Yes, you can use 2-3 M.2 SSD cards under these conditions and specifications.
Yes, you can use 2-3 M.2 SSD cards under these conditions and specifications.
PCIe2 is quite outdated. It’s odd considering I got a PCIe3 board in 2014. I’m curious why they made that choice. My systems from around 2003 or 2008 probably don’t support it either. Could an AM4 chipset use PCIe2?
It really changes things and might explain why it's M&B instead of M. The M is moving too quickly, but M&B isn't. You have an M card and an M&B card—seems like the M card should go into the M slot and the M&B card into the M&B slot, acting as slow storage. Would prefer to remove the M card if it's possible.
I’m planning to try that now. But what would happen if I use an M.2 NVMe adapter with a SATA drive and then install my M&B card in the SATA slot?
UserBenchmarks: Game performance at 56%, Desk score 91%, Work usage 57% on GPU: AMD Ryzen 7 2700X - GPU load 84.1% AMD RX 580 - 57.1% SSD capacity Samsung 980 NVMe PCIe M.2 1TB - 278.5% HDD Seagate ST2000DM005-2CW102 2TB - 19% RAM Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 3000 C16 2x8GB - 98.7% MBD Gigabyte X470 AORUS ULTRA GAMING
Generally, as competition for PCIe lanes increases, devices requiring more lanes will have to reduce their speed to conserve bandwidth, similar to cars needing to share a lane on a busy highway. Certain boards with dedicated PCIe M.2 ports can also turn off specific SATA connections when the M.2 slot is occupied, because of bandwidth sharing. For instance, my Asus B550-PLUS turns off SATA ports 1-2 while M.2-1 is used, but it disables SATA ports 5-6 when M.2-2 is occupied. I assume the person asking this is based in the UK. In reality, spending around £275 will give you a new B550 board with two M.2 slots and a 3.5 GB/s 2TB M.2 that can deliver full PCIe3 performance on the main slot. Once your needs hit roughly £150-200, upgrading to a newer board with a single larger M.2 becomes more practical. I’m sure you’ll see improved results, and you’ll still retain a second M.2 if you really need separate drives. However, I can’t guarantee your GPU will run at full speed with multiple M.2s, as it usually depends on the primary slot’s configuration. The main PCIe3 slot is typically isolated from other devices, but using the secondary slot forces the GPU to share lanes, which can slightly reduce performance. Therefore, opting for a newer board with one larger M.2 might actually boost speed more than adding more smaller ones.
The explanation becomes clearer when examining the b550 chipset layout. (A diagram exists for b550, though the name isn’t showing up.) The block diagram suggests that only one m.2 card can connect directly to the CPU, functioning as a PCIe4 device. All other connections pass through the chipset. It appears these two ports travel via the chipset and operate at PCIe3 speeds (or slower PCIe 3.0 depending on data traffic). There could be an additional NVMe slot that bypasses the chipset entirely and links straight to the CPU.