SilverStone Launches M.2 Riser Card for Two SSDs

[INSTG8R]

A) That would require an expensive PLX controller chip, which of course would raise the price considerably...

Well my board has Bifurcation so “technically” I could reassign a few lanes I guess. That said I’m pretty sure I’m already out of lanes having all my storage ports occupied, GPU and a sound card.

 

[terroralpha]

They make a lot of niche things and this is kinda cool. Though if I'm going to have enough m.2 sticks that I need to put one in a PCIE slot why not get one of those raid cards?

this is not niche, it's pretty common. and it's not cool, it's stupid. i bought something like this, but better, from aliexpress for $5 shipped years ago. it's still in use in my NAS to this day and it doesn't require a 16X slot to be held in place

you can get something better on amazon right now less than $10. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08M3VTY6D/

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

A) That would require an expensive PLX controller chip, which of course would raise the price considerably...

I'm sure that price could be justified one way or another. Lanes seem to be at a premium now.

C) Booting from an nvme on anything older than a Z97 board is iffy at best, even with W10 or 11 and a Sammy 950....so yes, it may work, it may not, just depends on the bios... But most of the older boards that do NOT have nvme boot support built in from day 1 will not be able to boot from one with this card installed...

knowing you cant boot from this device is still ok as the installed drives could be used in future builds. I'm sure there are those that would still buy this hoping to use as boot drives and remain ignorant that they cant.

 

[john_]

A) That would require an expensive PLX controller chip, which of course would raise the price considerably...


B) It seems that what is being overlooked here is that the 2nd slot on this card is for an SATA m.2, which is different (and slower/cooler) than an nvme m.2... thats why the SATA cable connection is needed.. It's still useful though if you have or wanna use 1 of each type of drive

@Chrispy_

Can you boot off these? Specifically for older boards that lack bootable M.2 NVMe - or is that still very much a per-board question that relies on the BIOS and chipset?

C) Booting from an nvme on anything older than a Z97 board is iffy at best, even with W10 or 11 and a Sammy 950....so yes, it may work, it may not, just depends on the bios... But most of the older boards that do NOT have nvme boot support built in from day 1 will not be able to boot from one with this card installed...

A) Yes, but that's exactly what it will differenciate from the others. As I said, and as it was shown on the above post from @terroralpha , there are plenty cheap options out there to do the job. And with metal brackets included in the $5 price, not like in SilverStone's case where their solution will probably be much more expensive.

B) I did mentioned SATA cable. I guess both SSD's get power from the slot, but that's all about the second SSD. Data transfer is happening through the SATA cable.


PS. This is what I could be interested, because SATA on M.2 is a waste in my opinion.
PCI E X8 Dual Channel M.2 NVMe SSD Upgrade Expansion Card M.2 M Interface Solid State Drive Adapter Card|Computer Cables & Connectors| - AliExpress
(while Chinese enginears probably do know their job, Chinese sellers don't, so the SATA support that it describes in the seller's page is probably wrong)

 

[trsttte]

A) That would require an expensive PLX controller chip, which of course would raise the price considerably...

I think what the other user was sugesting was to assign 2 lanes from an x4 slot to each m.2, that wouldn't require a PLX but compatibility could be iffy

 

[bonehead123]

I think what the other user was sugesting was to assign 2 lanes from an x4 slot to each m.2, that wouldn't require a PLX but compatibility could be iffy

Ok, so can you please elaborate on exactly what type of device/circuit/chip could do this, without adding some added cost to the base card ?

Perhaps you have some insider/hands-on knowledge that you could share with us mere mortals.. inquiring minds wanna know & all that

 

[trsttte]

Ok, so can you please elaborate on exactly what type of device/circuit/chip could do this, without adding some added cost to the base card ?

Perhaps you have some insider/hands-on knowledge that you could share with us mere mortals.. inquiring minds wanna know & all that

It's just bifurcation of an x4 slot to 2 x2 which would make support iffy as I said. You'd need a PLX switch (and it's extra cost) if you wanted to get both ssd's running on 4 lanes from a 4 lanes slot, bifurcation is much simpler but is usually only used on x16 slots

In terms of price, first do we even know what the cost will be for this silverstone adapter? Second, it would probably cost more to do a bifurcation carrier, never said it wouldn't, but it would also be a more interesting product. I was just clarifying (possibly, i'm not the original poster) what the other user was asking for and how your answer was wrong: you don't need a plx switch to do simple bifurcation.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

So essentially, you can have the SATA drive near your nvme drive, but it has to be a quite odd SATA stick not a traditional one, in its own case, mounted to mounts almost always provided in your case, great, but, , Why?!.
Pciex to nvme adapter's already exists, I have one sans SATA port ,shit I only read the pr hoping it was 2x pciex 3 to one pciex4 port or something worth, even a look, or this reply, arse plug in a sata cable, wtaf.

