Gigabyte MB10-DS1 nvme connector?

[josh3light]

So, I found a really good deal on xeon-d Gigabyte MB10-DS1 over the black friday weekend, and in the process of building the machine I found that there is a nvme connector on the motherboard. This is my first encounter with nvme, u.2, m.2 etc, and after some research I still don't quite understand which ssd I'd need to buy to plug in to this connector. Attached is the photo of the area of the motherboard with the nvme connector.

Which ssd / connector would I need?

 

[Marsh]

I brought the same board.

I checked the doc, the connector in your picture is not documented.
Where did you find out the connector is for SSD?

 

[Patrick]

That does not look like a NVMe capable connector. Remember for a single drive you need a SFF-8643 connector, a PCIe x4 slot or similar.

 

[smitty2k1]

Bought the same board, my box-included documentation calls it NVMe, but the online documentation shows it on the schematic but does not reference it.

Additionally, the NVMe section of the bios just says 'not detected' or something similar. Certainly the Xeon D chip supports NVMe in addition to the PCIe lane (see all the Supermicro boards). I'm guessing Gigabyte planned on supporting it with some sort of breakout cable but then gave up half way through development.

I think my documentation just called two of the pins "SMBus" or something similar.


In other fun news, the older versions of these boards had 2 chassis fan headers in addition to the CPU header. The one I received only had one

 

[josh3light]

Interestingly, while the online version of the motherboard manual has this connector unlabeled, the printed one that came with the motherboard has it labeled as an NVMe connector.

@smitty2k1 Hmm, I see you have the same situation.

But... there are two NVMe drives in the QVL list. Looks like only PCIe 3.0 though.

 

[BlueFox]

The only NVMe SSDs you're going to be hooking up to that board are going to be through the PCIe x16 slot.

 

[smitty2k1]

Interestingly, while the online version of the motherboard manual has this connector unlabeled, the printed one that came with the motherboard has it labeled as an NVMe connector.

@smitty2k1 Hmm, I see you have the same situation.

But... there are two NVMe drives in the QVL list. Looks like only PCIe 3.0 though.

PCIe3 is exactly what you would want. However I suspect you're chasing a lost cause

 

[SDLeary]

The MB10-DS1 doesn't have an NVMe connector, either a U.2 or an M.2, only the six SATA connectors. The only Gigabyte mini-ITX board that has NVMe is the MX11-pc0, which has a standard U.2/mini-SAS connector.

At least as far as I can tell from their web site.

SDLeary

 

[josh3light]

The MB10-DS1 doesn't have an NVMe connector, either a U.2 or an M.2, only the six SATA connectors. The only Gigabyte mini-ITX board that has NVMe is the MX11-pc0, which has a standard U.2/mini-SAS connector.

At least as far as I can tell from their web site.

SDLeary

You're probably right... anyway here is the image from the included documentation that made me start to wonder, #28 is labeled "NVMe connector"

 

[smitty2k1]

That's exactly what mine looks like, and further down on the page is the pinout for that connector as well

 

[SDLeary]

You're probably right... anyway here is the image from the included documentation that made me start to wonder, #28 is labeled "NVMe connector"

Odd. Perhaps some sort of proprietary connector, or a new connector for an NVMe DOM?

SDLeary

 

[pgh5278]

Looked at latest qiock reference card for that products, there is no NVMe item in the list, but there are still mistakes, looking at it and the nearby connectors it is a the ( backplane connector, ie a I2C or similar, which it looks like to me. or a IPMB connector..)

 

[SDLeary]

You know, the way its labeled got me thinking. Doesn't that look like a power header? Like perhaps they originally intended to have, say, a mini-SAS/NVMe connector and wanted a power header so that they could keep things like power supplies small? Hence NVME_PH.

Looks like they engineered one out while leaving or forgetting about the other?

SDLeary

 

[himynameisdaniel]

how many pins does it have? got a better photo of the connector?