Will ASRock Z370 Extreme4 LGA1151 disable SATA when using NVMe?

[JacobRyan]

I'm looking at purchasing an ASRock Z370 Extreme4 LGA1151 for a new build I'm doing. I'm also looking at purchasing a Samsung 960 EVO 500GB NVMe drive (MZ-V6E500). ASRock's manual states:

* M2_1, SATA3_0 and SATA3_1 share lanes. If either one of them is in use, the others will
be disabled.
* M2_2, SATA3_4 and SATA3_5 share lanes. If either one of them is in use, the others will
be disabled.

Since it's an NVMe and would be using PCIe3, would the SATA ports still get disabled? I know the Extreme4 has 8 SATA ports but I'm going to be putting in a 6 drive RAID configuration, as well as a 500GB SSD so all those SATA ports are necessary. Thanks for the help!

 

[feelinfroggy777]

Yes, it depends on the motherboard, but using a PCIe SSD can disable certain SATA ports. I have a z370 gigabyte gaming 7 and there is one M.2 drive that an NVME SSD can be installed and not disable the other SATA ports.

 

[feelinfroggy777]

I looked up the manual for the Extreme4 and it does not look like there is a way around using the NVMe drive without taking away SATA ports.

You could install the NVMe drive a PCIe slot with the appropriate adapter, but you would be taking away lanes from your GPU. If you are not using a GPU, then it wont matter.

 

[Snipergod87]

It will disable them unless you get a PCI-Express to NVMe riser to plug your card into one of the 16x slots.

I hope you are not going to be using RAID 5 for your array

 

[JacobRyan]

Yes, it depends on the motherboard, but using a PCIe SSD can disable certain SATA ports. I have a z370 gigabyte gaming 7 and there is one M.2 drive that an NVME SSD can be installed and not disable the other SATA ports.

Thanks! It seems the problem then becomes I've seen a lot of the ASUS doesn't always seem to disable the ports but they tend to max out at 6 SATA ports. As I say below, I guess I could get 6TB drives.

 

[JacobRyan]

It will disable them unless you get a PCI-Express to NVMe riser to plug your card into one of the 16x slots.

I hope you are not going to be using RAID 5 for your array

Haha no, RAID 10, hence the 6 drives. I suppose I could spend some extra coin and go for 4, 6TB drives, instead of 6, 4TB drives.

 

[JacobRyan]

I looked up the manual for the Extreme4 and it does not look like there is a way around using the NVMe drive without taking away SATA ports.

You could install the NVMe drive a PCIe slot with the appropriate adapter, but you would be taking away lanes from your GPU. If you are not using a GPU, then it wont matter.

I am going to be putting in a GTX 1080Ti looking specifically at the EVGA SC2 edition.

 

[feelinfroggy777]

I looked up the manual for the Extreme4 and it does not look like there is a way around using the NVMe drive without taking away SATA ports.

You could install the NVMe drive a PCIe slot with the appropriate adapter, but you would be taking away lanes from your GPU. If you are not using a GPU, then it wont matter.

I am going to be putting in a GTX 1080Ti looking specifically at the EVGA SC2 edition.

Yeah, I would not put the NVMe drive on the PCIe slot with the adapter. You will be running the 1080ti at only 8 lanes and you will have performance loss in some games.

Go for the 6tb drives. I ran into the same problem before and really wish I had just run with the higher capacity drives from the beginning. To save some money, just buy 6gb external HDDs and install them in a 3.5" enclosure. You can get the exact same drives and they are much cheaper.

 

[JacobRyan]

I looked up the manual for the Extreme4 and it does not look like there is a way around using the NVMe drive without taking away SATA ports.

You could install the NVMe drive a PCIe slot with the appropriate adapter, but you would be taking away lanes from your GPU. If you are not using a GPU, then it wont matter.

I am going to be putting in a GTX 1080Ti looking specifically at the EVGA SC2 edition.

Yeah, I would not put the NVMe drive on the PCIe slot with the adapter. You will be running the 1080ti at only 8 lanes and you will have performance loss in some games.

Go for the 6tb drives. I ran into the same problem before and really wish I had just run with the higher capacity drives from the beginning. To save some money, just buy 6gb external HDDs and install them in a 3.5" enclosure. You can get the exact same drives and they are much cheaper.

Wow yeah, didn't even think about that. I'm just using WD Blue's in it, and they're like $60 cheaper to get an external then the drive itself. Thanks for the heads up! That actually saves me like $100 compared to buying 6x 4TB drives, and $240 from buying the 4x internal 6TB drives.

 

[feelinfroggy777]

Yeah, it really is a racket they have going on with the HDD market.