[SOLVED] Checking Compatibility and Picking Drives for Upgrade[Need upgrade soon!]

[seanm1999]

Hi, I was running quite low on my desktop storage and really am trying to switch over to m.2 only to remove the need for cables. I was wondering if the following would work for my system and how I should go about doing it. I am running an x99 platform(x99a godlike gaming carbon) which currently has 1 1080 in x16 and a 970 pro 512GB in x4. There are no more slots available on the board except PCIE so I think I would need an x16 card to hold all the drives. For drives I was thinking two 1TB western digital SN750's and the asus Hyper M.2 x16 card to hold them both.

If I did this I would probably want to put the two cards into raid and make it my boot drive just for the added speed as this will be used to load annoying games such as the witcher 3 and gta. Do you think I will come across any issues with doing something along the lines of this?

Also on the note of the card, it appears to have 4 slots for m.2, I was wondering if it would be possible to put different M.2 drives inside that in the future and run it with the WD blacks in tandem or would it pick them all up as one drive/cause issues?

These cards are new to me so any help/product suggestions would be appreciated, really want to get this system full up with storage and fast storage at that.

IF THERE ARE ANY OTHER DETAILS YOU NEED LET ME KNOW. I wanna get the parts in the system next week.

 

[hang-the-9]

There is no need to use RAID with solid state drives, it does not really improve speeds enough to be worth the extra cost and setup hassle.

If you are "switching" to M.2 that means your motherboard M.2 slots would be free, use that instead of an add-on card.

 

[seanm1999]

There is no need to use RAID with solid state drives, it does not really improve speeds enough to be worth the extra cost and setup hassle.

If you are "switching" to M.2 that means your motherboard M.2 slots would be free, use that instead of an add-on card.

Sorry I should have clarified better, I am currently using a 970 pro for my boot and its the only m.2 slot, which is occupied. I mainly need to figure out if my systems motherboard(MSI x99a Godlike gaming carbon) can pick up that a PCIE adapter is a boot drive, and also checking that the Asus Hyper M.2 x16 would work with said motherboard.

 

[popatim]

it might not work, you may have an x16 slot available that will work at x16.
What is occupying you slots and which CPU do you have?

Slots

• 5 x PCIe 3.0 x16 slots (PCI_E1~E4, PCI_E6), support up to 4-way mode

• 1-way mode: x16/ x0/ x0/ x0/ x0
• 2-way mode: x16/ x0/ x0/ x16/ x0* / x16/ x0/ x0/ x8/ x0**
• 3-way mode: x16/ x0/ x0/ x16/ x8* / x8/ x8/ x0/ x8/ x0**
• 4-way mode: x8/ x8/ x0/ x16/ x8* / x8/ x8/ x0/ x8/ x4**

* For the CPU that supports 40 PCIe lanes
** For the CPU that supports 28 PCIe lanes

 

[seanm1999]

it might not work, you may have an x16 slot available that will work at x16.
What is occupying you slots and which CPU do you have?

I currently use a GTX 1080 in my Slot 1 and my CPU is the 6850k. I did some digging and it seems like PCIE ssd's cant be used in raid 0, at least from what I understand on the MSI specs page. Even if not I wouldn't mind doing something outside of having it as a boot drive. Think it would be fine?

 

[popatim]

You have a 40 pcie lane CPU so Slot 4 should have all 16 lanes available but from this post at Msi forums, the board does not support bifurcation. https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?topic=293942.0
You could still use single slot m2 adapters to get 2 running.