upgrade to M.2 SSD from 6TB HDD

NeghVar

NeghVar

2[H]4U
Joined
May 1, 2003
Messages
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I am piecing out a plan for upgrading my 6TB HDD to 3x 2TB in JBOD or RAID 0
Last year I put together a new system
  • MSI MPG X570 Gaming Edge
  • AMD Ryzen 7 3700X
  • 32 GB DDR4
  • MSI RX 5700 Mech OC
  • Corsair Force MP600 (500GB)
Moved 6TB libraries/game HDD to the new system

So what I am looking to do now is create an array of 3x 2TB M.2 SSD PCIe 4.0 to replace the 6TB HDD. I have seen cards such as this, but they only support older M.2 SSDs
1586540676526.png

https://www.newegg.com/p/35Y-005D-00011

Any suggestions
 
What you're proposing is very expensive and technical overkill.

By libraries I'm assuming you mean music/video/etc. If these are just for consuming and you're not doing creative/editing tasks with them, there's absolutely no benefit to having them on a SSD over a HDD. Depending on your usage, you may also want to consider moving such content off to a NAS.

Games generally do perform better if played from a SSD, but there's virtually no difference between SATA and NVMe units here. Something like the SATA Crucial MX500, or a low-end NVMe like the WD SN550, would be just fine.

There are PCIe adapter cards similar to what you've linked for NVMe SSDs. However, they either require explicit support from the mainboard itself (i.e., bifurcation support, possible vendor-lock), or are pretty expensive ($200-300+) because they have their own PCIe switching support onboard. Not worth it except for very limited applications.
 
Neat product, but have to agree with Blueline, too much OC, at best, copy your stuff to a cheap high capacity SSD and keep the HDD as a backup.
 
noko said:
ASrock makes an affordable 4x NVME M.2 to PCIe 16x slot card. $99 at Newegg:
https://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/8542/asrock-ultra-quad-2-card-16-lane-aic-review/index.html

Tweaktown tested on an Intel X299 system:
https://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/8542/asrock-ultra-quad-2-card-16-lane-aic-review/index3.html

It should work in most motherboards and if you have PCIe 4 then you can use PCIe 4 M.2 SSD's and get full performance out of them.
Click to expand...

OP's motherboard almost definitely does not have native support for PCI-E bifurcation, which is necessary for cards with multiple NVMe drives without a built-in RAID controller. In addition, the motherboard's second PCI-E x16 slot is an electric X4 slot connected to the chipset, so that ASRock card (and others like it) will not work, at least, the last three NVMe cards will not work as there is no electrical connection for them.

The only way the OP is getting 6 TB in a single PCI-E card is a RAID card with built-in RAID controller, or one of those enterprise PCI-E SSDs. It will be limited by the x4 link speed, but it does support 4.0. OP is better off using SATA drives unless there is some sort of case restraint.
 
noko said:
ASrock makes an affordable 4x NVME M.2 to PCIe 16x slot card. $99 at Newegg:
https://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/8542/asrock-ultra-quad-2-card-16-lane-aic-review/index.html

Tweaktown tested on an Intel X299 system:
https://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/8542/asrock-ultra-quad-2-card-16-lane-aic-review/index3.html

It should work in most motherboards and if you have PCIe 4 then you can use PCIe 4 M.2 SSD's and get full performance out of them.
Click to expand...

OK, I just looked it up. That card (or the similar Asus, etc. models) will not work with OP's mainboard. There's only a single x16 slot available, and that's dedicated to the GPU. The only other x16 slot on that board is actually only wired for x4 PCIe. The Asrock card linked is simply an adapter, and has no ability to multiplex the four x4 m.2 cards to a single x4 slot (you can actually see this in the image of the card's traces on the linked page).

This is going to be the case for any mainstream consumer-level AMD or Intel system. The Ryzen CPUs and compatible chipsets simply do not have enough PCIe lanes available. Same goes for Intel Core. In order to support this card you'd need at least an AMD Threadripper or a Intel Core "Extreme" setup.
 
BlueLineSwinger said:
OK, I just looked it up. That card (or the similar Asus, etc. models) will not work with OP's mainboard. There's only a single x16 slot available, and that's dedicated to the GPU. The only other x16 slot on that board is actually only wired for x4 PCIe. The Asrock card linked is simply an adapter, and has no ability to multiplex the four x4 m.2 cards to a single x4 slot (you can actually see this in the image of the card's traces on the linked page).

