AOC-SLG3-2M2 to Bifurcate or not Bifurcate on X9DRi-LN4F+

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John M.

Member
Mar 7, 2016
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Hello everyone,

I have a X9DRi-LN4F+ my cpu's are coming at the end of this week.

I was wondering if the AOC-SLG3-2M2 would work on this board. It is officially not supported.

However I have read on this forum that one NVME would work but two drives at the same time would not work since pcie slot needs Bifurcation to split the 8 lanes into 4 separate lanes.

I checked the manual and found that there is Bifurcation control. Does this mean the AOC-SLG3-2M2 would work on this board? Here is what it says:


IIO 2 PCIe Port Bifurcation Control

This submenu congures the following IO PCIe Port Bifurcation Control settings for IIO 2 PCIe ports to determine how the available PCI-Express lanes to be distributed between the PCI-Exp. Root Ports.

Any thoughts?

Cheers!
Karel.
 

carcass

New Member
Aug 14, 2017
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It doesn't work on latest BIOS -- indeed only top NVME drive is visible.
bifurcation control is grayed out, and setting it manually by ruexe tool doesn't seem to work.
 

satter

New Member
Oct 17, 2016
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I have X9DR3-F board and my AOC-SLG3-2M2 card is on the way. It could take 2-3 weeks.

I'm gonna test it with two Samsung NVMe drives. If bifurcation works I will do a BIOS mod to support NVMe boot.
 

John M.

Member
Mar 7, 2016
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I checked with supermicro but only asked if you would be able to boot from the pci-e drive. This is what they said:

X9DRI-LN4F+ motherboard would support PCIe NVME drive. The OS and PCIe slot need to be in UEFI mode.
Go to BIOS->Advanced->PCIe/PCI/PnP Configuration, change "Launch Storage OpROM policy" to "UEFI only". Then installed OS in UEFI.

I didn't ask about the bifurcation because I decided to stick with a simple sata ssd. App launch times don't really matter to me beyond the sata ssd speed. Boot times don't matter much as well since I'm using a raid card that takes forever to load it's bios...
 

satter

New Member
Oct 17, 2016
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I've checked mine AOC-SLG3-2M2 and could not make both ssd work, only first one does.
I tried different slots and different bifurcation settings -- no luck.
Is there any other passive PCI-e splitters for m2 drives?
 

sovking

Member
Jun 2, 2011
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You mean it bifurcate correctly on X9DRi-LN4F+ ? Have you tested with multiple nvme drive on the same slot ?
 

carcass

New Member
Aug 14, 2017
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It is dated 5/23/2018, but I'm not sure if it has been there since that date. Anyways, after upgrading to 3.3 it is possible to choose bifurcation mode in bios -- but that I tried with ruexe tool without success -- and it actually works now.
 

copcopcopcop

Member
Feb 2, 2017
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anyone able to confirm if this works with the X9DRD-7LN4F board with BIOS v3.3?

would the AOC-SHG3-4M2P card work as well?
 

Philmatic

Active Member
Sep 15, 2011
124
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Funny timing, I JUST got the IT model of this board (X9DRD-7LN4F-JBOD) and the AOC-SLG3-2M2, along with two HP EX920 M.2 PCIe 3.1 x4 NVMe SSDs.

I struggled with ordering it all without clear confirmation online that bifurciation does work on X19 boards, I figured it was worth the risk and worst case is I have to use 2 PCIe slots to use my two SSDs.

With the latest bios (R 3.3), and setting bifurciation to 4x/4x on CPU 1/Slot 1, it works BEAUTIFULLY. I have both SSDs showing up in VMWare and have the full 1TB available. The screenshot below shows the performance to the NVMe drives from INSIDE a Windows guest VM, as well as the related VMWare info. I will try to get a screenshot of the BIOS setting the next time I reboot the host.

upload_2019-3-24_16-41-24.png

upload_2019-3-24_16-41-2.png
upload_2019-3-24_16-42-35.png
upload_2019-3-24_16-42-59.png
 

copcopcopcop

Member
Feb 2, 2017
36
11
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36
Funny timing, I JUST got the IT model of this board (X9DRD-7LN4F-JBOD) and the AOC-SLG3-2M2, along with two HP EX920 M.2 PCIe 3.1 x4 NVMe SSDs.

I struggled with ordering it all without clear confirmation online that bifurciation does work on X19 boards, I figured it was worth the risk and worst case is I have to use 2 PCIe slots to use my two SSDs.

With the latest bios (R 3.3), and setting bifurciation to 4x/4x on CPU 1/Slot 1, it works BEAUTIFULLY. I have both SSDs showing up in VMWare and have the full 1TB available. The screenshot below shows the performance to the NVMe drives from INSIDE a Windows guest VM, as well as the related VMWare info. I will try to get a screenshot of the BIOS setting the next time I reboot the host.

View attachment 10793

View attachment 10792
View attachment 10794
View attachment 10795
Great stuff. I wonder if it would also work with one of these AOC-SLG3-2E4 cards for 2 NVME connecters.
 

cferra

New Member
Jun 27, 2016
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Funny timing, I JUST got the IT model of this board (X9DRD-7LN4F-JBOD) and the AOC-SLG3-2M2, along with two HP EX920 M.2 PCIe 3.1 x4 NVMe SSDs.

I struggled with ordering it all without clear confirmation online that bifurciation does work on X19 boards, I figured it was worth the risk and worst case is I have to use 2 PCIe slots to use my two SSDs.

With the latest bios (R 3.3), and setting bifurciation to 4x/4x on CPU 1/Slot 1, it works BEAUTIFULLY. I have both SSDs showing up in VMWare and have the full 1TB available. The screenshot below shows the performance to the NVMe drives from INSIDE a Windows guest VM, as well as the related VMWare info. I will try to get a screenshot of the BIOS setting the next time I reboot the host.

View attachment 10793

View attachment 10792
View attachment 10794
View attachment 10795
I’ve got an x9dri-f and I tried to replicate your success and have not be able it to detect the 2 NVMe drives in the card.

Latest bios 3.3.
 

cferra

New Member
Jun 27, 2016
17
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Yeah - I know I saw that - I figured they were similar enough that it was worth a shot. Others are reporting success with the dri-l4nf but it’s not working for me even though I see bifurcation options in the bios. Frustrating
 
Last edited:

Philmatic

Active Member
Sep 15, 2011
124
85
28
Are you sure you are using the right slot #? They are numbered in reverse order from what you would logically think.

upload_2019-7-8_14-43-37.png
 

Zervun

Member
Feb 2, 2019
44
9
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Oregon
I have a DRi and got my AOC-SLG3-2M2 to work.

The bios does not support booting from nvme out of the box (with 3.3).

I followed the nvme bios flash instructions on win-raid forums. You have to use the AMI bios flash tool and not the UEFI bios flash tool due to something weird with the supermicro bios.

After doing that, nvme is recognized in the bios with one issue that the drives show up as a generic name and you can't really differenciate between the two nvme drives within the bios (such as boot order etc, it just says something like UEFI boot drive or something)

I have legacy OProm mode on, not UEFI. Bifurcation had to be set on the slot it was in

I was able to install Freenas using legacy mode install and it boots off the nvmes

Hopefully this will help someone.
 
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