5 ms·

Connecting M.2 drives to various things (and not doing so)

59 points by kencausey 1y ago

yummypaint 1y ago
You could do this on an FPGA dev board with the right connectors. Might be a nice project for someone with the time
- IgnaciusMonk 1y ago
  Writing SATA to NVME adapter is nonsensical endeavor. It is as writing RoCE to HTTPS adapter. Makes no sense at all. And im not even talking about voltages etc. Any NVME disk can be connected even over PCIE3 x1 so there is plenty of capability on DESKTOP computers he is "managing". And what is he writing and how is he writing it is unbelievable that he can not seem to understand what SAS expander is etc.
  - userbinator 1y ago
    No, it makes as much sense as USB-NVMe, which does exist, and as the article mentions, so does the other direction (a PCIe SATA controller in the shape of an M.2 SSD) but there's just not enough of a market for NVMe-SATA yet. They're just block device protocols, and the conversion between them is well-defined. A bidirectional example is IDE/SATA, for which plentiful cheap adapters in both directions (one IC automatically detects its role) exist; IDE host to SATA device, or SATA host to IDE device. For another "directional" example, it's worth noting that SATA to MMC/(micro/mini)SD(HC/XC)/TF adapters exist which let you use those cards (often multiple, even in RAID!) as a SATA drive, but the opposite direction, exposing a SATA drive as an SD card, does not (yet).
    - account42 1y ago
      > No, it makes as much sense as USB-NVMe I don't think that's true. USB is accessible in lots of places where SATA and PCIe is not, i.e. as external connectors. Yes eSATA is a thing but eSATA without being able to use USB or PCIe? Or in other words, SATA->NVMe would at best serve users unwilling to upgrade their legacy racks while USB->NVMe has plenty of non-legacy use cases.
      - IgnaciusMonk 1y ago
        do not encourage nonsense. pls :) it is totally pointless endeavor because you CAN still buy NEW sata disks.... so why the.. you need to have 60 dollar converters added on top of essentially same disk ??? so no sata -> nvme is total nonsense and provides absolutelly nothing in technical terms to anybody in any situation. "" rest of your comment is "ok" ""™ XD
    - IgnaciusMonk 1y ago
      USB is on same "OSI model" layer as PCIE is. SATA is not. PCIE sata controllers in m.2 ssd are a thing, as are m.2 direct sata ssd, as are sata controllers on m.2 card with sata connectors capable of connecting 4-6 disks ( ASM1166 ). so i do not seem to see point you want to make there sata -> memory card is solution for embedded market of 2000s not today, for refurbishments or efforts to keep using old embedded stuff. and again it has nothing to do with guys point, it is absolutelly different use case. he is talking about servers, ( servers with a lot of drives have expanders ) ! ! ! ! M.2 NVMe to CFexpress Extender is something else entirely, so depends highly on what EXACTLY are we talking about ! ! ! ! simple reason why it is nonsense - how much does 256 GB m.2 ssd cost? so just use that. or use M.2 to PCI-E 4X 1X Riser Card ( adt-link K42ST ) and connect standard ubiquitous SATA/SAS/NVME HBA/RAID card into it and use any freaking disks. or M.2 Key M to SFF-8643 and use cable to connect it to something like H3platform Falcon 4118... which is "just" PCIE switch + psu + connectors. or m.2 to pcie connector and use HBA with optics to connect to 5 miles remote ARRAY.
      - rasz 1y ago
        OSI model makes no sense when applied to USB vs PCIE vs SATA :) But if you really insisted SATA and USB would occupy layers 1 and 2 while PCIE goes all the way to 3, so would ancient Firewire. PCIE (and FW) support bus mastering, USB does not. USB/SATA devices are purely host pooled and unable to initiate any transfers, PCIE device can talk to any other PCIE device without host help.
privatelypublic 1y ago
I think You're looking for something called a "tri-mode HBA." They run about $200 on ebay and as you mentioned- the m.2 to u.2, u.3, etc is passive (minus power)
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- rmb938 1y ago
  That's not really a M.2 nvme to sata converter though. That's just something that can take pci-e lanes and either give them to nvme drives through a pci-e multiplexer or convert the pci-e lanes to saas or sata. It also isn't passive, there's lots of processors to make it happen.
