Tuesday, January 21st 2025
SilverStone Intros ECM40 4-Bay M.2 NVMe SSD Adapter Card With Active Cooling
SilverStone unveiled a new addition to its expansion card with the ECM40 PCIe 4.0 x16 to 4x M.2 NVMe SSD adapter card. This device supports 4x M.2 SSDs (M Key) in 2230, 2242, 2260, and 2280 form factors. The expansion card comes in a single slot format measuring 147.74 x 181 x 21.59 mm and is equipped with a 40 mm dual ball-bearing fan spinning at 7000 RPM to ensure better cooling of the SSDs. The fan can be turned on and off using the included power switch. A two-mode LED indicator provides additional operating status based on signals from the motherboard and SSD. The top cover is made from aluminium and acts as a radiator to dissipate heat. Moreover, thermal pads are included.
In terms of performance, the SilverStone product page informs us that the ECM40 is capable of achieving speeds up to 7,351 MB/s for continuous reads and up to 6,845 MB/s for write speed. These results were achieved using Kingston Fury 2T SSDs on a system built around an ASRock X570 Pro4 motherboard, with an AMD R9 5900X CPU and Micron Crucial DDR4 2133/8G (4Gx2) memory modules. The motherboard or add-on card must support PCIe bifurcation, allowing the PCIe x16/x8 slot to be split into 4x4 or 4x2 configurations. Currently, there is no information about pricing.
Sources:
ITHome, SilverStone
In terms of performance, the SilverStone product page informs us that the ECM40 is capable of achieving speeds up to 7,351 MB/s for continuous reads and up to 6,845 MB/s for write speed. These results were achieved using Kingston Fury 2T SSDs on a system built around an ASRock X570 Pro4 motherboard, with an AMD R9 5900X CPU and Micron Crucial DDR4 2133/8G (4Gx2) memory modules. The motherboard or add-on card must support PCIe bifurcation, allowing the PCIe x16/x8 slot to be split into 4x4 or 4x2 configurations. Currently, there is no information about pricing.
16 Comments on SilverStone Intros ECM40 4-Bay M.2 NVMe SSD Adapter Card With Active Cooling
*There are hundreds of Asus etc. Gen4 and Gen5 Bifurcation-only M.2 Expanders on eBay for $30-50/ea.
You can't just split a 10/100/1000 into a dual 5/50/500.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_complex
I think it has more to do with handshook resource allocation from the PCIe Root Complex, than centralization.
Keep in mind that PCIe and PCI are software-level intercompatible. PCI could share a single bus (largely) due to the (hardware-level) parallell nature of PCI/PCI-X.
Also, most-all of those AICs you speak of used SCSI, SATA, PATA, etc. for disks. Which, do not have such direct communication(s) with the CPU/SoC as NVMe drives or other PCIe endpoints do.
Wish we had even more options!
Personally the primary CPU m.2 connector is used, the rest of my m.2 SSD-s are in AORUS Gen4 AIC Adaptor, Because the GPU would melt them otherwise
I only wish if I had the Gen5 version because that has an even bigger fan.
www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/it-is-2025-you-have-a-pci-slot-you-really-want-to-fill-what-do-you-stick-in-it.331296/post-5424197
This one is just a PCIE splitter/extender. It just splits the x16 slot to four x4 ones. There's nothing on the card beyond some voltage regulation, the traces, the m.2 connectors, and the fan header. You can get these dirt cheap from aliexpress too, I have a x8x4x4 one (for a low profile gpu + two x4 m.2 slots).
www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?t=78987
(Mileage varies by platform, bridge, adapter, etc.)
I have a couple PCI<-> PCIe bridges too.
Still holding out for my personal holy grail bridge, the PCI-X<->PCIe x4.
-Lots of old workstation and server boards could see naughty things done to them...
On Topic:
Most B-series and X-series motherboards on AM5 support bifurcation.
If one didn't need much/any graphics horsepower, cards like these can be part of an affordable path to a very fast DIY NAS solution.