NVME M2 drives: which slot to use?

[Lange_666]

Bought myself 2 NVMe M2 drives.

The Gigabyte motherboard has 3 slots available, marked M2A_CPU, M2B_SB and M2C_SB.

I guess M2A_CPU has direct lanes to the CPU, the others are SB which stands for ??? (SATA Bus or SATA Bandwidth or something else) and i guess these run then at SATA speed?

I also read that an M2 with CPU lanes steals away some CPU cycles but i haven't been able to find more about that (yet).

Question is where to put the drive with the OS (will be Windows 11 (or stick witn Win 10?) on it and where to put the DCS drive?

 

 

Edited September 29, 2022 by Lange_666

[Rudel_chw]

2 hours ago, Lange_666 said:

The Gigabyte motherboard has 3 slots available, marked M2A_CPU, M2B_SB and M2C_SB.

 

Read carefully the manual of your specific motherboard, as some times there are restrictions as these device share some resources. For example, on mine I have this caveat:

"M2_3 and SATA3_5_6 share lanes. If either one of them is in use, the other one will be
disabled."

Also, not all M2 cards are equal, look carefully their specifics .. on mine, for example:

"The M.2 Socket
(M2_3) supports type 2242/2260/2280 M.2 SATA3 6.0 Gb/s module and M.2 PCI Express
module up to Gen3 x2 (16 Gb/s)."

Edited September 29, 2022 by Rudel_chw

[Hiob]

2 hours ago, Lange_666 said:

Bought myself 2 NVMe M2 drives.

The Gigabyte motherboard has 3 slots available, marked M2A_CPU, M2B_SB and M2C_SB.

I guess M2A_CPU has direct lanes to the CPU, the others are SB which stands for ??? (SATA Bus or SATA Bandwidth or something else) and i guess these run then at SATA speed?

I also read that an M2 with CPU lanes steals away some CPU cycles but i haven't been able to find more about that (yet).

Question is where to put the drive with the OS (will be Windows 11 (or stick witn Win 10?) on it and where to put the DCS drive?

 

 

 

Which Chipset do you have (or what is the exact name of your MoBo).

On a B550 you have usually one PCIe4.0 M.2 that doesn't cannibalize your GPU PCIe-Lanes, on A X570(S) you are most likely not limited.

You're running Intel, don't you. I don't know about their chipsets nowadays, but the same principle applies most likely.

 

But don't stress yourself - as long as you stay with a 3000 series GPU, you won't notice the difference between PCIe 3.0 and 4.0.

(apart from that, Rudel is absolutely right. Those informations are all in the manual or technical data sheet of the MoBo)

Edited September 29, 2022 by Hiob

[xoxen]

For one of my M.2 drives I'm using a PCI-E 4.0 adapter which results into the same speed than the reals slots are achieving. My GPU is still running with 16x speed. Maybe this is also an option to take into consideration. The adapter was about 15,- Euro.

[Lange_666]

Chipset: X570S
Board: Gigabyte X570S UD (to put an 5800X3D on it)
I do read manuals, there is some stuff in the manual about it but for me it's not 100% explained.
SATA 3, 4, 5 are not availble when PCIEX2 slot is used but there is no reference to it if an M2 slot is used, it points to the PCIEX2 slot.
Module type i'm gonna put in is 2280 and supported.

The only 2 things that i'm after for the moment is what is the meaning of SB in M2x_SB and which has the most impact on performance, the M2A_CPU slot or the M2x_SB slot. Neither one i can find in the manual.
 

[BitMaster]

The diagram for X570 usually has 1 connector for NVMe x4 without sacrificing any of the six Sata conns. Only when you have a board with 8x Sata you end up  having no NVMe fed by the Southbridge.

Only when you connect a third drive you will have to sacrifice either another 2 Sata or a PCIe x4 slot to free up 4 lanes.

It's simple math, + and -. Look up the diagram of the chipset and see how your board vendor has solved the puzzle, there are more ways than 1.

