[SOLVED] PCIe Expansion Card for M.2 Question

[Nick007]

Hi all,

Had a question about using PCIe Expansion Cards to add M.2 storage. So I'm a big fan of M.2 drives, for the speed of course, but also the lack of cables. I'm currently using 2 M.2 SSDs on my motherboard, one for my OS and the other is a 1TB storage. I will soon be running out of room on the 1TB, so I started looking at SSDs when I discovered M.2 expansion cards for PCIe (like the ASUS Hyper M.2 X 16 PCIe 3.0 for 4 M.2s). My build specs are below, but I realized my motherboard does not support PCI slots #2 through #5 if the M.2 slot #2 is in use.

But, if I took out the M.2 from M.2 Slot 2, and used an expansion card (like the ASUS Hyper), could I put my M.2 in the expansion card (with 3 more M.2s)? The reason why I like the idea of an expansion card is that I don't plan on using my second PCIe 16x and I like having as minimal cables as possible (I know the ASUS Hyper requires a 6pin power).

Are there any drawbacks or cons for using an expansion card?

Thanks!

EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 FTW3
AMD Ryzen 7 2700x w/ Noctua CHROMAX NH-u12s
G.Skill Trident Z RGB RAM 32g @3200
MSI B450 Pro Carbon AC Motherboard
EVGA G3 850w PSU
Corsair 570x Case w/ 6x Corsair ML Pro RGB Fans (3 in and 3 out)
Samsung 960 Evo 256gb M.2 (OS)
Intel M.2 SSD 660p Series 1 TB

 

[k1114]

All 4 m.2 will run at 2.0 x1 so besides having no cables, you don't get more sequential speed over sata which won't matter for most uses anyways.

 

[Nick007]

All 4 m.2 will run at 2.0 x1 so besides having no cables, you don't get more sequential speed over sata which won't matter for most uses anyways.

So it would work on my motherboard with the expansion card? Are there any other requirements to use the expansion card? The extra drives would be mainly for game downloads, my OS is on the main M.2.

Also, would I be able to access all 4 M.2s at the same time?

 

[USAFRet]

The extra drives would be mainly for game downloads, my OS is on the main M.2.

You're spending extra money, for no performance gain over SATA III SSD's.

 

[k1114]

I couldn't find any concrete info of anyone using it in a x4 slot so I can't say for sure. It says x8 or x16 but I don't see why it couldn't separate it to x1 each. You would see all 4 separate unless you raid.

 

[popatim]

Just buy a bigger M2 drive, clone you're over and then sell the smaller one and recoupe some monies.
There's little point in spending $50+ for the adapter plus extra money for NVME drives only to end up spending $100 more then a larger sata drive to begin with and end up being just as slow.

But it's you're money

I couldn't find any concrete info of anyone using it in a x4 slot so I can't say for sure. It says x8 or x16 but I don't see why it couldn't separate it to x1 each. You would see all 4 separate unless you raid.

There's also no evidence that the B450 PCH can bifurcate it's lanes at all much less break it down to 1 lane channels. This involves switches and I don't know any motherboard that will break it down to 1 lane segments.
Given that this motherbd won't even support breaking down the CPU lanes into two pcie3 slots leaves me thinking it definitely won't go the extra mile on a lowly pcie2 x4 slot...

 

[Nick007]

Just buy a bigger M2 drive, clone you're over and then sell the smaller one and recoupe some monies.
There's little point in spending $50+ for the adapter plus extra money for NVME drives only to end up spending $100 more then a larger sata drive to begin with and end up being just as slow.

But it's you're money



There's also no evidence that the B450 PCH can bifurcate it's lanes at all much less break it down to 1 lane channels. This involves switches and I don't know any motherboard that will break it down to 1 lane segments.
Given that this motherbd won't even support breaking down the CPU lanes into two pcie3 slots leaves me thinking it definitely won't go the extra mile on a lowly pcie2 x4 slot...

Thanks all for the replies. Until 4TB M.2s are available, I'm still considering the expansion card option. From what I found in the BIOS, the PCIe 16x can be bifurcate on the PCIe_1 lane (used by my GPU). But the PCIe_4 lane (the other 16x) doesn't show since nothing is plugged in at the moment. In the manual I found this:

- PCIe SlotX Lanes Configuration PCIe lanes configuration is for MSI M.2 Xpander / MSI M.2 Xpander-Z / Other M.2 PCIe storage card. The options in this item will vary with the installed processor.

So I should be able to set the 16x to 4x4 lanes, but not sure if only the PCIe_1 or also PCIe_4. The MSI M.2 Xpander is a similar product to the Asus, but can't be bought individually.

Right now, the expansion card is hovering around 90$ and another 1Tb M.2 around 120$. The 2TB SSD I was looking at is at 350$.

 

[popatim]

I think you can only bifurcate the CPU lanes and you don't have another Gen3 slot so the adapter would only see 1 SSD.
Let us know how you make out please.

 

[Nick007]

I think you can only bifurcate the CPU lanes and you don't have another Gen3 slot so the adapter would only see 1 SSD.
Let us know how you make out please.

I think you are right, I can't seem to find any additional information about it working or not with my B450 motherboard. From the Amazon comments, some have managed to make it work and others only have one M.2 being recognized (some manage to bifurcate others don't specify). Seems at this point the only way of finding out is trying it.

Might reach out to MSI to see if they can specify what is noted in the manual. Otherwise, I might just go for the SSD. Thanks all for help, will update if I get more information.