# raid nvme using mainboard software raid



## Easy Rhino (Oct 24, 2019)

Does anyone with a 2 socket m.2 mainboard run a RAID config on it? I am curious to know if there is a performance hit when running 2 m.2 drives in RAID 0 using the on-board raid software.


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## kapone32 (Oct 24, 2019)

Depends on the system you have. With X399 all of the M2 slots are connected to the CPU and a full software RAID 0 would work fine. The Issue with X299 and I assume Z370/Z390 boards would be that the top M2 slot is tied to the CPU and the other slots are tied to the chipset. On x570 I do believe the same thing applies as well.


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## Easy Rhino (Oct 24, 2019)

kapone32 said:


> Depends on the system you have. With X399 all of the M2 slots are connected to the CPU and a full software RAID 0 would work fine. The Issue with X299 and I assume Z370/Z390 boards would be that the top M2 slot is tied to the CPU and the other slots are tied to the chipset. On x570 I do believe the same thing applies as well.



if I am looking at Ryzen chips, is there any easy way to find a list of mainboards that connect both m2 slots to the cpu?

edit: i see you mentioned x399 which is amd. not sure of others then.

edit 2: okay looks like i found the board that does exactly what i want. 2x m2 pcie 4 in raid 0 without limiting the pci 4 x16 slot for gpu.








						GIGABYTE X570 AORUS ELITE AMD ATX Motherboard - Newegg.com
					

Buy GIGABYTE X570 AORUS ELITE AMD Ryzen 3000 PCIe 4.0 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.2 AMD X570 ATX Motherboard with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!




					www.newegg.com


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## Zach_01 (Oct 25, 2019)

I think that most if not all X570 boards have only one M.2 slot directly to CPU. The second or the third, if it got 3 slots, are connected through chipset.
If any X570 is having two m.2 slots directly to CPU I don’t expect a sub 200$ one to support that. I have the Aorus Pro that is above the Elite and does not.
That statement of not cutting the PCIE slot in half is a different thing. Has nothing to do with the connection of the second m.2 if it is through chipset or directly to CPU.

Out of curiosity... why you need a RAID-0 with NVMe drives? It gives you no real life performance other than transferring quiet large amounts of data, like hundreds of GBs at a time.


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## newtekie1 (Oct 25, 2019)

kapone32 said:


> The Issue with X299 and I assume Z370/Z390 boards would be that the top M2 slot is tied to the CPU and the other slots are tied to the chipset. On x570 I do believe the same thing applies as well.



On the Intel platforms, at least mainstream ones, all the M.2 slots are connected to the chipset, there are no M.2 slots linked to the CPU.


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## kapone32 (Oct 25, 2019)

Easy Rhino said:


> if I am looking at Ryzen chips, is there any easy way to find a list of mainboards that connect both m2 slots to the cpu?
> 
> edit: i see you mentioned x399 which is amd. not sure of others then.
> 
> ...



Yeah my knowledge is with X399 and X470. In terms of the X570 I think the bottom 2 are indeed connected to the chipset.



newtekie1 said:


> On the Intel platforms, at least mainstream ones, all the M.2 slots are connected to the chipset, there are no M.2 slots linked to the CPU.



Thanks for that it is always good to learn something new


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## Easy Rhino (Oct 25, 2019)

Zach_01 said:


> Out of curiosity... why you need a RAID-0 with NVMe drives? It gives you no real life performance other than transferring quiet large amounts of data, like hundreds of GBs at a time.



Good question. I already have a 512 Gig NVMe M.2 drive. I am trying to decide if I want to buy a second 512 drive and put it in raid 0 or get a 1 TB NVMe drive as the second drive. i am still exploring options. If I know I can raid them for better performance then I may since I do a lot of virtualization.


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## kapone32 (Oct 25, 2019)

Easy Rhino said:


> Good question. I already have a 512 Gig NVMe M.2 drive. I am trying to decide if I want to buy a second 512 drive and put it in raid 0 or get a 1 TB NVMe drive as the second drive. i am still exploring options.



As owner of several different RAID arrays I would say that the major benefit is for moving video files but Access databases and Excel spreadsheets also will benefit. The fastest array I have is actually 4 1TB 660P in the easily accessible Asus M2 riser card. I can confirm though that those cards work fine at x8  with 2 NVME drives, if the board in question supports lane splitting. If you are doing it on the X570 board you posted the only potential drawback would be the GPU would run at X8. This actually brings up another thought process; I am on X399 so it does not matter where I put my NVME RAID drives but it would be interesting to see what the difference in performance would be having them in a adapter card vs on the board slots.


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## Easy Rhino (Oct 25, 2019)

kapone32 said:


> As owner of several different RAID arrays I would say that the major benefit is for moving video files but Access databases and Excel spreadsheets also will benefit. The fastest array I have is actually 4 1TB 660P in the easily accessible Asus M2 riser card. I can confirm though that those cards work fine at x8  with 2 NVME drives, if the board in question supports lane splitting. If you are doing it on the X570 board you posted the only potential drawback would be the GPU would run at X8. This actually brings up another thought process; I am on X399 so it does not matter where I put my NVME RAID drives but it would be interesting to see what the difference in performance would be having them in a adapter card vs on the board slots.