  - privatelypublic 1y ago
    Once they talk about adding a SATA controller- imho, trimode controllers become the obvious solution. If you want to get super hacky, if the SATA backplane is direct instead of multiplexed, passing a single lane of PCIe over SATA is possible. Probably limited to pcie 2.0 though. And they're absolute abominations, real frankensteins monster stuff. Edit: I mean the physical layer. Obviously you can't control a pcie device with a sata controller, but the cable will do a single wide pcie link.
kube-system 1y ago
It would be kind of an awkward to adapt a new and fast NVME drive to a clunky old SATA controller. M.2 conversions would typically not have the physical space required for any active conversion circuitry, and it would be more expensive than buying a SATA drive. If you've got a full 2.5" bay, you can get native 2.5" consumer SATA SSDs up to 16TB... which is more than I want to read/write at SATA3 speeds. And if you want to take advantage of fast storage, you can just skip the whole SATA controller and use PCIE. In an enterprise environment, nobody is really hooking up fast new storage to old slow storage controllers. They are either maintaining old systems, where they will use the legacy storage technologies, or they are deploying entirely new systems.
- stephen_g 1y ago
  Yeah, there is very little reason to want to do this. It may become more of an issue if new SATA/SAS drives stop being produced anymore for maintaining those legacy systems - but at that point something based on an FPGA (as was suggested in another comment) is probably going to be more economic than a company bothering to spin an ASIC for the purpose. But I don't see SATA drives dying out for a fair while yet.
  - kube-system 1y ago
    Usually the tail end of legacy systems are adequately supported by new-old-stock for quite a while. e.g. 3.5" floppies are 40 years old, were obsolete 25 years ago, went out of production 15 years ago, and are just about ready to deplete their stock today. Yes, there are flash-to-floppy adapter, and a similar thing may happen for SATA, but we may not see that as a necessity until 2050.
- aidenn0 1y ago
  I looked into this as an option because (similar to the author, from the sounds of it[A]): 1. I already had a 2.5" hotswap setup 2. 2.5" 8TB SSDs are 4x as expensive as 8TB NVMEs. A: https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/NVMeOvertakingSATAForSSDs https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/NVMeOvertaking...
kccqzy 1y ago
> there also doesn't currently seem to be any high capacity M.2 SATA SSDs I have a high capacity M.2 SATA in my computer. It's 4TB which I think qualifies for high. I bought it because I found out about that empty slot in my computer and wanted to fill it, not because of a particular need. Having a rare part in my computer gives me an indescribable sense of joy. And don't worry it's entirely used for extra redundancy so I won't lose data even if it dies.
- SteveNuts 1y ago
  > And don't worry it's entirely used for extra redundancy so I won't lose data even if it dies. Just make sure to still back up the data!
- aidenn0 1y ago
  The author uses a number larger than 4TB as "high" (source https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/NVMeOvertakingSATAForSSDs https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/NVMeOvertaking..., where they lament that SATA SSDs stop at 4TB).
  - kube-system 1y ago
    They don't stop at 4TB though... consumer SATA drives go up to 16TB. And I've heard there are even larger enterprise drives. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09FJFMQBB https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09FJFMQBB
    - aidenn0 1y ago
      From the article I linked: "...capacities larger than that only available from a few specialty vendors at eye-watering prices" From what I can tell, this was true when it was written, but has changed since with the Samsung QVO 8TB SATA only at a roughly 25% markup compared to a 8TB QLC M2 2280 drive. When I searched last winter it was 2-4x expensive as soon as you crossed the 4TB mark, with 4TB and under being similarly priced between SATA and nvme drives.
