ASUS R6E with M.2 raid and WTF setup
ASUS R6E with M.2 raid and WTF setup
Asus Rampage 6 Extreme is a powerful motherboard, though I feel Intel’s release might be a bit questionable. It has three M.2 slots and two in the DIMM2 slot. I’m planning to VROC all three drives for my boot setup. Currently, I can only RAID 0 on two of them, but I’m unsure which ones. I’m using Samsung 960 EVOs—should I switch to Intel drives? Is this an update? Need help with the 7900X 16GB Cosair dominator.
It seems the DIMM.2's M.2_1 port can be used by either the CPU or the chipset. The M.2_2 slot is for the CPU only, and the M.2_1 slot on the motherboard is likely CPU-only as well. You should verify this in the BIOS settings to confirm the DIMM.2 pulls from the CPU. Since it's Virtual RAID On CPU, it probably won't work with a drive routed through the chipset. Intel’s VROC FAQ suggests RAID 0 isn’t officially supported without a specific hardware key, except for certain PCIe Gen3 x8 SSDs. PCIe Gen3 x4 SSDs (like the 960 Evos you have) might work depending on configuration. The manual also mentions a Hyper M.2 card with PCIe bifurcation rather than the standard M.2 slots, which could affect compatibility. I don’t have time to go through the entire manual just to guess—my hardware isn’t available for testing.
Even with PCH, I’m limited to just two drives instead of three. The reason I think I can use all three comes from using SATA, which makes sense since NVMe isn’t the only option.