2 X m.2 drives

[Dibbley247]

Just going through the manual for the Auros 7 board. I was going to put a m.2 drive in, which on the table i read as using up 2 sata ports. If I was going to use a second m.2. will this remove another 2? Bits about lanes etc is confusing for me at the moment.
I will be using a GPU in one of the pcie slots

 

[jay.wooster]

In short i do not beleive it does, one of the ports will take up 2 Sata ports and the other will not. It is designed for use by Optane M.2 cards to speed up 7200RPM HDD's to the speed of SATA SSD's. I say that with the below disclaimer;

Depends on the Motherboard in particular but for my ASUS Z370-H gaming M.2_1 uses SATA ports 1 & 2 when occupied which works for my Optane M.2 with my Seagate 4TB HDD and in the other M.2_2 i have a WD Black M.2 Nvme SSD that does not occupy any of the SATA ports.

You need to double check the manual.

 

[jay.wooster]

In short for 1 x M.2 Drive if that's all you ave use the M2P-32G M.2 Slot which should be labeled on your Motherboard.

From your manual;

The M2M_32G connector shares bandwidth with the
SATA3 4, 5 connectors; the M2A_32G connector shares bandwidth with the SATA3 0; the M2P_32G connector
shares bandwidth with the PCIEX4 connector.

You need to look at the three tables on page 33 of the below manual to see what impact each slot has. Didnt realise your MB has 3 x M.2 slots but the basics are as follows:

Your three M.2 slots are titled and will say as much on the Motherboard (followed by 32G);

M2M
M2A
M2P - Wont affect any SATA ports

 

[bmockeg]

Appears you can use 3 m.2 and 3 SATA

 

[jay.wooster]

M2P-32G is the bottom M.2 slot on your Motherboard of the three of them located just above the bottom PCI-E slot.

If you occupy the top M.2 Slot (M2M) you will "lose" use of the last two (2) SATA ports (titled SATA4 & SATA5), If you use M2A you will "lose" use of SATA0

When i say "lose" use of it simply means that unless you are using an Optane M.2 in the M2 slot with a HDD in the correspending SATA port it will no longer be functional.

Clear as Mud ?

 

[Dibbley247]

Been looking at the in depth reviews, and seen a pictorial of the m.2 layouts which made it clearer for me.

Top one loses 2 Sata ports

2nd one loses none, but is in the way of the exhaust air of the GPU.

Bizzare how that's laid out, would have thought those 2 would have been swapped over?

Thanks for the info guys.

 

[jay.wooster]

Yep, on my ASUS board the non SATA impacting M.2 slot is between the GPU and CPU and gets up to 70 degrees whereas the other sits around 30, go figure.

 

[jay.wooster]

And you want to use the third one anyway which will be cooler

 

[Dibbley247]

The case I'm using, I'll be drawing cool air from the bottom with 2-3 fans, so hopefully that'll help with temps in that area.

 

[SkyNetRising]

You haven't mentioned your motherboard model name.
All those features depend on actual motherboard.