U.3 connectors / MB connectors.

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jolly

New Member
Was considering the Kioxia CD6 drives for a workstation build.
I've got the WS-WRX80E-SAGE-SE-WIFI mb.

I've heard that U.3 is different than U.2, but can't figure out what I'd need to connect these drives either to this board or to a standard m.2 slot.
 

lihp

Active Member
Jan 2, 2021
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Was considering the Kioxia CD6 drives for a workstation build.
I've got the WS-WRX80E-SAGE-SE-WIFI mb.

I've heard that U.3 is different than U.2, but can't figure out what I'd need to connect these drives either to this board or to a standard m.2 slot.
I had a prolonged support case with Broadcom about that exact same issue, but with CM6-V drives.
  1. You are fine with U.2 connectors.
  2. You need to check on which cables you use. Just to make sure the cables support 4x PCIe 4.0 lanes.
Personally I consider the CD-6 for a workstation a suboptimal choice. The CM6-V Kioxia, the Samsung PM9A3 (U.2) or Samsung PM1735 (PCIe) are imho a better choice.
 

lihp

Active Member
Jan 2, 2021
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PS: just checked - the PM9A3 are actually quite cheap still. Seems those were not hit by the Chia banstick at all. Those U.2 drives are even available.
 

amalurk

Active Member
Dec 16, 2016
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lihp

Active Member
Jan 2, 2021
186
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Just to put things in perspective:
  • The CD6 work with the right cable (for PCIe x4 aka 4i cable)
  • The CD6 is a read optimized Enterprise drive. For the most part for web servers, archive servers as cache and read intense database servers. It is not optimized for typical workstation tasks at all.
  • The PM9A3 by Samsung U.2 is a datacenter SSD, optimized for read and writes. It comes closest to typical workstation tasks and its dead cheap compared to other high end drives. Ideal as a typical workstation drive.
  • The PM1735 is a PCIe card, which far exceeds the performance of it's U.2 version. It's an enterprise SSD optimized for reads and writes and extremely high durability. Even when single NAND storage fails during operation it still works well by rearranging storage live during operations. Ideal for workstation operations when it comes to video editing and databases. Already cool if you want it for gaming ;). Best used as 4 drive RAID5 RAIDIX array.
  • The CM6-V is U.3 datacenter drive optimized for reads and writes. Ideal for almost any task, while offering consistent performance across the boards in all areas.
  • To top it off, the best money can buy is the Intel Optane DC P5800X 1.6TB. Absolutely sick seek times of 5µs make it the lowest latency drive available today with sick IOPS of 1.5M/1.5M for Read/Write.
Normal workstation I would go with the PM9A3, Video editing and similar the PM1735 or the CM6-V if and only if the CM6-V is close to the PM1735 pricing wise. If money doesnt matter at all order the Optane DC M5800X. Its sick.
 

jolly

New Member
Thanks for the info!
Mostly went with CD6 since it seemed like the best I could buy that was readily available - for VM drives that shouldn't be that heavily written to.
Seemed to beat consumer drives, have PLP, and decently large sizes - I bought two from wiredzone, 7.68TB for $1161 each.

I have one 1.6tb p5800x on order from shopblt, but I've been waiting for a month for that one (right now have a 905p optane as my boot).
Current plan is Optane for boot, CD6-s for VM's, backup to spinning disks.

Right now this is with a 5950x, but will be switching to a 3995wx threadripper pro shortly.

I'm not doing anything that would conventionally be considered resource intensive, I just really hate waiting for computers, and having even tiny bits of latency.

My workstation will often end up with 600+ chrome tabs open across 4 4k monitors, high refresh rate, adding a 5th shortly. At least some of the web browser tabs (trading charts) I'll run via RDP/remote app off a second PC to balance out some of the resource utilization.
 

jpmomo

Active Member
Aug 12, 2018
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the 1.6tb p5800x seem to be hard to find. I was able to purchase 2 of the 800GB p5800x a little bit easier. For some reason the 800s pop up and then go out of stock pretty quickly. Check provantage as they may show up there as available.