Question Can you get and install the TRX40 motherboard add in cards for adding an extra 4x M.2 gen 4 PCI-e SSDs or Thunderbolt to other Motherboards later?

spikeysonic

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Jul 23, 2018
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Looking at the add in cards that come with the AS Rock Taichi MSI and Gigabyte TRX 40 motherboards:


The ASroc - HYPER QUAD M.2 CARD

or MSI - M.2 XPANDER-AERO

4 x M.2 SSD Add in cards.



And the Gigabyte 40GB/s GC-TITAN RIDGE fast data transfer add in board with Thunderbolt. 3 connections.


Can you get these or similar to add to Asus or Gigbyte Motherboards(in this case one of the 4 m.2 add on cards) other boards at a later date ?

Looking to see if the addin cards can be delayed or eliminated as a deciding factor in which motherboard to get if they can be added later?
 

Starcruiser

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Even the ones you mentioned are only pcie 3.0. But with 16 lanes you can get some massive throughput, the cards themselves say 12 GB/s.
PCIe 4.0 is still new, and don't expect much to support it yet. It is and always has been backwards compatible though.
Most motherboards that have PCIe 4.0 only have it for the main graphics slot anyway.
 

spikeysonic

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Even the ones you mentioned are only pcie 3.0. But with 16 lanes you can get some massive throughput, the cards themselves say 12 GB/s.
PCIe 4.0 is still new, and don't expect much to support it yet. It is and always has been backwards compatible though.
Most motherboards that have PCIe 4.0 only have it for the main graphics slot anyway.




https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/Creator-TRX40


You can get PCI-e Generation 4.0 M.2 add in cards WITH the ASroc Taichi and MSi creator TRX40 motherboards, not sure if you can get them separately as opposed to the older gen 3.0 ones.

Need to make sure they will work on ANY TRX40 boards not just the same brand ones. Do they need a particular header on the mother board.

There is a huge speed difference with the Gen 3 ones


Likewise does the Gigabyte Thunderbolt 3 Gigabyte 40GB/s GC-TITAN RIDGE add in card . Can you get those separately and do they need a special header etc on the motherboards and is that only on TRX40 Gigabyte boards.
 

Starcruiser

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There should be no compatibility issues that I can forsee as long as you have the proper drivers and headers on the motherboard. Modern UEFI should have no problems booting from add on cards as well.
With the thunderbolt card, you need a Thunderbolt 3 header on the board, often labeled thb_c, and I see reports of it working on AsRock boards. There's an unofficial forum thread here with people testing different cards on different boards with varying degrees of success. https://egpu.io/forums/thunderbolt-...titan-ridge-thunderbolt-3-devices/#post-38201
 
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