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Had success modding bios entries and bifurcating the last pci-e #5 slot on my motherboard by changing a few values in nvram. Only thing is I wish I could split down equally the channels to the M.2 onboard equally much like when you have two gpu's in slot 1 + 2 both know to operate at 4X. Unfortunately the way it is now if I enable both to PCI-E operation one shuts down. They must have a switch. So only way to get two NVME drives going is to use a two slot adapter and occupy the second slot with a pci-e m.2 adapter and forget about the onboard m.2 connector.
They must have a switch
I wonder if the M.2 shares its lanes with the first 4 or last 4 lanes of PCIe Slot #5. Do you know?
If it is the last 4 lanes it could work. If it is the first 4 you are out of luck in any way without a special riser. (This is probably the case, otherwise it would make no sense at all for MSI not to enable them both.) It would also explain the behaviour you were explaining.
Is your Slot NVME drive low profile? I could imagine a very simple riser putting the bottom 4 lanes top. I will probably send some new custom risers to fabrication in the near future so I could make one for you.
All in all very impressive work.
Awesome work. Please let the forum know the exact steps neccesarry. This may well be very helpful to enable bifurcation on "non bifuraction ITX Mainboards"
Seems really groundbreaking,
I'm pretty sure its the last or second bus path that both m.2 and pci-e device share as indicated in the last image I posted.
This of course is not permanent and a cmos reset will probably wipe this but its good for testing purposes before you flash your modded bios file you made earlier.
Which picture? If that is really the case bifurcation should be visible in HWinfo when using the m.2 slot, even without your modification.
So I take it it should be sufficient to modify the BIOS in amibcp and then load defaults?
I've been using bifurcation for ~2 years now on my main PC, and trifurcation on a test PC, gotta say it's definitely the future.
Making a case for it, would love feedback from everyone in this thread: https://hardforum.com/threads/the-g-a4-layout-with-water-cooling-and-bifurcated-riser-15l.1948544/
Also planning a small version ~8L similar to DAN A4 with bifurcation.
What model of Riser card is that??? Got in contact with Ameri-Rack. They recommend the ARC1-PERY423-C20. Is that it??
That one wont do you no good as it bifurcates x16 into two x8.
I suggest you try that Fujitsu M.2Carrier Board D3352 with two m.2 slots I posted earlier.
If you wish I could design a custom riser for you, but it would be a waste if it wasnt working.
I will probably send out a new batch of risers soon so it would be OK price wise. Havent done M.2 so far however.
That one looks promising.Supermicro RSC-R2UU-2E4R 2U Right Slot 2x PCI-Express x4 + UIO Riser Card
That one looks promising.
As I said earlier I meant to add M.2 to my custom riser portfolio.
I took your efforts as motivation and this is what I came up with:
Sitting on the top will be the pcie slot for a low profile card.
I will send this to fab with some other order and see how it goes. I made quite a few experiments with this one (Lane Reversal, Lane Inversion, clock inversion, new M.2 Slot footprint, new card edge female connector footprint)
I will experiment and let you know. If they work I would gladly offer one to you.
Chris
Edit: Only one issue I can see causing a problem. That is the placement of the M.2 on the primary bus. I mean you want the drive that boots the OS on the first pci-e bus such that if theres a problem with the mod you don't lose your ability to boot into the OS. Unfortunately I have no idea which one that is. I would presume its the first quarter of the 16X physical slot.
So C_Payne another idea for a pci-e adapter or even better a cable that repositions the last four lanes up first. Or a combination of dual M.2's for high speed raid or what you designed before which was pretty cool!
That was my first idea of a "very simple riser" I was talking about. However its use would be only to some specific mobos and also I wanted to test my m.2 footprint.
It would be much cheaper though... maybe I will do it too.
Chris If your building a few of those can I make a donation for one?
Just a little confused on how the pins before the keynotch such as the PRSNT1, SMCLK, + ClKREQ signals are routed with such an adapter and if it makes a difference whether a switch has shut off the first 4 lanes on the 8X slot?
Awesome work! I am glad you are here.
Does this involve writing a custom efi module? Again I am very impressed and interested in how you achieved this.
I think I might donate one of my risers should they work.
First of all, great looking machine! Really gald everything worked out for you. Really making the most of your hardware!I am extremely happy to report that I was able to successfully bifurcate my 8X Slot into two!!!! Today the Supermicro RSC-R2UU-2E4R 2U arrived at long last and installed it with a 9 cm EZDIY Black X16 Riser cable:
I really didn't have to do anything beyond the modding I have already done. My bios automatically reset the onboard M.2 to PCI-E CPU operation where it was on the PCH before. I even benched both drives with AS-SSD and the scores were dramatically improved for the onboard M.2 as its now on the PCI-E highway.
Here are HWInfo64 images as proof:
The only thing that is a bother I guess is the green color of the Supermicro board and its handle! Also I found the EZDIY had a couple creases in it and not very flexible but not one bit of it went to waste. It fit perfectly onto the Slot and onto the Supermicro adapter.
This has got to be the most awesome mod ever! MSI said it couldn't be done and man were they so wrong!!!
First of all, great looking machine! Really gald everything worked out for you. Really making the most of your hardware!
Your work makes me curious what a laptop bios would look like under the hood. It makes me wonder if there would be certain options to add or unlock as OEMs like to keep most things pretty locked down.
Good to know, I'll be curious to look into it not that I'd do it myself more than likely. Thanks for the caution! Good luck with the build!Modding a laptop Bios is much more dangerous. You could end up with a brick. Usually those bios files are not standard and have protections and boot guard. But I have taken a look at them out of curiosity though I would never dare. At least with my machine I had a dual bios switch and a rom programmer just in case.
About what options there are check out Bios-mods.com. Lots of interesting unlocks for over clocking, Stuff like that.
Thanks for the compliment. Been wanting to water cool it next, got the parts, just not the time,
Thanks.
Had a WTF moment this morning. Besides my riser cable knocking the GPU fan ;( - the link speed dropped to 2.5 GT/S after making a minor bios setting change. Had to disable Bifurcation support. At that point the on-board M.2 disappeared. So I re-enabled my Bifurcation support bios mod option and rebooted back into Windows from the on-board M.2 and this time both were at 8 GT/s according to HWInfo. So it seems like weird things can happen but its working now like it should. This only proved that if anyone is looking to take advantage of their defunct last PCI-E slot when you've got a M.2 set to PCI-E mode your going to need to mod the bios...
I had the same issue with a supermicro riser when I could only get gen2... Maybe it is hardware related? PCIe negotiates lower speeds when quality decreases.
davidm71
OK.. got my low profile x8 -> x4 + M.2 Riser ready and tested.
PCIe working as expected.. polarity inversion on clock and data as well as lane reversal.
Also my M.2 socket footprint seems to be working perfectly.
Only thing I didnt get right is the height, so one cannot directly use the low profile bracket to screw into the full height slot as intended.
(I took the specified card height for low profile cards and not the slot height for my calculations which is obviously stupid)
Take a look. As always I have spare PCB's to sell should anyone be interested.
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