ASROCK X570 NVMe and SATA 3 port question

[swamibob]

I am thinking about either getting the Asrock x570 pro 4 or phantom gaming 4 and coupling it with a 3900x. I have a question about NVMe and how it affects the SATA ports on the Asrock boards. These boards have 8 SATA3, 1 Hyper M.2 (PCIe Gen4 x4 & SATA3), 1 Hyper M.2 (PCIe Gen4 x4) and was wondering if using one of these takes up 2 of the SATA3 ports like a lot of older boards would do? I tried to find the information in the users manual but couldn't find where it specifically said what happens if you use the NVMe m.2 slot.

Thanks,
Rob

 

[sirmonkey1985]

asrocks layout is different from most of the others when the board has 3 m.2 slots where most boards disable 2 of the sata ports, asrock disables the 3rd pcie slot. in the case of the two boards you're looking at both only have 2 m.2 slots and thus nothing is disabled since asrock is only using a 4x pcie 4.0 slot from the chipset for the second pcie slot which allows them to run 2x pcie 4.0 m.2 + 8 sata ports. asrock seems to be the only ones going with this configuration option.

 

[swamibob]

in the case of the two boards you're looking at both only have 2 m.2 slots and thus nothing is disabled since asrock is only using a 4x pcie 4.0 slot from the chipset for the second pcie slot which allows them to run 2x pcie 4.0 m.2 + 8 sata ports. asrock seems to be the only ones going with this configuration option.

Thank you sirmonkey!! Well that sounds like an awesome configuration decision since most people won't use more than 1 PCI-e slot anyway.

So you are saying I can run 2 m.2 NVMe cards and all 8 SATA3 ports and not lose anything, not even pci-e slots since they are not running as many slots as most? I plan to run only 1 gpu but may want to add 2 so i can run 2 vm's.

I think this will be an awesome configuration for Unraid like I plan to do on this board and won't have to waste an SATA3 port on a standard SSD drive for my cache drive.

 

[sirmonkey1985]

Thank you sirmonkey!! Well that sounds like an awesome configuration decision since most people won't use more than 1 PCI-e slot anyway.

So you are saying I can run 2 m.2 NVMe cards and all 8 SATA3 ports and not lose anything, not even pci-e slots since they are not running as many slots as most? I plan to run only 1 gpu but may want to add 2 so i can run 2 vm's.

I think this will be an awesome configuration for Unraid like I plan to do on this board and won't have to waste an SATA3 port on a standard SSD drive for my cache drive.

based on all the information i was able to find including their manual yes. the one big thing i can recommend with asrock though is that if you find a bios that works for you and gives you all the features you need stick with it, don't keep updating to new bios because asrock has a history of finding a way to screw them up over time.

 

[swamibob]

Thank you for the words of wisdom on Asrock and doing the research on this.
Another guy on the unraid forum told me he was running an NVMe and all 8 SATA ports but I wanted to make sure that this sounded right since I had a couple of boards before where it did use up SATA ports if you ran even 1 NVMe. This puts my mind as ease. Now I just have to wait on the 3900x to come back into stock and if it takes too long I may just grab the 3950x instead

 

[CMDR1337]

Thank you sirmonkey!! Well that sounds like an awesome configuration decision since most people won't use more than 1 PCI-e slot anyway.

So you are saying I can run 2 m.2 NVMe cards and all 8 SATA3 ports and not lose anything, not even pci-e slots since they are not running as many slots as most? I plan to run only 1 gpu but may want to add 2 so i can run 2 vm's.

I think this will be an awesome configuration for Unraid like I plan to do on this board and won't have to waste an SATA3 port on a standard SSD drive for my cache drive.

i plan on doing something similar. but i dont thing you woud need 2 gpus to run more than 1 vm? did i misunderstand something?

 

[Ready4Dis]

I'm becoming more of a fan of ASRock lately... And there x570 prices are very reasonable. My last build was a 6500k with ASRock board, some issues at release (early adopter), updated bios when a new one came out and Rock solid since.

 

[swamibob]

i plan on doing something similar. but i dont thing you woud need 2 gpus to run more than 1 vm? did i misunderstand something?

The deal is if you want to run games on a VM you need to passthrough the video card to the vm. If you want to run 2 vm's at once and game on them you need 2 video cards. You can run as many vm's as you want 1 at a time, but to do something like replace 2 computers with 1 and run 2 virtual machines on 2 different monitors at the same time, that is when you need more gpus.