 

 

To sum it up:

- 1x fed by CPU ( best option there is )

- 1x fed by SB w/o the need to turn off other devices

- any other NVMe forces you to turn off other devices, Sata, WLAN, PCIe slot(s).

 

I have 4 slots, 1x CPU, 3x SB.    #3 forces me to loose PCIe x4 Slot and #4 forces me to turn off Sata 5+6. Only 2 work w/o restrictions.

With Ryzen 7000, you have TWO NVMe directly fed from the CPU ( since the CPU now lacks native Sata support ). That is great imho !

 

 

 

 

vor 32 Minuten schrieb xoxen:

For one of my M.2 drives I'm using a PCI-E 4.0 adapter which results into the same speed than the reals slots are achieving. My GPU is still running with 16x speed. Maybe this is also an option to take into consideration. The adapter was about 15,- Euro.

Not really, it behaves just like my #3 Slot from post above. Either I use that slot, PCIe-v4 x4 or I use the onboard NVMe slot #3 ( which your board doesnt have ). It still needs those 4 lanes from the SB chip. Either or that is.

it wont magically pull 4 lanes out of the sleeve

[Lange_666]

@BitMaster: And SB stands for... (because that was one of my questions... ?

 

 

[Rudel_chw]

1 hour ago, Lange_666 said:

@BitMaster: And SB stands for... (because that was one of my questions... ?

 

 

 

Probably means "South Bridge" ... the chipset is divided on two parts: the Northbridge handles cpu, memory bus and PCI-ex, while the Southbridge handles slower peripherals, like Sata, Sound and USB.

[Lange_666]

Ah, couldn't imagine that it would mean that (but then by getting older and older and older things get more and more and more blurry).

[Hiob]

With this board you can put the two M.2 anywhere you like. It won’t affect the GPU.

[derbarbarian]

Since everyone else has already answered the M2 questions, I'll take on the Windows question, I would personally stick with 10 for now. I upgraded to 11 when it was still in Beta and it was absolutely horrible which is to be expected so after a couple of days I reverted back to 10, then I upgraded to Windows 11 again a couple months ago and while it wasn't anywhere near as bad as it had been, I still don't like it much. I was running into Issues with it with several of my other games where it wasn't allowing you to press multiple keys at the same time, it was acting like they were sticky keys, which sticky keys was disabled to prevent this but it was still doing it. There were several other performance issues I ran into as well, so I again reverted to 10. Plus I don't really care for the menu's and what not in 11, on 10 I run ClassicShell so I can set it up like Windows 98, 2000, XP, 7, etc. Which ClassicShell doesn't work with 11 yet, I found an alternative program to fix the menu issue but overall I wasn't overly impressed with 11 so I'm going to stick with 10 for the time being. 

[BitMaster]

vor 4 Stunden schrieb Hiob:

With this board you can put the two M.2 anywhere you like. It won’t affect the GPU.

It actually got three and since it skips a few features it has enough lanes to fire them all 3 without deactivating anything.

 

from the specs site:

 

1 x M.2 connector (M2A_CPU), integrated in the CPU, supporting Socket 3, M key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 SSDs:

1. AMD Ryzen™ 5000 Series Processors/AMD Ryzen™ 3000 Series Processors support SATA and PCIe 4.0 x4/x2 SSDs
2. AMD Ryzen™ 4000 G-Series Processors/AMD Ryzen™ 3000 G-Series Processors/AMD Ryzen™ 2000 Series Processors/AMD Ryzen™ 2000 G-Series Processors support SATA and PCIe 3.0 x4/x2 SSDs

1 x M.2 connector (M2C_SB), integrated in the Chipset, supporting Socket 3, M key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 SSDs:

1. Supporting PCIe 4.0^(Note)/3.0 x4/x2 SSDs

1 x M.2 connector (M2B_SB), integrated in the Chipset, supporting Socket 3, M key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 SSDs:

1. Supporting SATA and PCIe 4.0^(Note)/3.0 x4/x2 SSDs

6 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors, integrated in the Chipset:

1. Support for RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 10

(Note) For AMD Ryzen™ 5000 Series Processors/AMD Ryzen™ 3000 Series Processors only.

