M.2 NVMe SSD to PCIE 2.0 X16

[georgegeo56]

Hi,
I have a Asus M5A99X EVO R2.0 motherboard witch I'm planning to upgrade with a Samsung 970 EVO 250GB SSD boot drive. First things first, the plan is to mod the bios in order to boot from nvme ssd. Then, the issue is that the MBO is PCIE 2.0 only capable. I'm considering to use an M.2 NVMe SSD to PCIE 3.0 X16 adapter in one of the 2 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (x16 or dual x8). My question is whether the NVME SSD run on full 3400r/1500w speed on x8 lanes in PCIE 2.0 mode?

Thanks in advance for your attention!

 

[TJ Hooker]

It'd be limited to PCIe 2.0 x4, and PCIe 2.0 x4 only allows 2 GB/s bandwidth, so no you're not going to be able to get 3.4 GB/s reads. That being said, you'd probably never actually see > 2 GB/s reads outside of synthetic benchmarks anyway, regardless of PCIe bandwidth.

You're comfortable modding the BIOS? How do you plan to do that, are their tools out there for adding NVMe drivers to a BIOS?

 

[georgegeo56]

You're comfortable modding the BIOS? How do you plan to do that, are their tools out there for adding NVMe drivers to a BIOS?

Thanks for your quick response, sorry for the late replay.

i saw this guide on another forum called "[Guide] How to get full NVMe support for all Systems with an AMI UEFI BIOS" , is this possible?

 

[TJ Hooker]

Sorry, couldn't tell you, don't have the first clue as to what would be involved with adding NVMe drivers to a BIOS.

As an aside, what OS will you be using?

 

[USAFRet]

Personally, I wouldn't.

No justification for an NVMe drive if you can't get the full speed out of it.

I'd just use a regular SATA III drive.
No BIOS mods needed.

 

[georgegeo56]

As an aside, what OS will you be using?

From what i understand, Windows 10 is NVME ready, but at the moment I'm using Windows 10, i don't consider going back.

I think i should try to make some time and try do the mod, from what i have seen in the guide, i just have to inject the driver into bios file and then flash it.

Personally, I wouldn't.

No justification for an NVMe drive if you can't get the full speed out of it.

I'd just use a regular SATA III drive.
No BIOS mods needed.

Yes, i think you are right..... i was just hoping that an NVME SSD, even on 2.0 pcie limp mode, would be 4x time faster than my actual Intel SSD 535 Series (120gb) with a 540 MB/s read / 480 MB/s write declared speed.

 

[TJ Hooker]

The advertised speeds for drives are typically for large sequential I/O and/or high queue depth, which is highly unrepresentative of typical consumer use. Try looking at some 'real world' benchmarks that compare NVMe vs SATA, you're not going to see anywhere close to 4x improvement. For the average joe, there really isn't much difference in performance between an NVMe drive and a good SATA one.

 

[USAFRet]

Yes, i think you are right..... i was just hoping that an NVME SSD, even on 2.0 pcie limp mode, would be 4x time faster than my actual Intel SSD 535 Series (120gb) with a 540 MB/s read / 480 MB/s write declared speed.

4x in daily use?
Not a chance.

I'd be surprised if you saw an actual 1.4x difference.

You're stuck on the wrong number.

That "540 MB/s read / 480 MB/s" number for your current drive, and the huge numbers for NVMe drives are for large sequential file operation. Like moving a large 3D render between two similar drives.

Out here in the real world..that is not what you'll be doing with it. All SSD's benefit from the near zero access time. This is where they shine over spinning drives.
This is shown in moving or accessing thousands of little files and blocks. Like what we do with the OS or games.

ObCar Analogy.
Car A has a top speed of 120mph.
Car B has a top speed of 150mph, and costs twice as much as Car A.
They have identical 0-25mph, 0-45mph, and 0-60mph times, and are otherwise 100% identical.

Given that you drive on roads with a 70mph absolute top speed...which car is faster?
Which one should you buy? If you focus on the theoretical Top Speed number, you're wasting money.


NVMe provides little benefit over SATA III SSD.
And if you have to shove that through a x2.0 interface and adapter?
Minimal gain, at best.

