Question Will my m.2 SSDs be congested?

b3l1nsky

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I am building a home server with the asrock rack X470D4U motherboard. I noticed that the diagram (picture is further down) for the motherboard layout shows both m.2 slots going through the chipset, not directly to the cpu. Will this cause considerable latency? How about congestion? One of the slots is PCIe 3.0 x2, and the other is PCIe 2.0 x4, while the SSDs are PCIe 3.1 x4 and PCIe 3.0 x4. What SSD should I use in which slot? This motherboard works very well for my setup, apart from the shady m.2 situation, which worries me somewhat. Thank you.

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P. S. Is the x470 chipset adequate for a ryzen 7 3800x? I will not be overclocking anything.
 
You will be slightly bottle-necked by the low gen PCIe slot along with having to go through the chipset, but you will not notice anything substantial if you're not moving gigabytes worth of data at once.

You can buy a PCIe M.2 Expansion card that goes into the PCIE 3.0 x16 slot, you will have full PCIe 3.0 support and a direct connection to the CPU.
https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-M-2-X16...nt=&hvlocphy=&hvtargid=pla-659234806310&psc=1

This'll also work fine in the PCIe x8 slot with no considerable data loss speed.

As for 3800x Compatibility, according to their list the 3700x is but it doesn't show the 3800x.
https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=X470D4U#CPU

But since the 3800x is just an overclocked 3700x, you should be fine.
 
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b3l1nsky

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You will be slightly bottle-necked by the low gen PCIe slot along with having to go through the chipset, but you will not notice anything substantial if you're not moving gigabytes worth of data at once.

You can buy a PCIe M.2 Expansion card that goes into the PCIE 3.0 x16 slot, you will have full PCIe 3.0 support and a direct connection to the CPU.
https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-M-2-X16...nt=&hvlocphy=&hvtargid=pla-659234806310&psc=1

This'll also work fine in the PCIe x8 slot with no considerable data loss speed.

As for 3800x Compatibility, according to their list the 3700x is but it doesn't show the 3800x.
https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=X470D4U#CPU

But since the 3800x is just an overclocked 3700x, you should be fine.

Thank you for your reply! I have emailed asrock rack in regard to 3800x, and they say that an upcoming bios update will bring official compatability, so I am not worried. What I was wondering is whether the x470 chipset will allow me to get the most from the cpu (I don't care about PCIe 4.0). Would it be otherwise identical in performance to x570?

As for the SSDs, one will be exclusively for OS usage (centos), it is a 128gb intel SSD, but the other one is 2tb and will be used to build android ROMs and other intensive tasks. Would you say it's a good idea to invest in that asus card? Would it draw a lot of energy? My concern is that I am already somewhat pushing my PSU and my UPS.
 
Thank you for your reply! I have emailed asrock rack in regard to 3800x, and they say that an upcoming bios update will bring official compatability, so I am not worried. What I was wondering is whether the x470 chipset will allow me to get the most from the cpu (I don't care about PCIe 4.0). Would it be otherwise identical in performance to x570?

As for the SSDs, one will be exclusively for OS usage (centos), it is a 128gb intel SSD, but the other one is 2tb and will be used to build android ROMs and other intensive tasks. Would you say it's a good idea to invest in that asus card? Would it draw a lot of energy? My concern is that I am already somewhat pushing my PSU and my UPS.

If you want to compare the x470 server board with an x570, you will find the x570 does provide more even if it's designed for gaming. Most x570's do have ECC support, gigabit ethernet connection, and unlike the x470 the x570 supports more RAM (128GB) total and at higher speeds.
The m.2 slots are also not bottle-necked and the best part - it's cheaper than the x470 server board.

However the caveats about that option is the reliability of prolonged power-on usage. Since server boards are designed to be left on constantly the x470 has more reliability. The x570 also has an onboard fan that can fail at anytime without giving warning causing it to destroy the chipset since you won't know until it's too late.
So honestly there are pros and cons. This will come down to a personal choice. I personally have a gaming motherboard running my home server but it's an old intel 1150 chipset board.

And the PCIe asus card should not draw much power, at most it's stated to use up to 14W.

I'd invest in a better PSU however if you're going to start a server. Don't want to cheap out your server's power supply.
 
