Friday, June 9th 2023
Sabrent Introduces its Quad NVMe SSD to PCIe 4.0 x16 Card
The Sabrent Quad NVMe SSD to PCIe 4.0 x16 Card (EC-P4BF) is the perfect complement for a desktop that requires additional high-performance storage. Add one, two, three, or four NVMe SSDs with a single, physical x16 PCIe slot adapter. A bifurcation setting in the BIOS is required. Only M.2 M key SSDs are supported, but older and newer generation SSDs in the 2230/2242/2260/2280 form factors will work at up to PCIe 4.0 speeds. The adapter is also backward compatible with PCIe 3.0/2.0 slots. Drives can be accessed individually or placed into a RAID via Intel VROC, AMD Ryzen NVMe RAID, UEFI RAID, or software-based RAID through Windows Storage Spaces when respective criteria are met.
High-performance drives and systems may require high-end cooling, and this adapter has you covered. It's constructed out of aluminium material for physical stability and improved heat dissipation. It also includes thermal padding for all four SSDs to keep things cool and in place. Active cooling for high-performance environments is optional with a switchable fan. The adapter is plug-and-play with driverless operation. Rear-mounted LEDs quickly show the drive status for a quick visual update. The host must support PCIe bifurcation (lane splitting) to access more than one drive, so be sure to check your motherboard's manual ahead of time.
More Storage
Add up to four high-performance NVMe SSDs to a system with a single adapter in a physical x16 PCIe slot with the Quad NVMe SSD to PCIe 4.0 x16 Card (EC-P4BF). The system requires the PCIe bifurcation (lane splitting) function to add more than one SSD with the full 16 lanes required for 3 or 4 drives.
Built Cool
Designed with quality aluminium for physical stability and top-notch cooling. Thermal padding is included to ensure the best cooling interface for your SSDs. Optional active cooling (fan) via a rear-positioned switch for high-performance environments. Your drives won't throttle in here.
PCIe 4.0 Compliant
Supports even the fastest PCIe 4.0 SSDs but also works with older and newer generation SSDs at up to 4.0 speeds. Works in older 3.0/2.0 systems that have PCIe bifurcation support. Compatible with NVMe SSDs in the M.2 2230/2242/2260/2280 form factors for your convenience.
Supported By Sabrent
This card requires M.2 M key NVMe SSDs and UEFI PCIe bifurcation support to work properly. The destination PCIe slot must be x16 in physical length. Please visit sabrent.com for more information and contact our technical support team for assistance.
The SABRENT Quad NVMe SSD to PCIe 4.0 x16 Card (EC-P4BF) is on sale now at Amazon.
Source:
Sabrent Blog
High-performance drives and systems may require high-end cooling, and this adapter has you covered. It's constructed out of aluminium material for physical stability and improved heat dissipation. It also includes thermal padding for all four SSDs to keep things cool and in place. Active cooling for high-performance environments is optional with a switchable fan. The adapter is plug-and-play with driverless operation. Rear-mounted LEDs quickly show the drive status for a quick visual update. The host must support PCIe bifurcation (lane splitting) to access more than one drive, so be sure to check your motherboard's manual ahead of time.
Add up to four high-performance NVMe SSDs to a system with a single adapter in a physical x16 PCIe slot with the Quad NVMe SSD to PCIe 4.0 x16 Card (EC-P4BF). The system requires the PCIe bifurcation (lane splitting) function to add more than one SSD with the full 16 lanes required for 3 or 4 drives.
Designed with quality aluminium for physical stability and top-notch cooling. Thermal padding is included to ensure the best cooling interface for your SSDs. Optional active cooling (fan) via a rear-positioned switch for high-performance environments. Your drives won't throttle in here.
Supports even the fastest PCIe 4.0 SSDs but also works with older and newer generation SSDs at up to 4.0 speeds. Works in older 3.0/2.0 systems that have PCIe bifurcation support. Compatible with NVMe SSDs in the M.2 2230/2242/2260/2280 form factors for your convenience.
This card requires M.2 M key NVMe SSDs and UEFI PCIe bifurcation support to work properly. The destination PCIe slot must be x16 in physical length. Please visit sabrent.com for more information and contact our technical support team for assistance.
45 Comments on Sabrent Introduces its Quad NVMe SSD to PCIe 4.0 x16 Card
Ya know, other than Gen4 redrivers (which, not all bifurcating cards use) these cards are stupid-simple and (presumably) stupid-cheap to make.
What would actually be exciting would be an x16 card with a Gen4 switch on-board.
