PCIE SSD to M.2 Slot?

[Daharen]

Three questions, one does the M.2 slot PCIE Bus go directly to the CPU, or is it a chipset PCIE Lane in most motherboards? 

Two, if the PCIE card that I am running pulls a maximum of 16.4W will it be able to get enough power from an M.2 slot if I were to connect it via a cable link?

Three, is there a reputable vendor that sells PCIE x4 to M.2 cables?

If anyone is wondering about the components being used, it's a Gigabyte Z390 Master and a Intel Optane 905P 960 GB SSD. To clarify, these are M Key PCIE 4x M.2 slots, that have dedicated lanes, I just don't know if by 'dedicated' they mean dedicated on the board, or direct to the CPU. 

 

Edited November 5, 2018 by Daharen
Clarification.

[Electronics Wizardy]

10 minutes ago, Daharen said:

one does the M.2 slot PCIE Bus go directly to the CPU, or is it a chipset PCIE Lane in most motherboards? 

Depends on the board. On your board it connects to the chipset

 

10 minutes ago, Daharen said:

Two, if the PCIE card that I am running pulls a maximum of 16.4W will it be able to get enough power from an M.2 slot if I were to connect it via a cable link?

What ssd are you getting? I don't think m.2 is rated for that power, but many m.2 to pcie adapters have a power plug

 

 

Why not just put the 905p into the bottom slot on the board?

[Mira Yurizaki]

• If it's an HEDT platform: it comes off the CPU normally
• If it's Ryzen, there's four dedicated lanes for NVMe
• If it's Intel, it comes off the PCH

[Daharen]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Why not just put the 905p into the bottom slot on the board?

 

2 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

• If it's an HEDT platform: it comes off the CPU normally
• If it's Ryzen, there's four dedicated lanes for NVMe
• If it's Intel, it comes off the PCH

Yeah with that, I'll just put it on the bottom slot of the board, really no point in fighting it. 

I was 'attempting' to get as many direct CPU lanes as possible for both my GPU and SSD, but I have been told many times on this forum that the difference is negligable, and I'm making a mountain at of a mole hill.

Still, it just 'bothers' me. Lol, went so far as to look up PCIE specifications, and discovered it is theoretically possible to split PCIE lanes into x12 and x4. However, I can't figure out how I would do that, if it would be hardware side and therefore prohibitive, or if it can be done in software by some sort of wizard. I would actually pay to have someone figure it out for me and make my top two slots run in x12 and x4, but again, I was told repeatedly that this is really unnecessary. 

As you can see, those 1% performance differences are really bothering me more than they should. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

5 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

If it's an HEDT platform: it comes off the CPU normally

This depends on x299 or x399.

 

Most x399 boards have all m.2 from the cpu

 

Most x299 boards have m.2 from the chipset as the lanes on the cpus varies and its the only way to use things like optane caching.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, Daharen said:

I was 'attempting' to get as many direct CPU lanes as possible for both my GPU and SSD, but I have been told many times on this forum that the difference is negligable, and I'm making a mountain at of a mole hill.

What are you doing with the optane drive?

 

Really the chipset is basically the same speed as running off teh cpu.

 

2 minutes ago, Daharen said:

Still, it just 'bothers' me. Lol, went so far as to look up PCIE specifications, and discovered it is theoretically possible to split PCIE lanes into x12 and x4. However, I can't figure out how I would do that, if it would be hardware side and therefore prohibitive, or if it can be done in software by some sort of wizard. I would actually pay to have someone figure it out for me and make my top two slots run in x12 and x4, but again, I was told repeatedly that this is really unnecessary. 

thing is intel doesn't support this.

[Daharen]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

This depends on x299 or x399.

 

Most x399 boards have all m.2 from the cpu

 

Most x299 boards have m.2 from the chipset as the lanes on the cpus varies and its the only way to use things like optane caching.

I probably should have just waited for the Skylake refresh CPU's to come out, and gone with an X399 rig instead of jumping on the i9-9900k and the Z390 boards.

[Daharen]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What are you doing with the optane drive?

 

Really the chipset is basically the same speed as running off teh cpu.

 

thing is intel doesn't support this.

I got to play around on a high end workstation which had optane drives. I'm an enthusiast, and while the difference is 'small' when you're already at the thresh-hold where seconds matter, small differences can be big. A few seconds here and there is noticeable to me. Arguably not a big deal, but something I'm willing to pay for. 

I don't render, or run analytics on my computer 'enough' to warrant the use of the drive, but I do once every 3 months or so, and it involves parsing massive 50+ GB datasets filled with tons of small files, so it can be particularly noticed there. It's not REALLY worth it for something I only do every few months, but it's a convenience, and I like having the best.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Daharen said:

I got to play around on a high end workstation which had optane drives. I'm an enthusiast, and while the difference is 'small' when you're already at the thresh-hold where seconds matter, small differences can be big. A few seconds here and there is noticeable to me. Arguably not a big deal, but something I'm willing to pay for. 

I don't render, or run analytics on my computer 'enough' to warrant the use of the drive, but I do once every 3 months or so, and it involves parsing massive 50+ GB datasets filled with tons of small files, so it can be particularly noticed there. It's not REALLY worth it for something I only do every few months, but it's a convenience, and I like having the best.

then run the 905 on the chipset lanes, it won't make a difference. It has morethan enough bandwidth for this, and the latency is basically the same, and thats what really matters here.