NVMe: 2.5" SFF drives working in a normal desktop

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alex1002

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Apr 9, 2013
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Does this card support Raid 1 or Raid 0. Is there any advantage getting this vs a PCIE Card with Storage on it.
 
Patrick

Patrick

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alex1002 said:
Supermicro AOC-SLG3-2E4R
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Get the non-R version. It works in just about any machine. It does not have RAID but that is what software RAID is for!

The key advantage is that you can add two drives. So, for example, 2x 2TB Intel P3700 and then get twice the bandwidth of a single drive per slot (x8 with the card instead of x4 with a slot based P3700)
 
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Alza

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Nov 3, 2015
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takao.nakagawa said:
Asus Z97-pro & Intel Core i7 4790k & Lycom DT-120 & ASRock U.2 Kit & Intel SSD 750 400GB 2.5inch & Win 10.View attachment 653
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Hi there, I also have a similar setup (Asus z97 motherboard, Lycom dt-120, Asus U.2 kit, Intel 750 SSD 2.5 inch), but the motherboard is not recognising the drive.

I have the dt-120 in a pcie 2.0 x4 slot. Which slot did you use on your board, and any special BIOS settings required?

Thanks!
 
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ggg

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Jul 2, 2015
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Alza said:
Hi there, I also have a similar setup (Asus z97 motherboard, Lycom dt-120, Asus U.2 kit, Intel 750 SSD 2.5 inch), but the motherboard is not recognising the drive.

I have the dt-120 in a pcie 2.0 x4 slot. Which slot did you use on your board, and any special BIOS settings required?

Thanks!
Click to expand...
That combo did not work for me on a Z97-A and Z97-WS. A AOC-SLG3-2E4 worked with the Z97-WS.
 
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ggg

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Jul 2, 2015
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Has anyone got one of the M.2 -> U.2 cards form any of MSI, ASRock, ASUS or others working in a (5028D-TN4T) X10SDV-TLN4F?

I don't want to take up the single slot on the X10SDV-TLN4F. Of course some of the ASRock boards have another slot but I'd probably rather use the SM.
 
Patrick

Patrick

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ggg said:
Has anyone got one of the M.2 -> U.2 cards form any of MSI, ASRock, ASUS or others working in a (5028D-TN4T) X10SDV-TLN4F?

I don't want to take up the single slot on the X10SDV-TLN4F. Of course some of the ASRock boards have another slot but I'd probably rather use the SM.
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I think that the ASUS hyper-kit one was not the right physical size when I tried it (between the two options that the X10SDV has for M.2 lengths.
 
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ggg

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@Patrick Thanks! The ASUS one was a 2260 yes? From pictures the Gigabyte and ASRock appear to be 2260 as well.

@Davewolfs did you got that MSI working in the X10SDV-TLN4F?
 
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Davewolfs

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Aug 6, 2015
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ggg said:
@Patrick Thanks! The ASUS one was a 2260 yes? From pictures the Gigabyte and ASRock appear to be 2260 as well.

@Davewolfs did you got that MSI working in the X10SDV-TLN4F?
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I have it sitting on my desk waiting for a rainy day but another forum member here did confirm that the solution works.
 
RchGrav

RchGrav

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Aug 21, 2015
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I thought you guys might like to check out an ATTO disk benchmark against Two P3700 in Software RAID 0



On A Side Note: It's Official.. I think I went overboard this time.. On the positive side I scored some great deals along the way to build my new workstation. I had a lot of the parts already from various purchases throughout 2015. This was NOT an all at once purchase...

ASUS X99-E WS/USB3.1 & ASUS Titan X GPU
Intel Xeon E5-2699 V3 (QGN1 C1 Stepping)
Corsair C70 Ammobox Case w/ AX1500i PSU
1.6TB Boot: Intel DC P3605 2.5" NVMe*
(*on MSI Turbo U.2 Host card)
4.0TB Data: Software Stiped Dual Intel DC P3700 2.5"**
(**on AOC-SLG3-2E4 PEX 8718 PCIe Switch Adapter)
256GB ECC DDR4-2133 (8x32GB Samsung M393A4K40BB0-CPB)

On a side note: I have to share this since the ATTO Disk Benchmark is right here. It's so nifty, tiny, and it's fast. It's called the MyDigitalSSD OTG. A nice accessory for the NVMe workstation in your life.. I picked up the 256GB model for $93.. I'm almost as excited about this little thing as my new NVMe based workstation. :p
 
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Davewolfs

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Aug 6, 2015
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RchGrav said:
I thought you guys might like to check out an ATTO disk benchmark against Two P3700 in Software RAID 0



On A Side Note: It's Official.. I think I went overboard this time.. On the positive side I scored some great deals along the way to build my new workstation. I had a lot of the parts already from various purchases throughout 2015. This was NOT an all at once purchase...