According to the specs of that mainboard, running 2 nvme drives will not impact the bandwidth of the other pcie 4.0 x16 slot.  I think...


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## kapone32 (Oct 25, 2019)

Easy Rhino said:


> According to the specs of that mainboard, running 2 nvme drives will not impact the bandwidth of the other pcie 4.0 x16 slot.  I think...



If they are PCI_E 3.0 you might be fine but if they are 4.0 you might have to run them at x8.


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## Easy Rhino (Oct 25, 2019)

kapone32 said:


> If they are PCI_E 3.0 you might be fine but if they are 4.0 you might have to run them at x8.



Okay I am totally confused now. Newegg specs show:

Integrated in the CPU (M2A_SOCKET):
- 3rd Generation AMD Ryzen processors:
1 x M.2 connector (Socket 3, M key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 SATA and PCIe 4.0 x4/x2 SSD support)
- 2nd Generation AMD Ryzen processors / 2nd Generation AMD Ryzen with Radeon Vega Graphics processors / AMD Ryzen with Radeon Vega Graphics processors:
1 x M.2 connector (Socket 3, M key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 SATA and PCIe 3.0 x4/x2 SSD support)

Integrated in the Chipset (M2B_SOCKET):
1 x M.2 connector (Socket 3, M key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 SATA and PCIe 4.0*/3.0 x4/x2 SSD support)
* For 3rd Generation AMD Ryzen processors only. 

But the product overview states:

X570 AORUS Series Motherboards feature built-in PCIe 4.0 slots, delivering superior bandwidth compared to that from previous generation technology. Performance of Graphics cards and PCIe NVMe AIC SSDs will not be limited by insufficient bandwidth.


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## kapone32 (Oct 25, 2019)

Easy Rhino said:


> Okay I am totally confused now. Newegg specs show:
> 
> Integrated in the CPU (M2A_SOCKET):
> - 3rd Generation AMD Ryzen processors:
> ...



You are looking at the M2 connections which is what you want to do anyway. I was talking about using a riser card on the 16 slots. 

- 3rd Generation AMD Ryzen processors:
1 x PCI Express x16 slot, supporting PCIe 4.0 and running at x16
- 2nd Generation AMD Ryzen processors:
*1 x PCI Express x16 slot, supporting PCIe 3.0 and running at x16*
* For optimum performance, if only one PCI Express graphics card is to be installed, be sure to install it in the PCIEX16 slot.
- 2nd Generation AMD Ryzen with Radeon Vega Graphics processors / AMD Ryzen with Radeon Vega Graphics processors:
1 x PCI Express x16 slot, supporting PCIe 3.0 and running at x8 

I also stand corrected, (if you are using a 3000 series CPU) it looks like you would be able to use all 4 of the riser card slots. The cool thing is there are no *stars so lane splitting would be the only concern.



kapone32 said:


> You are looking at the M2 connections which is what you want to do anyway. I was talking about using a riser card on the 16 slots.
> 
> - 3rd Generation AMD Ryzen processors:
> 1 x PCI Express x16 slot, supporting PCIe 4.0 and running at x16
> ...



I have not had enough sleep today that board only has 1 x16 slot wired as such your only option would be the slots on the board


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## theonek (Oct 25, 2019)

this is raid 0 tested on usual ryzen mobo X370 with 2700x, these two ssd's were WD SN750 1Tb directly tied to cpu pci-e lanes through pci-e x16 slot on the mobo, raid is made through bios, not windows.....


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## kapone32 (Oct 25, 2019)

theonek said:


> this is raid 0 tested on usual ryzen mobo X370 with 2700x, these two ssd's were WD SN750 1Tb directly tied to cpu pci-e lanes through pci-e x16 slot on the mobo, raid is made through bios, not windows.....
> View attachment 134911



That is pretty close to what I get with 2 Adata SX8200 Pros in RAID 0 in a RISER card so you should be good to go.


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## Zach_01 (Oct 25, 2019)

The thing is that the SSD (SATA/NVMe) RAID-0 really benefits the sequential read/write speed which is for big transfers

Maybe this is more helpful... watch the whole thing


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## moproblems99 (Oct 25, 2019)

Easy Rhino said:


> Newegg specs show



Sorry but F**k Newegg with a capital F.  I think my Taichi has 2 m.2 slots that are x4 pcie4 and the third is pcie3


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## thesmokingman (Oct 25, 2019)

kapone32 said:


> Depends on the system you have. With X399 all of the M2 slots are connected to the CPU and a full software RAID 0 would work fine. The Issue with X299 and I assume Z370/Z390 boards would be that the top M2 slot is tied to the CPU and the other slots are tied to the chipset. On x570 I do believe the same thing applies as well.



On x570 you can RAID the m2.1 and pcie x8, so it's an option if you get a pcie card. I haven't tried it myself. Though I'd wait for the TR3 as you mentioned, for this kind of stuff with its silly abundance of PCIE lanes.


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## Zach_01 (Oct 25, 2019)

Never trust any online store for specs. Always check the manufacturer's page of the hardware you are interested in.


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## Easy Rhino (Oct 25, 2019)

Zach_01 said:


> Never trust any online store for specs. Always check the manufacturer's page of the hardware you are interested in.



Yea I am going to have to do more specific research it seems...


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