SilverStone Intros ECM40 4-Bay M.2 NVMe SSD Adapter Card With Active Cooling

[Nomad76]

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.



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[LabRat 891]

Unexciting. Still, an important AIC to have availible 'new'* on the market.
*There are hundreds of Asus etc. Gen4 and Gen5 Bifurcation-only M.2 Expanders on eBay for $30-50/ea.

 

[chrcoluk]

Why do these NVME devices need bifurcation, yet older multi drive addon cards had no such requirement? Is it because of the controller no longer being centralised?

 

[LabRat 891]

Why do these NVME devices need bifurcation, yet older multi drive addon cards had no such requirement? Is it because of the controller no longer being centralised?

I'm unsure as to the true "technical accuracy" of the simile, but... PCIe is a lot like Ethernet.
You can't just split a 10/100/1000 into a dual 5/50/500.

Root complex - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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.

 

[mab1376]

How is that fan doing anything with no fins on the inside?

 

[chrcoluk]

I'm unsure as to the true "technical accuracy" of the simile, but... PCIe is a lot like Ethernet.
You can't just split a 10/100/1000 into a dual 5/50/500.

Root complex - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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.

Yeah it sounds like its controller related then, as on SATA e.g. you have one controller shared between all devices. So its just the PCIe allocation and interaction with the controller, the controller itself handles separate devices.

 

[azrael]

Now, if modern motherboards just had enough PCIe slots...

 

[anonuser57]

I'm unsure as to the true "technical accuracy" of the simile, but... PCIe is a lot like Ethernet.
You can't just split a 10/100/1000 into a dual 5/50/500.

Root complex - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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.

Well actually with Ethernet you can split the connection into two. The reason new multi drive expansion cards rely on bifurcation is a) those cards were often SATA and b) PCIe 4.0+ switches are stupid expensive.

 

[Toothless]

How is that fan doing anything with no fins on the inside?

Fins on the top. It's a giant heatsink.

 

[Blue4130]

Well actually with Ethernet you can split the connection into two. The reason new multi drive expansion cards rely on bifurcation is a) those cards were often SATA and b) PCIe 4.0+ switches are stupid expensive.

You can't split gigabit ethernet and get two 500 mbit lines though. The best you could do is get two 100 mbit lines from a gigabit cable. Full speed gigabit needs all 4 pairs.

 

[bonehead123]

How is that fan doing anything with no fins on the inside?

It's like, you know, magic, but apparently you missed that memo, hahaha

 

[csendesmark]

Great!
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.

 

[Wirko]

Keep in mind that PCIe and PCI are software-level intercompatible.

So NVMe on the PCI bus should theoretically be possible, haha. Or maybe in reality too, because PCI to PCIe bridge adapters exist.

It is 2025, you have a PCI slot you really want to fill, what do you stick in it?

Forget the win10... Format c: /q /s then put a 3dfx Voodoo card and enjoy the beauty of glide games.

www.techpowerup.com

 

[kapone32]

Why do these NVME devices need bifurcation, yet older multi drive addon cards had no such requirement? Is it because of the controller no longer being centralised?

The reason is they have no Chip on board. Those were mostly Enterprise and really expensive. Mushkin had one a few years ago that was a cool $2000. The Cheapest Consumer card with a controller is the WD AN1500. I doubt that they make that anymore though. That little card may have a 4 TB limit but you can put anything in that and also put it into any PCie slot. This is no different than the Asus one that I bought several of years ago when I had a TR system. Those were also no more than $60 Canadian. I know that Gigabyte also has one. The best is probably MSI's. It only has 2 slots but is nice and beefy with a great fan. It might even have ARGB as there is a 3pin header on the PCB.