[SkateZilla]

M2's on South Bridge disable other things for the bandwidth,

M2's on CPU Lanes will also do this,

My Taichi board has 1 M2 "Ultra" that disables the 2nd PCIe 3.0 4x Slot and the other M2 Runs directly off the CPU Lanes available.

[Lange_666]

3 hours ago, BitMaster said:

It actually got three and since it skips a few features it has enough lanes to fire them all 3 without deactivating anything.

from the specs site:

1 x M.2 connector (M2A_CPU), integrated in the CPU, supporting Socket 3, M key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 SSDs:

1 x M.2 connector (M2C_SB), integrated in the Chipset, supporting Socket 3, M key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 SSDs:

1. Supporting PCIe 4.0^(Note)/3.0 x4/x2 SSDs

1 x M.2 connector (M2B_SB), integrated in the Chipset, supporting Socket 3, M key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 SSDs:

1. Supporting SATA and PCIe 4.0^(Note)/3.0 x4/x2 SSDs

6 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors, integrated in the Chipset:

1. Support for RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 10

(Note) For AMD Ryzen™ 5000 Series Processors/AMD Ryzen™ 3000 Series Processors only.

It has 3 M2 ports but i only will install 2 M2's.

The manual also says this about PCIEX2

Expansion Slots:
 1 x PCI Express x16 slot (PCIEX16), integrated in the CPU:
* For optimum performance, if only one PCI Express graphics card is to be installed, be sure to install it in the PCIEX16 slot.

1 x PCI Express x16 slot (PCIEX2), integrated in the Chipset: - Supporting PCIe 4.0 (Note 2)/3.0 x2 mode
* The PCIEX2 slot shares bandwidth with the SATA3 4, 5 connectors. The SATA3 4, 5 connectors will become unavailable when a device is installed in the PCIEX2 slot.

2 x PCI Express x1 slots (PCIEX1_1/PCIEX1_2), integrated in the Chipset: - Supporting PCIe 4.0 (Note 2)/3.0

 

Since both M2B_SB and M2C_SB sit above and below PCIEX2 i was wondering if they also make the SATA 3, 4 , 5 unavailable?
Time will tell when i get the rest of my parts to build the system and i can see what it does, for the moment the parts are stuck somewhere in the DHL pipeline

 

[Hiob]

I thought your concerns was to limit your GPU, I haven't figured you wanted to use sata drives as well.

[Lange_666]

Yup, will take some of them from the old system to the new system, mostly containing data (music, photo's etc...) or backup.

[Hiob]

Consider to put that kind of data on a NAS. Makes switching systems easier and is (a bit) safer for the data.

[BitMaster]

Lange_666,

All of your 3 NVMe slots are usable without sacrificing any lanes elsewhere due to the fact that the board does not have WLAN, Sata 7+8 and no 3rd PCIE-x4, any of these would force the layout to switch between either-or one or the other device but not in your case.

You can make use of 6x Sata and no PCIe-x4 -or-  4x Sata + PCIe-x4 ( a 1-Slot Add-In NVMe card for example ).

 

If a NAS drive is safer or not compared to DAS ( Direct Attached Storage ) is another debate and very specific.

 

[SkateZilla]

they can start removing SATA from boards like they did IDE

[blkspade]

On 9/30/2022 at 12:58 PM, SkateZilla said:

they can start removing SATA from boards like they did IDE

NAND will have to be way cheaper, as plenty of people still want bulk storage. I virtualize a NAS server in my computer, and use 4 of the SATA ports for 16TB of useable storage. SATA SSDs would still be reasonable if costs per GB ever got near HDDs.

[SkateZilla]

2 hours ago, blkspade said:

NAND will have to be way cheaper, as plenty of people still want bulk storage. I virtualize a NAS server in my computer, and use 4 of the SATA ports for 16TB of useable storage. SATA SSDs would still be reasonable if costs per GB ever got near HDDs.

M.2 to SATA Adapter or PCIe 4x Sata Controllers are likely better options for future boards,

there will always be server tier boards that have features that normal and gaming boards dont.