 

[terroralpha]

I think what the other user was sugesting was to assign 2 lanes from an x4 slot to each m.2, that wouldn't require a PLX but compatibility could be iffy

That would require a motherboard to support bifurcation on an x4 slot, which to my knowledge is not something that exists.

bifurcation in the consumer space is mostly an asus thing and generally on the main X16 slot. Sometimes is separated into 8x/8x or 4x/4x/4x/4x. Other manufacturers don’t seem to offer this at all or extremely rarely.

but I have never seen a bifurcated 4x slot and would probably be a waste of the manufacturer’s time and money to even try to do it. And even if it was implemented, you’d end up with a 1x/1x configuration because PCI-E 2x is not a thing.

 

[trsttte]

you’d end up with a 1x/1x configuration because PCI-E 2x is not a thing.

Of course it is a thing, just an uncommon one. PCI-e lanes are made to be flexible, I've seen some products listed with x2 before, they just use a 4x slot because there's no x2 physical slot.

 

[kapone32]

So essentially, you can have the SATA drive near your nvme drive, but it has to be a quite odd SATA stick not a traditional one, in its own case, mounted to mounts almost always provided in your case, great, but, , Why?!.
Pciex to nvme adapter's already exists, I have one sans SATA port ,shit I only read the pr hoping it was 2x pciex 3 to one pciex4 port or something worth, even a look, or this reply, arse plug in a sata cable, wtaf.

The thing is products like that have existed for years in the Enterprise market. I bought a unit from Super Micro on Amazon that had exactly that. The problem with modern MBs is that the only truly x16 slot is on the GPU slot. The highest end AM4 and Z690 boards only support x8 maximum on the 2nd slot. Hence you can get dumb adapter cards but not full x16 adapters. The only other solution is to get a RAID card with a controller as it doesn't matter what the lane allocation is if the controller gives the MB disk info instead of the slot. As an example the WD AN 1500 will work in any slot and with any 2 NVME drives(I would get the same model) but the performance is relegated to the speed of the slot.

 

[Berfs1]

Not really an ideal sollution, using ancient S-ata. You will cap your speeds to a max 600MB/ps compared to a 2.5GB up to 3.5GB a second.

Well, m.2 SATA and SATA III have the same 600 MBps limit. That extra m.2 SATA port is strictly for m.2 SATA SSDs, not to be used with NVMes, that's what the other side is for. It can hold two drives at once, 1x NVMe which is connected to the x4 lane (which will get you the 3.5 GBps speeds), 1x m.2 SATA which has a SATA connector, connect that to the motherboard SATA port, and you have a SATA connected SSD.

Can you boot off these?

Specifically for older boards that lack bootable M.2 NVMe - or is that still very much a per-board question that relies on the BIOS and chipset?

Should be able to, because the m.2 SATA drive isn't connected to a controller on the riser card. This riser card serves two purposes, as an NVMe to PCIe x4 adapter (for the m.2 NVMe drive), as well as an m.2 SATA to SATA 7 pin adapter (for the m.2 SATA drive).

 

[Athlonite]

Why does it have a SATA data cable plugged into it
wait don't tell me the thing uses sata for data and pcie slot for power only

 

[Chrispy_]

wait don't tell me the thing uses sata for data and pcie slot for power only

Correct:

It's extremely cheap and easy to throw onto the back of the card this way. Nobody's forcing you to use it and it's not like it adds any real cost.

Getting SATA through PCIe requires a SATA bridge chip which would otherwise add enough costs to make this uncompetitive in the market as an NVMe card. If you want a dedicated SATA card then you can certainly buy those (from Silverstone among many others) but this is literally a way to add an extra M.2 SATA slot to a board in a low-profile way. If you're after something low-profile chances are good (but not zero) that you have spare SATA ports because low-profile generally means limited room for 2.5" and 3.5" drives.

 

[Assimilator]

The SATA SSD support is a nice feature on the surface, but in actuality is relatively worthless because M.2 SATA B-key SSDs are rare as hens' teeth.

Correct:

Incorrect. It uses PCIe slot power for both M.2 drives; the PCIe x4 slot for data transfer for an NVMe M-key M.2 PCIe SSD; and the SATA port for data transfer for a SATA B-key M.2 SSD.