Even in a Gen 2 x16 slot (as long as the drives were not RAIDed or constantly accessed simultaneously) a single gen4 x4 SSD could 'see' full performance.
Both my intel boards dont have it as an option, but my b450 does.
Technically, it's been common for ages, but rarely/never easily configured by the end user (SLI/CrossFire boards come to mind)
Most modern Mid-tier and higher chipsets seem to support it. But, not all allow finite control over the bifurcation config.
Aka AMD only
Also, the especially adventurous can sometimes edit firmware to force a bifurcation config. (Common with "Legacy" x58-x99 users, IIRC)
"Unsupported" is merely a challenge, after all.
they launched new 2230 nvme drives recently, and like 33 days after launch after return periods were over for early adopters, they cut prices in half.
lol fucking shady as fuck, fuck them
Just a PSA for AM5 users. If you plan on getting one of these do not buy the Asus X670E-Strix as that board shares the 2nd PCIe slot with a M2 slot on the board. This should have been a x2 PCIe 5.0 card to make sense.
There is another thing this has no controller either so even though the WD AN1500 is more expensive and only 3.0, the fact that it supports 2 drives and has a controller means that it works in 4 wired slot just fine and is therefore much more applicable for most modern PCs. It not like most of us have Threaddripper or those of us who did have it anymore.
In fact, it doesn't even have to be an SSD.
One could use M.2 add-in cards; non-storage M.2 devices *do* exist.
SATA controller and NIC varieties are 'common'. SDRs, Video Adapters, etc. also exist, but are very much 'industry-targeted' devices.
While it makes 0 sense to do on a bifurcating Quad M.2 card, one could slot in a M.2 M-key to PCI-e Slot Riser/adapter and use *any* slotted PCI-e card.
PCI Express is dreamy when it comes to non-standard and unconventional use. Since the data is packetized, you can run PCIe devices over all sorts of 'PHYs'Also, nothing new.
Asus has had Gen4 quad-m.2 bifurcating cards for years now.
Gigabyte also has one that is *actually* 'kinda neat', for a bifurcated card. -Gigabyte's has a buttload of supercaps on the adapter for write-thru protection. (It's also more expensive than Gen2 and many Gen3 switched multi-M.2 cards)
For more adventerous here is fun project-
www.grayxu.cn/wiki/pcie-bifurcation/
Why not something simple like:
www.amazon.de/-/en/gp/product/B0B5G6MN79/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Great cards ( have stack of them), just watch out for little diodes next to the M.2 connector. If you have 2 sided 4TB NVMe Gen.4 Phison controller devices it will be tough to plug them, but not impossible. Just careful.
I love OWC Accelsior 8M.2, but pricing & importing to EU is so meh.
If you wish to fully utilize the Gen4 NVMe drive can do, check the reviews and look out for drives that have one of these controllers: Phison PS5018 E18, Silicon Motion SM2264, Samsung Pascal S4LV008, etc. If you do not need top notch drives, you can go for drives with one tier down controllers, such as Phison PS5021T, SM2267 or Samsung Elpis S4V003.
What worries me is such AICs is blocking air flow towards GPU. If a motherboard has two x16 slots with x8/x8 bifurcation, I'd install NVMe AIC into the first one closer to CPU and GPU into the second one. This way air flow towards GPU is free from obstacles.Almost one one in the world needs AIC with PCIe 5.0 support. What would you do with it?
Honestly not expecting this right away, but it seems a waste to leave it there unused forever on my mini-ITX.
I hope you realize that almost no one in desktop space uses any PCIe 5.0 peripherals apart from a few NVMe Gen5 enthusiasts willing to pay a hefty price for those drives. Both Intel and AMD miscalculated Gen5 adoption in desktop space. It's too early. Sure, in server and workstation markets it's fine, but vast majority of everyday users of AM5 and 1700 platforms do not need Gen5 connectivity.
The databases concerned already exceed main memory on the server and will likely do so for the new machine by the time it is used for this purpose, so NVMe performance may be a factor over the ~90GB/sec that the RAM can handle.
Now, does that require Gen 5? Almost certainly not - my original post was a tad tongue-in-cheek - but one can never be sure what the future holds. Some of our competitors are looking a bit shaky. And it's true that not using Gen 5 when I have the slot seems like a waste. Plus, the sooner it comes out, the sooner it'll be available at a price I can actually justify!
There is a caveat to what I said before too as AMD could be re releasing a HEDT line in the Prosumer space. If they price the CPUs properly we could get scenarios where this could work.