PCIE Card for Dual M2 NVME?

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T_Minus

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What PCIE card is everyone using to put in 2x M2 NVME sticks on?

Thanks
 

zkrr01

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The most useful one is from StarTech.com and it is a 4x M.2 SSD to 3.5in SATA HDD Adapter. It is cheap and available from Amazon. Supports the Samsung 970 pro and earlier versions. Does not take up PCIe slots and comes with all required power and data cables. As the name implies, it fits in any 3.5in HDD Adapter.
 

T_Minus

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The most useful one is from StarTech.com and it is a 4x M.2 SSD to 3.5in SATA HDD Adapter. It is cheap and available from Amazon. Supports the Samsung 970 pro and earlier versions. Does not take up PCIe slots and comes with all required power and data cables. As the name implies, it fits in any 3.5in HDD Adapter.
I need NVME
 

zkrr01

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The Samsung 970 pro is NVME and is M.2 and the StarTecm.com holds up to four. That's what I thought you was asking for, right?
Of course is supports sizes and brands other then Samsung.
 

T_Minus

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The Samsung 970 pro is NVME and is M.2 and the StarTecm.com holds up to four. That's what I thought you was asking for, right?
Of course is supports sizes and brands other then Samsung.
Which one? I only found the one that did 4x SATA M2 not NVME :/
 

zkrr01

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It's on Amazon as:

StarTech.com 4x M.2 SATA Mounting Adapter for 3.5in Drive Bay - Four-Drive M.2 to SATA Adapter for One 3.5” Drive Bay

I think you are saying "NVME" and meaning something else.

The device I am referring to can hold up to four M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 3.0 x4 NVMe 1.3 SSD's such as the Samsung 970 pro and evo. The
device fits inside a 3,5" drive bay instead of a M.2 2280 socket. The SSD's themselves are placed into four M.2 2280 sockets on the device itself.


 

T_Minus

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It's on Amazon as:

StarTech.com 4x M.2 SATA Mounting Adapter for 3.5in Drive Bay - Four-Drive M.2 to SATA Adapter for One 3.5” Drive Bay

I think you are saying "NVME" and meaning something else.

The device I am referring to can hold up to four M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 3.0 x4 NVMe 1.3 SSD's such as the Samsung 970 pro and evo. The
device fits inside a 3,5" drive bay instead of a M.2 2280 socket. The SSD's themselves are placed into four M.2 2280 sockets on the device itself.


As I said, this device https://www.amazon.com/SATA-Mounting-Adapter-3-5in-Drive/dp/B00VNVMKCG is not a NVME Device it says SATA, you state it's SATA, it clearly has SATA ports on it. This won't work for a M.2 NVME devices, which I specified as what I'm looking for.
 

zkrr01

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I think we live in two different worlds. All I know is I can place four Samsung 970 Pro M.2 2280 1024GB PCIe Gen3. X4, NVMe SSD's
in the device. Really helpful if my PCIe slots are full and I need to add more SSD's.
 

EffrafaxOfWug

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Feb 12, 2015
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I'm with T_Minus on this - the only 4xM2 device I could see on the StarTech site was the SATA one, and as such it can't work with NVME drives:

Not compatible with M.2 NVMe or AHCI PCI-Express SSDs
Back to the original post, I don't use it for day-to-day booting and stuff, only for cloning NVME drives and suchlike, but I picked up this DeLock adapter and it works well enough for me (but as per the blurb it requires PCIe bifurcation support).

A quick search around for dual-M2 cards not needing bifurcation support (i.e. requiring a PLX chip of some sort) revealed the SYBA SI-PEX40129 but it seems relatively recent and, being a PLX-job I can't imagine it'd be cheap. Edit: turns out it's an ASMedia chip and not as obscenely priced but still expensive compared to bifurcation.
 
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T_Minus

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49CE2ABC-D134-4F90-8F77-12ECA5593457.jpeg

You may want to check your drives if you believe them to be nvme connected via SATA.
 

EffrafaxOfWug

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I noticed t'other day that MSI are bundling what looks to be the Rolls Royce of (again bifurcation) 4xM2 adapters with one of their X299 motherboards, double-slot complete with a large heatsink and fan and temp sensors if that's your thing.

MSI MEG X299 CREATION Review
 

T_Minus

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Only dual? I just got this guy in and will be installing it tomorrow.

https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...-server-upgrade-pics.23139/page-4#post-219128
That doesn't fit, and avoiding PLX and associated costs is great :)


I noticed t'other day that MSI are bundling what looks to be the Rolls Royce of (again bifurcation) 4xM2 adapters with one of their X299 motherboards, double-slot complete with a large heatsink and fan and temp sensors if that's your thing.

MSI MEG X299 CREATION Review
That's awesome!

I may have to checkout these 4x for my desktop :D
 

T_Minus

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IamSpartacus

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That doesn't fit, and avoiding PLX and associated costs is great :)
The ASRock card doesn't have a PLX chip (that I know of), I'm using bifurcation on my board with it.


If you only need two m.2 sockets check the supermicro AOC-SLG3-2M2:
-x8 pcie
-no plx chip, requires support for bifurcation
(- starts at 37€ in EU)

AOC-SLG3-2M2 | Add-on Cards | Accessories | Products - Super Micro Computer, Inc.
I also have this AOC-SLG-2M2 with 2 Optane 900p's attached. Works great and I got it for $50 on Amazon. Came with both low profile and standard height bracket.
 

T_Minus

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T_Minus

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For anyone curious I ended up getting a couple of the SuperMicro cards that do 2x NVME, and the Asus Hype M2 that does 4x.
Confirmed in bios already I can run 4x4x4x4 in the single x16 on the XeonD too, so that's exciting to try out :) although, at this point, I may just run it in a single CPU E5 v3 setup.
 
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