This is going to be the case for any mainstream consumer-level AMD or Intel system. The Ryzen CPUs and compatible chipsets simply do not have enough PCIe lanes available. Same goes for Intel Core. In order to support this card you'd need at least an AMD Threadripper or a Intel Core "Extreme" setup.
Click to expand...
There are some options, run 2 SSDs vice 4 SSDs with the card, leaving 8x for the GPU and 8x for the SSDs, so 3 M.2 type SSDs total. For boards with a 16x PCIe PCH slot but only 4 pcie lanes, which this board does not have, you can run a video card at PCIe 4, 4x which would be similar to 8x pcie 3 bandwidth which for most things would be ok, what problems that would present since rather abnormal is another thing. Yes if one is going to spend money on 4x 2TB SSDs and card, a HEDT motherboard would make a lot of sense. There is another option and that is just use some 2TB or higher SATA drivers, for a lot of applications including games not much difference is observable -> Compromise in other words, add 2 more M.2 NVME drives using second 16x pcie slot and SATA SSDs using the available SATA ports.
 
noko said:
There are some options, run 2 SSDs vice 4 SSDs with the card, leaving 8x for the GPU and 8x for the SSDs, so 3 M.2 type SSDs total. For boards with a 16x PCIe PCH slot but only 4 pcie lanes, which this board does not have, you can run a video card at PCIe 4, 4x which would be similar to 8x pcie 3 bandwidth which for most things would be ok, what problems that would present since rather abnormal is another thing. Yes if one is going to spend money on 4x 2TB SSDs and card, a HEDT motherboard would make a lot of sense. There is another option and that is just use some 2TB or higher SATA drivers, for a lot of applications including games not much difference is observable -> Compromise in other words, add 2 more M.2 NVME drives using second 16x pcie slot and SATA SSDs using the available SATA ports.
Click to expand...

Running a graphics card through the PCH will cause some performance hit due to the latency of running through the chipset. In addition, the graphics card will not get the full PCI-E 4.0 x4 bandwidth available to it as it has to share it with every other peripheral connected to the PCH.
 
noko said:
There are some options, run 2 SSDs vice 4 SSDs with the card, leaving 8x for the GPU and 8x for the SSDs, so 3 M.2 type SSDs total. For boards with a 16x PCIe PCH slot but only 4 pcie lanes, which this board does not have, you can run a video card at PCIe 4, 4x which would be similar to 8x pcie 3 bandwidth which for most things would be ok, what problems that would present since rather abnormal is another thing. Yes if one is going to spend money on 4x 2TB SSDs and card, a HEDT motherboard would make a lot of sense. There is another option and that is just use some 2TB or higher SATA drivers, for a lot of applications including games not much difference is observable -> Compromise in other words, add 2 more M.2 NVME drives using second 16x pcie slot and SATA SSDs using the available SATA ports.
Click to expand...

According to the spec page of that mainboard and its manual, the second x16 slot is indeed limited to x4 electrically (equivalent to a typical m.2 connector). Any attempt to support multiple SSDs in that slot with a basic adapter like the Asrock or Asus models will fail. They simply are not compatible. Best-case, only the first drive will show up. There are literally no traces from the back of the slot to the CPU or PCH.

And there's no chance the UEFI supports bifurcating that slot (or the first x16, for that matter). It's a feature that's simply not implemented on mainstream systems.

In order to connect multiple SSDs to a single non-bifurcated PCIe slot, you'd need an adapter card with a PCIe switch (e.g., PLX/Broadcom). Those cost much more than the basic units like that Asrock.

Also, very few GPUs support PCIe 4. IIRC, no Nvidias and only the very latest AMDs.
 
BlueLineSwinger said:
According to the spec page of that mainboard and its manual, the second x16 slot is indeed limited to x4 electrically (equivalent to a typical m.2 connector). Any attempt to support multiple SSDs in that slot with a basic adapter like the Asrock or Asus models will fail. They simply are not compatible. Best-case, only the first drive will show up. There are literally no traces from the back of the slot to the CPU or PCH.

And there's no chance the UEFI supports bifurcating that slot (or the first x16, for that matter). It's a feature that's simply not implemented on mainstream systems.

In order to connect multiple SSDs to a single non-bifurcated PCIe slot, you'd need an adapter card with a PCIe switch (e.g., PLX/Broadcom). Those cost much more than the basic units like that Asrock.

Also, very few GPUs support PCIe 4. IIRC, no Nvidias and only the very latest AMDs.
Click to expand...
Wow! Ditch the motherboard, it is way too limiting for expansion. A X570 motherboard with the second X16 slot X4??? Never thought that would be the case. Put the 5700 into the second slot, run it PCIe 4 4x which would be equivalent to 8x pcie 3, and two NVME M.2 with adapter on the first slot. Not a configuration I would bother with but it should work.

Another options is SATA drives and one adapter for the PCIe 16x slot at X4, I use one for my motherboard:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07F9SMXQ1/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
My third PCIe 16x slot is x4 pci-e 2, have a 2TB drive which works well, not a very fast 2TB drive so the pci-e 2 speeds is really not limiting, it reads around 2gb/s.

Really a better motherboard and optimally a HEDT would support larger numbers of pcie SSDs.
 
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