Can SATA disks work with PCIe-only MCIO

[JavaNocKziK]

So my understanding is MCIO is a replacement for MiniSAS HD/SlimSAS (and possibly OcuLINK?) as it can support much faster transfer rates for future PCIe standards?

But like, I noticed that some motherboards suggest an MCIO port supporting PCIe Gen3 x8 OR SATA (8x I guess) via the PCH bus, but then others ONLY support like PCIe Gen5 x8 with no mention of SATA, see below:


This is AsRock Rack SP2C741D32G-2L+, nothing special about it but just an example.

So I guess the question here is, let's say you want to run a bunch of drives in a NAS, would you still be able to run SATA-based disks off the MCIO ports that mention only PCIe? Or would it not be compatible? Cause, correct me if I'm wrong, but things like a U.3 or EDSFF drive (basically any modern NVMe-based SSD) would be PCIe and it wouldn't matter?

If SATA won't work via such a port, would a SAS drive work or no?

Dankje !

 

[Tech Junky]

My view would be you would need an adapter of some sort to run SATA off those CPU0/1 MCIO plugs. The PCH one states SATA or PCIE. As well the PCH port shows up to 9 drives.

That sure seems to be a ton of lanes for drives though.

MCIO is just the port connector form factor that can have different signaling depending on how the OEM wires things.

I run a U.3 Kioxia as my "NAS" drive because I wanted to slim things down and get rid of the spinners I was using. It's nice to have a singl 15.36TB drive instead of 5 spinners for the same capacity and bumping the speed to 10X+ in the same swap.

I can't say for sure but, you might be able to use those other formats for drives using some sort of backplane though. Just need something that translates the signals from PCIE / sas/sata. It wouldn't be the most efficient use of the lanes though by any means but, you should be able to mux multiple dives through the same uplink in theory.

 

[mattventura]

Generally, no, you can't. It would be like trying to plug a SATA drive into a PCIe slot. Generally, those connectors are just a PCIe slot in a different form.

 

[oneplane]

Neither SAS nor SATA would work. A PCIe-only connector must connect to a PCIe device. Some have restrictions but in general you could adapt one of those to a PCIe or M.2 slot and put an HBA in it.