Question Gigabyte AORUS Gen4 AIC Adaptor

[johnno23]

I was considering to buy one of these items as I have an Aourus X570 Master and no longer use any mechanical Hard drives.
I know I can use the slot closest to the CPU as it is a x 16 and can be turned into 4 x 4 so thats ok.
BUT...always the buts. My concerns are the following.
I am using an MSI RTX 3080 which I can move to another slot and understand PCI 4 x8 is fine as it will run the GPU same as a PCI 3 x16.
However the the manual reads that if a card is in the 2nd PCI slot the 1st Slot drops to x8 which means very expensive add on for 4 ssd's if I can only use 2 of them.
So I was wondering is there is a possible work around so I could use the GPU and the Gigabyte Aorus gen4 aic adaptor fully populated with 4 x 2TB SSD's
Or am I barking up the wrong tree as my Aorus Master Motherboard is not as masterful as I had hoped.
Final query was if I were to purchase the adapter all the info only I found online relates to how fast and raid 0 but I was thinking to use a Raid 5 or simply use as JBOD ? That info I have been unable to confirm.

 

[USAFRet]

Why RAID, of any type?

Multiple SSDs are fine. My current system has 6x.
No RAID in sight.

What will yours be used for?

 

[DSzymborski]

Yeah, really gotta know why to make any recommendations. For 99% of consumers, RAID is absolutely pointless at best, and potentially deleterious at worst.

 

[johnno23]

I have at present 4 x 1TB in my PC and 3 of them are at 80% capacity. the Only Drive under 50% is my C drive so I need more space and have no intention of dumping the 4 x 1TB and just going larger.
As for Raid not a big issue and as a Bunch of individual drives that can be accessed that s fine. The Adpater choice is simplicity. Inside the PC not need for even more cable clutter or powerbricks etc.
The webs however only talk of the adapter its speed raid 0 and the links to buy it...hence my question. Even Gigabyte Website do not bother to inform me that it can see and use 4 drives as separate units of storage.
The main issue though is my concern that the motherboard will not allow me to run the GPU and The adapter ?
I could drop the GPU in the Bottom PCI slot but that's a single PCI4 x 4 so I would be hampering the GPU just for extra storage is my concern.

 

[USAFRet]

Do you already have the 4x NVMe drives?

 

[johnno23]

I have 3 M.2 slots on the motherboard and using a PCI gen 4 adapter for the 4th SSD in the last slot.
The CPU is the 5900x but I think I just found my own answer. The CPU simply does not have the number of lanes in the correct allocations.
The last slot running at GEN 4 as it disables the SATA lanes. the 1st M.2 slot next to the CPU is 4 lanes and the 1st PCI 4 slot is 16 lanes....
So I think I am out of luck and the adapter whilst perfect for what I wanted will not work on the CPU Motherboard that I have.
Seems I need to rethink how I go about getting more storage into the beast.
where I live a local Hardware store is Offering ADATA sx8200 2TB at just over 100USD so I was thinking to grab four of those.
At present I am running 2 x 1TB gen 4 and 2 older 1TB gen 3 ssd's. The gen 3 gen 4 is not really a huge concern to me as I do not use the PC to generate income
so the need for speed is not a issue and gen 3 is plenty fast for 99% of what I do.
The gen 4 ssd's I discern no real difference to be honest but then if I do some heavy work on a couple of photos it is merely a time saver that I would appreciate maybe once
or twice a month at best.

PS: it will work but only with 2 ssd's so i could double my storage but the price of the gigabyte adapter is then unrealistic compared to picking up an exteranl bay from say icydock or similar.

 

[USAFRet]

I wouldn't buy an ADATA on a bet. Seen far too many problems here.

In my testing with various SSD types (Gen 4, 3, SATA III) the speed difference only really comes in when copying big data between two like drives.
Photo and video work, the CPU/RAM/GPU has far more effect.

Populate the 3x M.2 ports, and maybe a single drive adapter for the 4th.

 

[johnno23]

yeah that's what i have done and now getting to where my drives are reaching capacity. I don't like to push my ssd/s past 85% of the storage capacity and 3 are already at 81 82 and 79 % respectively.
Started shifting my most used items to the C drive which I normally keep totally free of clutter.

The motherboard has 6 stat ports and the two main ones are disabled using the 3rd PCI slot with the gen 4 adapter so maybe I should just drop 4 sata SSD's into the system for backup and extra space. I could hide them away
in the bottom of the case as they are so small compared to the mechanical drives and as I do not copy huge files on any regular basis so sata should be fine.
thanks for taking time out to assist with my questions....

Not sure how to close this or mark it as solved but solved it is.... thank you.

 

[USAFRet]

Yep.
Add a few SATA III SSDs, you'll be golden.

I tend to limit my SSDs to 80% full.
Long term stuff gets offloaded to the NAS.

 

[Eximo]

Purchase 8TB NVMe drive? Profit?

 

[johnno23]

Purchase 8TB NVMe drive? Profit?

Not rich enough to consider an 8TB drive and only considering the 2TB m.2 GEN 3 as they have dropped so much in price.
A 2TB today is less than I paid for my 1st 1TB.
Also my hesitancy on large drives is that the cost of replacement is terrifying.
Over the years I have had 2 x Crucial SSD's fail on me so once bitten twice shy I never buy Crucial brand anymore regardless of reviews.
Also one time an Intel 660p that simply gave up the ghost and is unreadable. I purchased 2 of them almost 3 years ago and the other is running perfectly.
I had considered the ADATA drive mentioned in my first post as Toms Hardware had glowing reviews but as USAFRet stated that he had seen so many issues reported here. ??
So as I have an external USB 3.1 case I have ordered an OEM PM861a 2TB. Almost double the price of the ADATA but I already have an older Samsung OEM in the PC and it has never given me
any problems. So paying a little more but still affordable and an extra 2TB should solve my data storage issues for the time being. Plus if it dies I can at least afford to replace it.

 

[USAFRet]

Most of the failed drives you list would seemingly be a warranty replacement?

 

[johnno23]

In the western world yes but I am living in Southern China so it is not worth the effort.
I had a harmony poduct that broke down and had a new unit sent out from USA but then ended up paying not only the postage etc but also got hit for import taxes as it was a new item and
NEW is the rule nothing to do with replacement LOL