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b3l1nsky

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If you want to compare the x470 server board with an x570, you will find the x570 does provide more even if it's designed for gaming. Most x570's do have ECC support, gigabit ethernet connection, and unlike the x470 the x570 supports more RAM (128GB) total and at higher speeds.
The m.2 slots are also not bottle-necked and the best part - it's cheaper than the x470 server board.

However the caveats about that option is the reliability of prolonged power-on usage. Since server boards are designed to be left on constantly the x470 has more reliability. The x570 also has an onboard fan that can fail at anytime without giving warning causing it to destroy the chipset since you won't know until it's too late.
So honestly there are pros and cons. This will come down to a personal choice. I personally have a gaming motherboard running my home server but it's an old intel 1150 chipset board.

And the PCIe asus card should not draw much power, at most it's stated to use up to 14W.

I'd invest in a better PSU however if you're going to start a server. Don't want to cheap out your server's power supply.

The reason I want this particular board is the built-in GPU. I am going to go with no dedicated GPU, as I don't need it for my build. The power supply is a good one and it is powerful enough for my current build (as per outervision), but adding anything else to it might be too much. The problem with updating the psu is that I'd have to get a new ups as well, which would turn out to be quite costly. I doubt there are any x570 server boards (or ones with a built-in gpu), so I guess I've no choice but to go with this one. Thank you for your input.
 
The reason I want this particular board is the built-in GPU. I am going to go with no dedicated GPU, as I don't need it for my build. The power supply is a good one and it is powerful enough for my current build (as per outervision), but adding anything else to it might be too much. The problem with updating the psu is that I'd have to get a new ups as well, which would turn out to be quite costly. I doubt there are any x570 server boards (or ones with a built-in gpu), so I guess I've no choice but to go with this one. Thank you for your input.

Sounds like you know what to do then. As for your original question, that asus hyper m.2 expansion card should be adequate if you don't want to bottleneck any performance. It'll only use up to 14w. Up to you, you could always test the m.2's on your mainboard with ssd speed tests and if you're not satisfied then go the asus hyper route.
 
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b3l1nsky

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Sounds like you know what to do then. As for your original question, that asus hyper m.2 expansion card should be adequate if you don't want to bottleneck any performance. It'll only use up to 14w. Up to you, you could always test the m.2's on your mainboard with ssd speed tests and if you're not satisfied then go the asus hyper route.

Looking into the PCIe card I noticed that it is only compatible with certain motherboards (chipset dependant). It doesn't seem to be compatible with x470. Asrock has a similar product available, but that is also limited to certain motherboards. Any idea if there is such a product for x470 motherboards?
 
Looking into the PCIe card I noticed that it is only compatible with certain motherboards (chipset dependant). It doesn't seem to be compatible with x470. Asrock has a similar product available, but that is also limited to certain motherboards. Any idea if there is such a product for x470 motherboards?

It should be compatible, it says so on their specs > features section

https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboard-Accessories/HYPER-M-2-X16-CARD-V2/specifications/

Contact them to find out.
As for the asrock version, it will require a 6-pin 12v cable from your psu. So if you have that available then that is also a valid option to go.
 
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b3l1nsky

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Sounds like you know what to do then. As for your original question, that asus hyper m.2 expansion card should be adequate if you don't want to bottleneck any performance. It'll only use up to 14w. Up to you, you could always test the m.2's on your mainboard with ssd speed tests and if you're not satisfied then go the asus hyper route.

Looking into the PCIe card I noticed that it is only compatible with certain motherboards (chipset dependant). It doesn't seem to be compatible with x470. Asrock has a similar product available, but that is also limited to certain motherboards. Any idea if there is such a product for x470 motherboards?
It should be compatible, it says so on their specs > features section

https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboard-Accessories/HYPER-M-2-X16-CARD-V2/specifications/

Contact them to find out.
As for the asrock version, it will require a 6-pin 12v cable from your psu. So if you have that available then that is also a valid option to go.

Ohh, there's a v2 of this card... Sneaky branding, I think I was looking at v1? Not sure. One last question, do you know why this card needs a specific chipset at all? Is this for RAID compatability? The PCIe lanes would go directly to the cpu in this case, wouldn't they?
 
Ohh, there's a v2 of this card... Sneaky branding, I think I was looking at v1? Not sure. One last question, do you know why this card needs a specific chipset at all? Is this for RAID compatability? The PCIe lanes would go directly to the cpu in this case, wouldn't they?

You're talking about the chipset on the expansion card? Yeah it's there for RAID support if you require that, but also to simply help the CPU and the drives communicate properly.