[blkspade]

10 hours ago, SkateZilla said:

M.2 to SATA Adapter or PCIe 4x Sata Controllers are likely better options for future boards,

there will always be server tier boards that have features that normal and gaming boards dont.

Gaming board is almost a misnomer. It's just marketing speak. I have a consumer class desktop board, that supports a 16 core CPU and up to 128GB RAM with the option of ECC. Basically the only thing that makes it "gamer" is having RGB headers. I do play games on it, while it is effectively being a server at the same time. I remotely throw GPGPU work at it at times from work, and have more cores and RAM than games are going to need any time soon. The only things in the server tier is support for even higher density, more advanced storage interfaces than SATA, and some times out of band management. Otherwise all computer have the potential to be servers of some description, unless you want it less functional out of the box for some reason. Hell NVME is a server technology woefully underutilized in most single user machines. The bulk of the real world daily client use of them happens at below SATA speeds. Dropping sata probably wouldn't even have a meaningful effect on the price. After 2 GPUs, a 10GbE Nic and a tuner card, I wouldn't want to have to find a place for something that can and should just be there. It's actually a bigger deal for them to remain an option on ITX boards that don't have as much expansion otherwise.

[BitMaster]

A hail to SSD & NVMe !

Coming from way back when CPU's had no Co-Processor and HDD had 20MB capacity, they, the HDD's,  always were a very hard and costly to overcome bottleneck.

For about a decade, mid '90s to mid '00 I switched to SCSI, Adaptec era, AIB Controllers and 4MB-Cache cards made my life easier but still, it was a bottleneck.

Sometime around 2008 I built my last home-server with 16 drives, 14x250GB and 2x1TB, all on a 16 port Adaptec SAS BBU controller. Only to splitt I/O between OS, DATA and VM's.

Gawd that thing was heavy, LOUD and overall not satisfying. I sold it and went Laptops for many years until I built my self another Do-it-All rig. That time around, SSD were already the #

norm, WHAT a relief. That was around 2015.

Now, I run ALL of my VM's off one single 1TB 980Pro until my 64GB are 98ish% utilized, that is usually either my UTM Firewall + all Linux + NAS or the UTM + 4-5 Win-OS

There is no slow down whatsoever, I imagine if I had more cores and mostly more RAM I could fire up another 2-3 VM's and the NVMe would still just do it and not become a bottleneck.

That sheer power is very welcome, first time we have headroom when it comes to drives and I/O speed. Unless you really need server grade throuput, it is almost impossible to bring a

NVMe to it's knees on a desktop computer. They really strive when you press them hard. Small, silent and less heat too.

 

[SkateZilla]

3 hours ago, blkspade said:

Gaming board is almost a misnomer. It's just marketing speak. I have a consumer class desktop board, that supports a 16 core CPU and up to 128GB RAM with the option of ECC. Basically the only thing that makes it "gamer" is having RGB headers. I do play games on it, while it is effectively being a server at the same time. I remotely throw GPGPU work at it at times from work, and have more cores and RAM than games are going to need any time soon. The only things in the server tier is support for even higher density, more advanced storage interfaces than SATA, and some times out of band management. Otherwise all computer have the potential to be servers of some description, unless you want it less functional out of the box for some reason. Hell NVME is a server technology woefully underutilized in most single user machines. The bulk of the real world daily client use of them happens at below SATA speeds. Dropping sata probably wouldn't even have a meaningful effect on the price. After 2 GPUs, a 10GbE Nic and a tuner card, I wouldn't want to have to find a place for something that can and should just be there. It's actually a bigger deal for them to remain an option on ITX boards that don't have as much expansion otherwise.

There is specs differences on the boards between:
Entry
Mainstream
Gamer / Enthusiast
Enterprise

 

RGB Doesn't make it a "Gamer" Board, RGB has nothing to do with gaming, it's purely an aesthetic.

The main Differences would be in the Chipset Features and VRM.


 

Edited October 2, 2022 by SkateZilla