[SOLVED] NVME m.2 question. Mobo raid0 install vs Asus Hyper Raid0 install

[alternative301]

I am new to doing m.2 installs in general and have a question regarding the speed of doing a Motherboard Raid0 setup vs a Asus Hyper M.2 PCIE expansion card Raid Setup.
I am using the Asus PRIME 270m Plus Motherboard. I am currently running my Win10 Pro -x64 Bit on one single Non NVME m.2 SSD.



Note - Both Pioneer M.2 NVME i am purchasing are version 3 not version 4.


Amazon NVME m.2 Drive Link
https://www.amazon.com/Pioneer-Internal-Solid-State-Drive/dp/B07P5QFRGJ?th=1

I also i checked and my Bios and my Bios revision does have the Enable Asus Hyper Expansion card checkbox so i assume its compatible.


Amazon Link for my Motherboard Model
https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-PRIME-Z270M-Plus-LGA1151-Motherboard/dp/B01N1Q2P77



Asus Hyper Card Amazon Link
https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-M-2-X16-V2-Threadripper/dp/B07NQBQB6Z/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=hyper+m.2&qid=1588130084&sr=8-1

According to my motherboard manual and the Hyper specs on amazon, all my Individual Plug or Slot standards are PCIE 3.0 (not PCIE 4.0) at a x4 modifier. The difference being 2 motherboard dedicated direct plug slots or up to 4 on the Asus Hyper Expansion Card.


Question 1 ...
I am wondering are there benefits to running 2 NVME in Raid0 on the Asus hyper card out of a x16 secondary PCIE slot VS ---> on this z270m board directly(x2)?

PCIE slot 1 being used by A Video Card already.



Question 2 ...
Are Asus Hyper m.2 Expansion cards a Operating System boot compatible technology?



I am new to this install and the first time i have done a NVME M.2 Mod. I have been out of the building game and the last installs i did were still Cable based SSD HD and RPM HD Installs.
Worst cast scenario is i only drop 50 dollars on the Asus Expansion card and it doesnt load correctly and am forced to use the other config.



Question 3 ...
Is it faster with my motherboard to run a single NVME from a single PCIEx16 to NVME card adapter for one single NVME drive out of the secondary PCIEx16 Slot or Run a single off the Primary off the Main m.2 Slot of the MOBO?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07JKR5C3Z/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1



(Post Edited for Accuracy)


Any information much appreciated.

George.

 

[Rogue Leader]

There is a simple answer to this. Don't waste your time/money.

You're going to spend time and money making this work for 0 real world benefit. The only benefit there is is in SOME synthetic benchmarks, or if somehow you are transferring or encoding massive files back and forth between drives. Some benchmarks are actually worse.

PCIe 3.0 drives are fine on your board, it does not support PCIe 4.0 NVMe drives. If you were to use that expansion card you'd be taking PCIe lanes from your GPU slightly hindering its performance, again for no reason at all.

When it comes to booting up windows, running a game, running Photoshop, etc you will never ever see a benefit.

 

[alternative301]

Thanks for the response. For now i may just use in default configuration and wait down the line to set anything else up.

I could be wrong but I was under the impression that there are NVME drives that are Gen 3 not Gen4 speed which is Version2. Or am i quoting a different standard? like the difference between a Corsair MP500 vs MP600.

I was with the intention to only use gen 3 spec parts with this board.

Edit* nvm, misread. you did say 3.0 is fine on my board.****

 

[Rogue Leader]

Thanks for the response. For now i may just use in default configuration and wait down the line to set anything else up.

I could be wrong but I was under the impression that there are NVME drives that are Gen 3 not Gen4 speed which is Version2. Or am i quoting a different standard? like the difference between a Corsair MP500 vs MP600.

I was with the intention to only use gen 3 spec parts with this board.

Edit nvm, misread. you did say 3.0 is fine on my board.***

Gen 4 is PCIe 4.0 Only AMD currently supports that on their X570 Boards.

That is the difference between those two Corsair drives, but you can't use the benefits of 4.0

Also most of it is Benchmarks, real life, not so much.

 

[USAFRet]

Question 1 ...
I am wondering are there benefits to running 2 NVME in Raid0 ...

No.

Unless you are a movie production house, and moving multiple gigabyte files to another NVME RAID 0 array, multiple times per day...there is ZERO benefit.

In normal use, that RAID 0 may be slower than individual drives. The RAID overhead steps on the performance of the actual drive.

 

[alternative301]

I got these parts today and did some speed benchmarks. They matched the advertised speeds very close being, slightly under. I found that running in Raid does not seem to benefit me in terms of speed. This could be due to maxing out the slot capabilities. (my best guess) The thing i do like is seeing all my storage under one drive though. These drives are very noticeably faster than the last SATA drives.

I got 90 to 110 Mbps from a standard hybrid SATA SSD drive to a SATA M.2 or NVME M.2. slow no matter what.

I then tried SATAM.2 to NVME PCIE, I got 350-450 Steady mbps on a manual transfer.

Last i installed the 2 NVME and booted them via Hardware Raid0 in Asus Bios.

The windows install time was around exactly 5 to 6 minutes from a flash USB.

Once i installed and updated the drivers of this NVME Raid0 config, I didn't have any other NVME to manually transfer to so I ran a CrystalDisk Benchmark.

Read Write
Pass 1 3.157Gbps 2.917Gbps
Pass 2 2.160Gbps 2.490Gbps
Pass 3 1.097Gbps 1.151Gbps
Pass 4 0.048Gbps 0.140Gbps

My pass test settings were set to

Pass 1 - Sequential 1 Mib / Ques = 8 / Threads = 1
Pass 2 - Sequential 1 Mib /Ques = 1 / Threads = 1
Pass 3 - Random 4 Kib /Ques = 32/ Threads = 16
Pass 4 - Random 4 Kib /Ques = 1 / Threads = 1

 

[mdd1963]

If you do the RAID 0, you may indeed get brag-worthy numbers on CrystalDiskMark reads, and, maybe even writes...

That's the extent of RAID 0 benefits with a pair of NVME drives in RAID 0....(as others have pointed out)

A standard 970 EVO by itself is already capable of 3400 MB/sec reads/3000 MB/sec writes, however....

If your M.2 adapter with two drives in RAID 0 requires an X8 or X16 PCI-e slot, you may then be running your GPU at x8 lanes...(the Z270 chipset does not have many PCI-e lanes to spare)


Good luck

 

[Rogue Leader]

If your M.2 adapter with two drives in RAID 0 requires an X8 or X16 PCI-e slot, you may then be running your GPU at x8 lanes...(the Z270 chipset does not have many PCI-e lanes to spare)

This is the main problem, kneecapping your GPU for 0 real world benefit.