ASUS X99-E WS/USB3.1 & ASUS Titan X GPU
Intel Xeon E5-2699 V3 (QGN1 C1 Stepping)
Corsair C70 Ammobox Case w/ AX1500i PSU
1.6TB Boot: Intel DC P3605 2.5" NVMe*
(*on MSI Turbo U.2 Host card)
4.0TB Data: Software Stiped Dual Intel DC P3700 2.5"**
(**on AOC-SLG3-2E4 PEX 8718 PCIe Switch Adapter)
256GB ECC DDR4-2133 (8x32GB Samsung M393A4K40BB0-CPB)

On a side note: I have to share this since the ATTO Disk Benchmark is right here. It's so nifty, tiny, and it's fast. It's called the MyDigitalSSD OTG. A nice accessory for the NVMe workstation in your life.. I picked up the 256GB model for $93.. I'm almost as excited about this little thing as my new NVMe based workstation. :p
Click to expand...
I hope you're crunching some serious models with this :)
 
P

Paul A. Mitchell

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Jun 24, 2015
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RchGrav said:
I thought you guys might like to check out an ATTO disk benchmark against Two P3700 in Software RAID 0



On A Side Note: It's Official.. I think I went overboard this time.. On the positive side I scored some great deals along the way to build my new workstation. I had a lot of the parts already from various purchases throughout 2015. This was NOT an all at once purchase...

ASUS X99-E WS/USB3.1 & ASUS Titan X GPU
Intel Xeon E5-2699 V3 (QGN1 C1 Stepping)
Corsair C70 Ammobox Case w/ AX1500i PSU
1.6TB Boot: Intel DC P3605 2.5" NVMe*
(*on MSI Turbo U.2 Host card)
4.0TB Data: Software Stiped Dual Intel DC P3700 2.5"**
(**on AOC-SLG3-2E4 PEX 8718 PCIe Switch Adapter)
256GB ECC DDR4-2133 (8x32GB Samsung M393A4K40BB0-CPB)

On a side note: I have to share this since the ATTO Disk Benchmark is right here. It's so nifty, tiny, and it's fast. It's called the MyDigitalSSD OTG. A nice accessory for the NVMe workstation in your life.. I picked up the 256GB model for $93.. I'm almost as excited about this little thing as my new NVMe based workstation. :p
Click to expand...
This answers a question that has been nagging me for some time.

Start with the X99 chipset block diagram:

Intel® X99 Chipset Block Diagram

Note: "DMI 2.0 x4"

That means 4 PCIe 2.0 lanes @ 500 MB/second = 2,000 MB/second MAX HEADROOM upstream.

Your AOC-SLG3-2E4 has an x8 edge connector and
should be compatible with PCIe 3.0: 8 GHz clock /8.125 = ~1 GB/second per lane

x8 lanes @ 1 GB/second = 8 GB/second MAX HEADROOM upstream vs. 2 GB /sec above

So, with a software RAID 0, 2 x DC P3700 reach a READ speed of 5.17 GB/second.

Outstanding!

Conclusions: the PCIe expansion slot in which you installed that SM AOC
is NOT downstream of the DMI link. If it were, max READ speed
could never exceed 2.0 GB/second under any conditions.

As such, there is hope for new hardware RAID controllers
that use a full x16 edge connector, and are compatible with PCIe 3.0.

Things will get even more interesting when the PCIe 4.0 standard
gets implemented in hardware, because the clock rate is planned
to increase from 8 GHz to 16 GHz per PCIe lane!


MRFS
 
A

Alza

New Member
Nov 3, 2015
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Replying to my own post with an update, in case it's useful to anyone..

I swapped the Asus U.2 kit with the Asrock one, and my solution now works :)

Therefore, I can only conclude that Asus hobbled it's U.2 adapter to either not work in a M.2 to pci-e slot adapter, and/or not work with a pci-e 2.0 interface.

As such, I would second the recommendation for the Asrock U.2 kit over the Asus one.

Alza said:
Hi there, I also have a similar setup (Asus z97 motherboard, Lycom dt-120, Asus U.2 kit, Intel 750 SSD 2.5 inch), but the motherboard is not recognising the drive.

I have the dt-120 in a pcie 2.0 x4 slot. Which slot did you use on your board, and any special BIOS settings required?

Thanks!
Click to expand...
 
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