 

[creoxon]

georgegeo56:

Pretty sure here will be more folks in the audience who gonna seek for opinions. Since I was there just a week ago here is what I learned.
1) I am not sure if that ASUS MB BIOS supports NVM, update to the latest & read up on it. Personally I had to update ASUS Sabertooth MB to the latest BIOS in order to enable NVM support.
Dont bother with writing strings into BIOS, unless you really know what you doing. Yes there is software & manuals for it, but it takes lot of time & effort.
2) It is real PITA to get NVM drivers extracted from hotfix (especially if there are no pure *inf files to extract) & furhter get them injected into Win7 installation disk, therefore the best solution is Win10. BTW, your code from Win7/8 works on Win10. Don't bother wasting your time reading articles and tutorials on youtube - most of them are outdated and half of the software is not even there anymore.
3) It is not true that its not worth to upgrade to M2 NVM. Single SSD3 in AHCI will give ~ 550/500 read/write, NVM single on PCIe 2.0 pulls ~1300/1200, 4x SSD3 in RAID0 give ~1100/700. So draw your own conclusion. Some folks here will say they get better or worse results - I dont care. Everyone's setup is unique.

Bottom line, read up on your BIOS and if latest & greatest update will support boot from NVMe - go for it.

Peace

PS. Seems like your MB is limited to BIOS version 2501 which (if I recall right) does not support NVM boot.
Sabertooth on the other hand with BIOS ver 2901 does support.
Technically, boards are somewhat similar with same chipset (btw I upgraded from the one you have back in the day without even reinstalling anything - jsut plug-n-play). You could download BIOS 2901 from ASUS and give it shot - see what will happen, but dont blame me if MB wont even boot after BIOS reflesh.
The other option is to read up on BIOS flash & recovery in case of failure before you even go that extreme.
Anyways - best of luck & keep us posted with your results.

 

[billy_bob_]

Hi,
I have a Asus M5A99X EVO R2.0 motherboard witch I'm planning to upgrade with a Samsung 970 EVO 250GB SSD boot drive. First things first, the plan is to mod the bios in order to boot from nvme ssd. Then, the issue is that the MBO is PCIE 2.0 only capable. I'm considering to use an M.2 NVMe SSD to PCIE 3.0 X16 adapter in one of the 2 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (x16 or dual x8). My question is whether the NVME SSD run on full 3400r/1500w speed on x8 lanes in PCIE 2.0 mode?

Thanks in advance for your attention!

I have been meaning to do the exact same thing, I have an M5A99FX PRO R2.0, and went through the process of modding the BIOS .cap file.
If it's the same 2501 for the M5A99FX PRO R2.0 as for the M5A99X EVO R2.0 then you should be able to use the BIOS I prepared. I followed a guide perfectly.. but just haven't got round to buying the NVME to PCIe adapter.. along with the PCIe SSD.

Here is the .cap I prepared if you want it. I'd love to know if a PCIe SSD can work on these boards.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rVe4M4mWnbaxwGdchQ8KCedbgtVrqSTE/view?usp=sharing

 

[billy_bob_]

OK just did a file diff.. the two BIOses are different, but do update us here if you get it working, as I say I'd love to know. Forgot which tutorial I used to edit the file but it was some sort of "add NVME to any UEFI BIOS" type guide.

I would definitely not try a sabretooth BIOS, that doesn't have the same shipset or VRM as the M5A99X EVO R2.0. You have the 990X chipset, but the Sabretooth and M5A99FX have the 990FX. But you at least have the same VRM as the M5A99FX

 

[dja_silicon]

While updating your BIOS can lead to a bricked motherboard a seasoned BIOS editor can do it without a problem. I'm running a Gigabyte GA-990FXA UD5 Rev 3.0 and the FX-9590 and because I am not CPU bound I wanted to add an M.2 NVMe 3D NAND. Since there was no slot I grabbed a PCIe adapter that is x4 and used a BIOS update from the folks here > https://www.win-raid.com/. I now am getting almost 1600MBs read and about 1000MBs write but that is throttled by the PCIe 2.0 x4 slot being 50% as fast as a PCIe 3.0. So I'll drop another $20 on a x16 card with the pass through x8. These BIOS mods do work! I am currently booting off nearly 1600MBs and my brand new Crucial 500GB SATA 3D Nand uses ALL of it's available SATA 3 bandwidth to top out at around 550MBs for both read and write which means that SATA 3 is definitely a bottleneck for the fastest SSDs. I'll update you when I get the new x16 adapter to let you know if it will give the full 3000MBs plus the NVMe is capable of.