There is a related issue that often gets overlooked: to date, Intel motherboards with 3 x NVMe M.2 slots situate those slots downstream of Intel's DMI 3.0 link. That DMI 3.0 link has the exact same upstream bandwidth as a single NVMe M.2 socket. Every measurement on such a system tops out at about 3,500 MB/second, even with 3 x NVMe M.2 SSDs. We need to know the answer to these next questions: is the X399 chipset merely going to add bootable RAID support for existing M.2 ports on existing X399 motherboards? If so, are those ports controlled by the chipset, or are they wired directly to the CPU? -OR- is AMD working with an OEM supplier of an Add-In Card ("AIC") that uses an x16 PCIe 3.0 edge connector and that supports 4 x NVMe M.2 SSDs installed on a single AIC? The one that comes to mind is the Highpoint SSD7101A-1, but there are others e.g. by HP, Dell, and Kingston. The SSD7101A-1 is a good start, multiples can be installed in the same motherboard, and we are being told by their marketing department that Highpoint's engineers are working on making that AIC bootable. I believe an x16 AIC is a better approach, in the short term, chiefly because new motherboards will be needed to support all modern RAID modes with 4 x integrated U.2 ports.