I am looking for an Expansion card for a Z97A MSI Gaming 6 motherboard, does one even exist? I have been studying for hours and looking but can't come up with something solid.
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Question Dual Nvme - Expansion Card - for a Z97A
- Thread starter TheWhiteRose000
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- dual nvme expansion cards Z97A
It seems to be for a Syba raid server and not for market use for gaming from what I understand.
13thmonkey
Titan
- Jan 10, 2006
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Honestly, on newegg it was cheaper to buy a single NVME 2tb, than it was a 2TB SSD so I dropped my games onto one, and video editing onto the other.
It was literally to save money.
You could always put one into the dedicated M.2 slot and then put the video editing one into a M.2 to PCIe add in card, which should be fairly cheap. You'll lose performance for the one in the M.2 slot, but you probably won't really much real world difference.
Well, the thing with that was the board's M.2 slot disables two sata slots, and lowers the speed of my PCIe to 8x while still only maintaining the speed of a M.2 gen 2 speed,
I went and got an adapter to maximum the speed of the NVME drive, and after my initial studies I've concluded that the only cards with a dual NMVE M.2 port is for servers, or MUCH newer systems.
But the adaptor card also comes with a SATA m.2 also, so probably just invest into a single M.2 Sata down the road this way I can still push my board pretty solid without much compromise.
The built in M.2 slot does not share bandwidth with the PCIe slots. The first PCIe slot will run at x16 with an M.2 drive installed in the M.2 slot.
Using a M.2 to PCIe add in card however will result in the first PCIe slot dropping down to x8.
Using a M.2 to PCIe add in card however will result in the first PCIe slot dropping down to x8.
- Mar 16, 2013
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You want 4x HDD.
Your motherboard has 4x SATA ports.
I know why you think you need to connect these via a PCIe card or whatever.
But that is a mistaken concept.
Performance depends on the slowest device in the chain. Here, the actual spinning drives.
Connecting a spinning drive to anything faster than a SATA II connection brings exactly zero performance gain.
Your motherboard has 4x SATA ports.
I know why you think you need to connect these via a PCIe card or whatever.
But that is a mistaken concept.
Performance depends on the slowest device in the chain. Here, the actual spinning drives.
Connecting a spinning drive to anything faster than a SATA II connection brings exactly zero performance gain.
What research? I'm going off what is said in the manual and specifications. Also, the fact that the M.2 slot PCIe lanes come from the chipset while the PCIe x16 lanes come from the CPU, meaning they can't be shared.
- Mar 16, 2013
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That says nothing about using a PCIe drive in an actual PCIe slot.
That is referring to the single m.2 port on the motherboard.
No one in that thread is saying that using the M.2 slot will reduce the bandwidth of the PCIe 3.0 x16 slot...
Using a PCIe add in card for the SSD will result in maximum bandwidth for the SSD, at the expense of bandwidth to the PCIe x16 slot (although most GPUs aren't really affected by x8 vs x16 bandwidth).
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I may have misread, but it still looks like the estimated throughput is going to be capped at PCIe 2.0 speeds at 800mbs using a nvme card.
Now the big money question, should I just return the adapter card and use the M.2 port, and get the full 16x from my GPU but be limited to the 1gb, or keep the adapter card and lower my 16x to an 8x for the full 1.8gb of speed.
- Mar 16, 2013
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This is why I said, 2 days ago:
"Even a single NVMe on a Z97 era board is mostly a waste."
These boards (I have an ASRock Z97) were released before NVMe drives became mainstream.
Yes, it works, but not great.
With that card there should be virtually no difference in between x8 and x16. If you want the best storage speeds you can get for video editing, there shouldn't be any major drawback to using a PCIe add in card adapter (other than the cost of buying the adapter).
Ah, so the same process I had prior then, just run it at 8x with the adapter for maximum speed and efficiency, I'm guessing though if I had a 2080ti, it would be a different story though?
Or if I decided off handedly to do a CrossFire it would be better than all the ports being at 4x speeds?
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