PCI-E Card for multiple M.2 NVME drives

[Kanoe]

Hi Guys

Been looking around for ages but not found anything that fits the bill so hoping someone else may have come across something.

My motherboard is quite old so doesnt have a M.2 slot on it but it does have lots and lots of PCI-E 16x slots that run at full 16x 3.0 so it would seem like an easy thing to do to add M.2 NVME devices to the PC by plugging them into a PCI-E adapter card.

Now I do have 1 device in a PCI-E 4x adapater card but getting several of them and putting 1 drive in each is not the most practical idea.

So ideally a PCI-E 16x card that can have 4 devices in it would fit the bill nicely but there seems to be a couple of issues with finding one to fit the bill.

The ones i have found seem to fall into 1 of 2 camps:

1) They require a CPU that supports VROC in order for more than 1 drive in the card to show up (my CPU doesnt support VROC)
2) They require the motherboard to have a setting to bifurcate the PCI-E slot to 4x4x4x4x to allow for one than one drive to show up int he system (my motherboard does not have this option either)

So really the card must have its own chip on it to split the PCI-E lanes, this is what I am am having trouble finding.

If anyone knows of one can they put a link to one in this thread please.

Many thanks

[AETAaAS]

The Highpoint SSD 7101 (reviews: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews...-ssd,5200.html , http://www.thessdreview.com/daily-ne...2-ssds-tested/) has its own PLX chip and is avaliable from Scan for an eyewatering £420. I don't know what your scenario is but there better be a good reason for doing something that expensive.

[Kanoe]

Yeah, i am hoping to find something a bit more consumer orientated like in the sub £100 region otherwise i may end up going with separate adaptors for each drive.

[scaryjim]

... i am hoping to find something a bit more consumer orientated ...

Hanging 4 NVMe drives off a PCIe x16 slot isn't really a consumer use-case. Running more than a couple of NVMe drives in total isn't really a consumer use-case. I'm sure you've got good reasons for wanting to do this, but I'm not convinced it's as "obvious" a thing to do as you seem to be suggesting...

[ik9000]

The Highpoint SSD 7101 (reviews: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews...-ssd,5200.html , http://www.thessdreview.com/daily-ne...2-ssds-tested/) has its own PLX chip and is avaliable from Scan for an eyewatering £420. I don't know what your scenario is but there better be a good reason for doing something that expensive.

to put that in context the MSI x570 godlike board occasionally drops to sub £500 on Amazon and can stack 5 NVMe drives using the bundled expander card. And for that you also get PCIe 4.0 and all the other usb3.2 etc benefits, plus a rock-solid power stage and VRM etc.

[Kanoe]

Well i need to add more storage to my system as have run out and i would prefer to go M.2 instead of SATA and its more that I don't want to replace what i already have with just a bigger version cause then what do i do with the old one, its a waste.

[scaryjim]

Well i need to add more storage to my system as have run out and i would prefer to go M.2 instead of SATA and its more that I don't want to replace what i already have with just a bigger version cause then what do i do with the old one, its a waste.

It's a nice thought, but as I'm sure you've already realised lots of NVMe drives is still a niche use-case - that level of parallel I/O really only matters for enterprise level workloads.

In short, you're not going to get what you need without paying enterprise-level pricing. Sorry

[AETAaAS]

I found something a little cheaper; https://www.amazon.co.uk/Adapter-ASM...dp/B07KG253NQ/

Its got an Asmedia controller, so no motherboard PCIE bifurcation needed but at £270, still pricey. I agree with scaryjim, NVME is only worth it if you have a good use case. Don't be suckered into paying a premium you don't need to. For £170 pounds, you can have a 2TB SATA SSD. Not to mention all the USB enclosures, cables, NASs and older hardware you can just drop a SATA drive into if you ever change up into something else.

[Kanoe]

I appreciate the input everyone but low and behold, im messing around in my bios and it will split the 16x ports down to 4x4x4x4x so I can use something like the asus card that's £30. woot!!!