (PCIEX4) * The PCIEX4 slot shares bandwidth with the PCIEX8 and PCIEX16 slots. When the PCIEX4 slot is populated, the PCIEX16 slot will operate at up to x8 mode and the PCIEX8 will operate at up to x4 mode. * When installing a x8 or above card in the PCIEX4 slot, make sure to set PCIE Slot Configuration in BIOS Setup to x4. (Refer to Chapter 2, "BIOS Setup," "Peripherals," for more information.) (The PCIEX16, PCIEX8 and PCIEX4 slots conform to PCI Express 3.0 standard.)
    

 

The 1.0 version has all PCIe x16 slots connected to CPU.

Using PCIEX8 or PCIEX4 will drop the PCIEX16 speed to PCIe 3.0 x8 

so it doesn’t matter if you put the pcie adapter in PCIEX8 or PCIEX4, as the result will be the same. 
 

i would argue it’s even worth considering buying 2 x pcie x4 adapters, and running both of your Ssd in the pcie -> m.2 adapters ( I assume your old m.2 Ssd is also nvme) as that way they will have full pcie 3.0 x4 speed ( your m.2 slot is only pcie 2.0 x2 )

 

 

 

 

 

 

6 hours ago, Darki said:

If so, will it they be fast both of them if I find a PCIe 4.0 adapter with 2 slots and not use the one on the motherboard?

it is actually possible to get pcie 4.0 speeds on this mobo, the problem is the device that you would need for it (active pcie x8 or x16 4.0 switch card with couple PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots) cost couple time the price of your whole PC.  
 

I have done something similar in my old sandy bridge mobo, but it was pcie 3.0 ssd speeds on pcie 2.0 cpu, so the parts cost wasn't as bad.