Question MSI Pro Z690-A WiFi DDR4 and available PCIe slots ?

rtomas99

Honorable
Sep 9, 2017
27
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10,535
Greetings from the hinterland.

I have need/interest in having as many NvMe M.2 SSD's as I can get into my system.
The Board comes with 4 M.2 connections. 1 1Tb is used for my win 11 drive, 2 1Tb for gaming, and 1 3Tb NvMe for UHD movie archive for Plex.
UDH 2160p ATMOS movies are extremely large files, often 30 to 80 Gb. And they need fast read/write drives to prevent any buffering. I cannot use reg HDD, too slow.
I have my graphics card in the first or PCIe1 5.0 X16 slot from CPU.
The 2nd or PCIe2 3.0 X1 slot is empty.
PCIe3 3.0 X4 has a NvMe adapter card which is supposed to hold 2 drives. I can only get one to work at a time.
PCIe4 3.0 X1 has a adaptor card for multiport USB connections
So, currently I have 5 NvMe drives. 7Tb total. All close to full. I'm an idiot I know, but that's not what we're discussing at the moment.

My questions:
  1. Can I populate all 4 PCIe slots? I seem to remember reading somewhere that on this board, if the X4 slot was used, the e4 slot was not available or something like that. True or can I, for example, put NvMe adapters in all available slots? I couldn't find my original users manual and the one online was too brief.
  2. Why am I unable to use 2 x NVMe drives in the one adapter card I've got?
Thanks for your thoughts and merry Xmas!
 
Which CPU are you using?

4x M.2 slots (Key M)
  • M2_1 slot (from CPU)
    • Supports PCIe 4.0 x4
    • Supports 2242/ 2260/ 2280/ 22110 storage devices
  • M2_2 slot (from Z690 chipset)
    • Supports PCIe 4.0 x4
    • Supports 2242/ 2260/ 2280 storage devices
  • M2_3 slot (from Z690 chipset)
    • Supports PCIe 3.0 x4 (check that the fastest SSD is not in this place, but shouldn´t make a difference)
    • Supports SATA 6Gb/s
    • Supports 2242/ 2260/ 2280 storage devices
  • M2_4 slot (from Z690 chipset)
    • Supports PCIe 4.0 x4
    • Supports SATA 6Gb/s
    • Supports 2242/ 2260/ 2280 storage devices
The manual isn´t that clear like you already know, but doesn´t state that it will be limited by using all PCIe slots at the same time. So should work in theory.