Update:
Today I received two pieces of kit:
ASUS Hyper M.2 X16 PCIe 3.0 X4 Expansion Card V2
ASUS Hyper M.2 X16 PCIe 3.0 X4 Expansion Card V2 Supports 4 NVMe M.2(2242/2260/2280/22110)Up to 128 Gbps for Intel VROC & AMD : Amazon.ca: Electronics
www.amazon.ca
Silicon Power 512GB NVMe PCIe Gen3x4 M.2 2280
Silicon Power 512GB NVMe PCIe Gen3x4 M.2 2280 TLC R/W up to 3,400/2,300 MB/s SSD (SU512GBP34A80M28AB) : Amazon.ca: Electronics
www.amazon.ca
I was unable to benchmark this assembly on my $100 PCIE 3.0 machine, as the MoBo (A58M-E3) only has one PCIEx16 slot, and yanking the Vega GPU seemed like an unneccessary hassle. So much for that. I went ahead and installed the assembly in a PCIEx16 slot in my current T5500. I did an initial benchmark having while booted from the 120gb SSD (Linux Mint OS Drive), and did a R/W on the NVME drive. I was disappointed to see that I was only getting ~400MB/s read speed. I ran lspci in the shell terminal and saw that the LinkCap was listed as Width 4x, but the LinkSta was only 1x. A disappointing result, but I decided to go ahead and attempt an OS install anyway.
After some messing around, I was able to successfully install the Mint root directory onto the NVME, and the boot system onto a 4gb thumb drive. The thumb drive currently sits in one of the rear USB slots. I have an inclination to move this boot thumb drive to the little USB slot inside the tower on the MoBo.
Having successfully installed the OS on the NVME, I ran a benchmark (Read-only, as a write test isn't permitted while disk is in use) and scored 1.5GB/s!
Somehow, the LinkSta got set to 4x to match the LinkCap! Worth mentioning: At one point in my toils I removed an un-needed network card from a PCIE slot (I'm fine with using the MoBo's jack). I suppose this could maybe account for the rise from 1x to 4x? I hope it's not the culprit, because a USB 3.0 PCIe card is in my plans.
I'll call that my small victory for today. If I can shake come cash loose in the next little while, I'll try and score some cheap M2 NVME drives and see if I can populate the other three slots on the Asus Hyper M2. I'd ideally like to try benchmark some softRAID RAID 0configs on it (NVME x 2, and NVME x3). I'll maybe start with one more NVME and see if it shows up on the lspci report.
Stay tuned!
===================Next Post, 10 minutes later =============================
That went well.
I move the boot thumb drive to the MoBo internal USB port, and it booted up properly.
I installed a USB 3.0 controller in a PCIex8 slot, and fired up the machine. The USB 3.0 controller It showed up on bus #23. Its LinkCap is 1x and its LinkSta is 1x
Miraculously, the NVME controller is still showing x4 in both places where it matters. I even scored a 1.6GB/s on a subsequent benchmark.
DELLicious.
==================== Next post, 10 minutes later ======================================
I plugged a USB 3.0 card reader with a Sandisk 32gb grade 10 SD card into the USB controller and ran a benchmark, which read at ~45MB/s and wrote ~10 MB/s.
Disappointed, I plugged in a USB 3.0 external drive and tried it out. I managed to get an average of ~120MB/s read, and 110MB/s write.
Side note: While screwing around I disabled the "Fast Boot" option in the bios. Big mistake. Took about 15 minutes to boot up.
Also, my BIOS version is C56. Has anyone heard of this before?
I have bought Samsung 950pro and put this little thing inside using cheap extension PCIE card. I expected some troubles but to my surprise - everything worked flawlessly.
