Question Can I run 3 nvme drives on my Asus x470 pro?

[Leeroy337]

I know the board has two M.2 slots, one is x4 and the other is x2. The second slot shares lanes with pcie_1 and pcie_3. What about an M.2 adapter on one of the other pcie slots? What would be the best way to add a third nvme and maintain performance?

My System:
Ryzen 2700x
Asus x470 pro
Radeon Vega 64
GSkillz Trident 32GB ram (2×16)
EVGA 850w Gold PSU
2TB Sabrent Rocket nvme
1TB Sabrent Rocket nvme
500GB Sabrent Rocket nvme

I know performance will be lower in the second M.2 slot. But these nvme drives are priced the same as SATA SSD's right now, so why not!

 

[Darkbreeze]

Yes, the only way really to add another M.2 drive would be to either get an M.2 PCI drive or a PCI slot adapter to install an M.2 drive in. Performance should be similar so long as you are using a slot with sufficient lanes for the type of drive you get. x4 would be preferable.

 

[Leeroy337]

Are the other pci lanes shared with anything else?

 

[Darkbreeze]

AMD’s Ryzen platform supports up to 28 PCIe lanes, but the CPU controls most of those lanes. Ryzen CPUs feature 20 PCIe 3.0 lanes, with 16 lanes dedicated to two 16x/8x PCIe slots for graphics cards, and four lanes to split between SATA and NVMe data transfer interfaces.


The X470 chipset adds another eight general-purpose PCIe 2.0 lanes, which board manufactures can dedicate to additional M.2 slots, 5/10GbE network interfaces, or other PCIe-based devices.

 

[CountMike]

Only M.2_1 supports NVMe, the other one can go only up to x2 (SATA) speed so paying extra for NVMe is not economically viable, better to put that money difference to better use like higher capacity. Using NVMe drives for storage, gives you 0 advantage.

 

[Leeroy337]

Only M.2_1 supports NVMe, the other one can go only up to x2 (SATA) speed so paying extra for NVMe is not economically viable, better to put that money difference to better use like higher capacity. Using NVMe drives for storage, gives you 0 advantage.

Yeah I hear ya but these Sabrents are the same price as a normal ssd so why not?

 

[Darkbreeze]

Because they probably won't work. Seems that board only supports ONE M.2 PCI drive. You'd need to buy two additional PCI slot adapters to use two more M.2 PCI drives.

 

[TJ Hooker]

You might be able to use PCIe x16_3 along with both M.2 slots to get three NVMe SSDs. But the way it's written it's not clear to me.

PCIe x16_3 shares bandwidth with PCIe x1_1 and x1_3, but it says that M.2_2 shares a PCIe clock with PCIe x1_1 (don't really know what this means) such that if either the x1_1 or x1_3 slots are used then M.2_2 is SATA only. So I don't know if using PCIe x16_3 would cause the M.2_2 slot to be SATA only.