CPU 5800X3D + X570 motherboard + ASUS Hyper M.2 x16 Gen 4 Card ?

Hi,

This is my current system:

AMD 5800X3D CPU
PRIME X570-P motherboard
AMD 6800 XT graphics
4TB Corsair NVMe = connected to a motherboard slot
1Tb Corsaid NVMe = connected to a motherboard slot
256GB Toshiba NVMe = connected to PCIe adaptor.

I've seen this device:

https://www.asus.com/uk/motherboards-components/motherboards/accessories/hyper-m-2-x16-gen-4-card/

There are quite a few reviews complaining about compatibility and the lack of available PCIe lanes.

According to AMD my CPU has 20 usable lanes + 16 lanes for an X570 motherboard.

https://www.amd.com/en/products/processors/desktops/ryzen/5000-series/amd-ryzen-7-5800x3d.html

My GPU is installed in a 16x slot and (I think) that should leave me with 20 lanes for the NVMe drives. I presume that I'm currently using 12 lanes for the three NVMe drives that I have fitted.

If I fit this card into the secondary 16x PCIe slot, is it as simple as removing one or both of the NVMe drives that are connected into the motherboard, disabling the slots in BIOS, and then fitting them into this card (JBOD)?

Ideally, I'd like to configure it as RAID0 with four identical NVMe drives (e.g. four 1TB cards) and keep the existing 4TB NVMe connected to the motherboard. That would total 20 PCIe lanes, but I'm not sure if things are that simple.

Does anybody have any experience with this?

Thanks.

 

No, it wouldn't touch the motherboard NVMe slots.
On some motherboards, it will split the 16x across the 2 full length PCIe slots, giving both 8x lanes.

But looks like your motherboard doesn't support this. The 2nd PCIe slot is from the x570 chipset at 4x.
https://www.asus.com/uk/motherboards-components/motherboards/prime/prime-x570-p/techspec/

The Asus NVMe card spec page talks about compatibility:

What you can do is fit GPU into the x570 chipset PCIe slot (2nd one) at cost of FPS. Then fit this card into primary PCIe slot with CPU. It will achieve what you want.

Alternatively, just buy a big drive and buy any NVMe PCIe adaptor for the x570 chipset PCIe slot:
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/icy...card-with-m2-m-key-socket-for-one-m2-nvme-ssd

 

Thanks for taking the time to reply.

It looks like it might not make any/much difference running the GPU in a 4x PCIe 4.0 slot.

https://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/sbegpb/gpu_in_pcie_40_x4_slot/

I'll give it some thought and do a bit more reading.

 

There are alternatives if you don't need absolute speed but just a few more slots, I use a qnap 4xm2 in my NAS that muxes 16 lanes down to 8 so I can have more NVMe, pretty sure it'll go down to 4x, a mail to QNAP will confirm, though I may be able to test this myself

QM2-4P-384 | Hardware Specs | QNAP

show some numbers in https://forums.bit-tech.net/index.p...pre-built-who-what.383124/page-2#post-4879474

still plenty fast

Or use something like a terramaster usb hybrid drive

 

scratch that comment on hyper m2 just read the manual

 

Also worth remembering that if you are raiding sata SSDs are still pretty handy, cheap and fast for raid0.

 

Is there any reason why you want to RAID 0 four NVMe drives? What do you need such speed for?

 

Maybe for a large big disc, I do this for my games and temp drive (not system temp, but say big video holding area before I convert or upload) where I don’t care if I loose stuff and just have a big array of discs for all the data that I can just keep adding too. Who wants to look at loads of drive letters just give me a big old disc.

Speed is nice when moving such data around your system or working with it, the slow points tend to be on and off the machine though but I at least have 20Gb link to my NAS for that when I am ultimately done.

Even if you manage to fit more NVMe, you have to look at where your lanes are coming from on x570, some are off the main CPU, so the x4 on your board is on the chipset I'd imagine normally there is a board box diagram like below but I could not see it, I mean it mentions it is crossfire compatible so I would assumed an 8x/8x, but it does not say that in the manual.

The lane arrangement, shows you where the lanes get spent, you don't get them all.

If you put your GPU in x4 with all your services from chipset, the link to CPU will likely get saturated and you'll have bad system performance.

Many boards will split the x16 to the second slot if you want more addin cards so you can run an 8x/8x/4x setup, giving 8x to GPU (plenty) and 8x to secondslot (great for card I mentioned) but I guess the prime P being on the lower end ASUS only wired this second slot for x4 which is a poor show on an x570 level chipset.

 

The card you linked has a PCIe bridge (I think?). Would that affect RAID performance vs 4x 4x PCIe bifurcation that OP wanted via CPU through the Asus card?

 

It has a MUX/PLX switch, it is not going to effect performance in any noticeable way bar of course bandwidth limitations of reduced lanes etc.

Image from QNAP



obviously using the top slot for full x16 straight to CPU is superior, I could do this in my NAS for example as I don't need a GPU, it has IMPI but I use both x16 slots in 8x/8x config one for extra dual NIC card I feed to router and one for that quad M2 card.

With this card you don't need bifurcation support that might not exist on lower end.

You used to get these chips on loads of boards then Broadcom bought the company and the price went exponential.

If you want to see an actual x570 board chipset implementation this is my NAS board as an example of how things hang off

X570D4U-2L2T.pdf p15 it has pretty pictures makes it quite clear.

You can see a similar mux chip fitted on the mobo between the board slots to give the lane config.

 

Not really.

I'm running out of space on my NVMe drives and I don't have any spare slots. It made me wonder if there were any PCIe NVMe RAID cards available.

This item was £44 yesterday, but has increased in price.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/KIOXIA-EXCERIA-PLUS-SSD-1TB/dp/B0CN5L6FPK

The RAID card is £57
https://www.amazon.co.uk/ASUS-M-2-supports-devices-platform/dp/B0863KK2BP

£233 for 4TB of RAID0 NVMe storage seemed like a good deal.

It looks like my motherboard is a problem and I can't justify a complete system upgrade. My current system is 'good enough' for my day-to-day usage.

 

you can get a couple of 2gb sata ssd and raid0 on your existing sata controller for less if you just reasonablly fast space, yes sure, its not NVMe fast but it's no slouch.

 

If speed isn't primary driving requirement, in addition to SATA idea, may be consider filling all the PCIe slots?

Your motherboard has three 1x slot and one 4x slot.
Use something like this for the 1x slot: https://www.amazon.co.uk/GLOTRENDS-Adapter-Installation-Bandwidth-PA09-X1/dp/B09P3HY3P3

 

Or just transfer your small ones to a big one, get rid, now you have a free slot for next one, blimey, there are games that fill 256Gb

 

I use the 256GB drive as a 'sacrificial' boot drive. If Windows kills it with excessive write operations, then it's only £20 for a new one.

I take your point, though. I could dump the 1TB drive and replace it with a 4TB drive.

 

Everything move up the stack?

Make 1 TB the boot drive, you then also gain 700 GB for storage.

These days the write lifetime is pretty high, no need to worry about wearing out the drives.