 

[kapone32]

Ok finally found it (At a Grocery store). There has been an enterprise card in the consumer lane since AM4. These cards were as cheap as $39.99 CAD). They even come with a low profile adapter. They even support (not officailly) Pcie 4.0 drives in RAID 0. They are a dumb RAID card which is why they should be inexpensive. It is because Youtube is the main form information on products. This card should be no more than $19.99 (CAD) in all honesty as there is less of everything.

Loblaws Supermarket | Grocery shop online or instore

www.loblaws.ca

Ok finally found it (At a Grocery store). There has been an enterprise card in the consumer lane since AM4. These cards were as cheap as $39.99 CAD). They even come with a low profile adapter. They even support (not officailly) Pcie 4.0 drives in RAID 0. They are a dumb RAID card which is why they should be inexpensive. It is because Youtube is the main form information on products. This card should be no more than $19.99 (CAD) in all honesty as there is less of everything.

Loblaws Supermarket | Grocery shop online or instore

www.loblaws.ca

Sorry it still an Amazon product.

https://www.amazon.ca/Supermicro-AOC-SLG3-2M2-PCIe-Add-Card/dp/B071S3ZY8P

 

[Chrispy_]

The SATA SSD support is a nice feature on the surface, but in actuality is relatively worthless because M.2 SATA B-key SSDs are rare as hens' teeth.


Incorrect. It uses PCIe slot power for both M.2 drives; the PCIe x4 slot for data transfer for an NVMe M-key M.2 PCIe SSD; and the SATA port for data transfer for a SATA B-key M.2 SSD.

What are you on about?
OF COURSE it uses PCIe for the NVME data transfer; we're just talking about the SATA slot data.
More importantly if you thought I was talking about data for the PCIe side going over the SATA cable too, how on earth is the NVME protocol going to run through a SATA port with zero bridge chips, exactly?!

 

[Chaitanya]

So Orico already is selling M.2 to Sata add in card, similar to one Sillverstone has listed on their website. Both are interesting additions.

ORICO PCIe Gen3 M.2 M Key to 6 Ports SATA 3.0 Adapter Card NVMe to SATA3.0 Converter Card NVME PCIe 3.0 to SATA 16G Expansion Card - Newegg.com

Buy ORICO PCIe Gen3 M.2 M Key to 6 Ports SATA 3.0 Adapter Card NVMe to SATA3.0 Converter Card NVME PCIe 3.0 to SATA 16G Expansion Card with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

 

[Athlonite]

So Orico already is selling M.2 to Sata add in card, similar to one Sillverstone has listed on their website. Both are interesting additions.

ORICO PCIe Gen3 M.2 M Key to 6 Ports SATA 3.0 Adapter Card NVMe to SATA3.0 Converter Card NVME PCIe 3.0 to SATA 16G Expansion Card - Newegg.com

Buy ORICO PCIe Gen3 M.2 M Key to 6 Ports SATA 3.0 Adapter Card NVMe to SATA3.0 Converter Card NVME PCIe 3.0 to SATA 16G Expansion Card with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

That's a completely different beastie this adds sata ports over an M.2 slot what silverstone has done is add an NVMe slot and Sata M.2 drive over PCIe

 

[Chaitanya]

That's a completely different beastie this adds sata ports over an M.2 slot what silverstone has done is add an NVMe slot and Sata M.2 drive over PCIe

Silverstone also has similar solution for M.2 to Sata ports released at the same time as the add-in card for 2x M.2 slots(pci-e and Sata). Check previous page for link to that M.2 to Sata card as well.

 

[Athlonite]

Silverstone also has similar solution for M.2 to Sata ports released at the same time as the add-in card for 2x M.2 slots(pci-e and Sata). Check previous page for link to that M.2 to Sata card as well.

but that's not the product we're talking about here at this point in time though is it unless Orico has a product out that is similar to the one being reviewed in this post then it has nothing to do with this

 

[Chaitanya]

but that's not the product we're talking about here at this point in time though is it unless Orico has a product out that is similar to the one being reviewed in this post then it has nothing to do with this

Here you go:

ORICO M.2 NVME to PCI-E 3.0 X4 Expansion Card

ORICO M.2 NVME to PCI-E 3.0 X4 Expansion Card

www.orico.cc

 

[Athlonite]

Ok I'll give you that, it is a similar product but it does have some serious limitations when compared to the Silverstone model
1: PCIe gen3 x4 vs PCIe gen4 x4
2: 2TB per SSD max vs Unlimited size per SSD
3: it's a lot taller than the Silverstone model so can't be used in 1U servers due to height constraints