      - 1y ago
IgnaciusMonk 1y ago
[flagged]
- tomhow 1y ago
  Could you please not fulminate like this on HN? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
  - IgnaciusMonk 1y ago
    i do not understand what exactly you mean by - "It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for." because i thought it is for technical things. not braindead nonsense which does not make any sense ( FOR PEOPLE WHO FULLY UNDERSTAND AREA HE IS EXPLORING not for ai kind of 80% understnading by googling and looking up in wikipedia by 50+ year old social studies major working as middle manager ) because that is what that article is about. yes it can seem it is highly technical , writen by person by a lot of knowledge, but it is not. OR HE HAS ANEURYSM OS CALL DOCTOR FOR HIM, so why the fffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuukkkkkkk is it here then. AI can hallucinate more accurate content than that. so remove his nonsensical post and no fulmination anywhere, whole post is technical retardation, yet it is still here. conclusions, in that article are total retardation. way of thinking about problems in that article is total retardation. he is mixing apples with cars, and inserting totally nonsensical "economical" conclusions for problem no one sane even manage to invent yet.
CyberDildonics 1y ago
I don't understand this title.
timzaman 1y ago
What a surprisingly insightful post
- mikestorrent 1y ago
  Yeah, it explains why I can't buy one of these. Now, what I am puzzled by is why none of the various PCIe (standard form factor) cards that offer m.2 nvme slots on them will work with any of my older computers; they have PCIe lanes to spare but I suppose the system firmware itself just doesn't know what to do with them. Maybe I need to use a little sata SSD as /boot?
  - aidenn0 1y ago
    Author has an article on that too[1] To explain what I learned on my own: If you want to (for example) put 4 NVME drives (4 lanes each) in a 16x slot, then you need two things: 1. The 16x slot actually needs to have 16 lanes (on consumer motherboards there is only one slot like this, and on many the second 16x slot shares the lanes, so it will need to be empty) 2. You need to configure the PCIe controller to treat that slot as 4 separate slots (this is called PCIe bifurcation. For recent Ryzen CPUs, the first 16x slot usually goes directly to the CPU, and the CPU supports bifurcation, so (assuming your BIOS allows enabling bifurcation; most recent ones do) all you need to do is figure out which PCIe lanes go to which slots (the motherboard manual will have this). If you aren't going to use the integrated graphics, you'll need a 16x slot for your GPU. This will at best have 4 lanes, and on most motherboards (all 800 series chipset motherboards from all major manufacturers) will be multiplexed over the chipset, so now your GPU is sharing bandwidth with e.g. USB and Ethernet, which seems less than ideal (I've not benchmarked, maybe someone else has?). In the event that you want to do a 4x NVME in a 16x slot I found that the "MSI X670E ACE" has a 4x slot that does not go throught the chipset, and so does the "ASRock B650M Pro x3D RS WiFi" either of those should work with a 9000 series Ryzen CPU. ThreadRipper CPUs have like a gajillion PCIe lanes, so there shouldn't be any issues there. I have also been told that there are some (expensive) PCIe cards that present as a single PCIe device to the host. I haven't tried them. 1: https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/PCIeBifurcationAndNVMe https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/PCIeBifurcatio...
Aurornis 1y ago
> Since (M.2) NVMe to USB adapters exist, protocol conversion is certainly possible, and since such adapters are surprisingly inexpensive, presumably there's enough demand to drive down the price of the underlying controller chipsets. > (These chipsets are, for example, the Realtek RTL9210B-CG or the ASMedia ASM3242.) The NVMe to USB adapters aren't converting the NVMe protocol to another disk access protocol. They are USB3-connected PCIe endpoints, which allow the PCIe NVMe drive to connect to the host as an NVMe device. This isn't equivalent to the protocol conversion the author is seeking, which would accept SATA commands on one end and translate them to NVMe on the other end. I would actually call that SATA drive emulation, not protocol conversion, as SATA and NVMe aren't 1:1 such that you can convert SATA commands into NVMe commands and vice versa.
- userbinator 1y ago
  They are USB3-connected PCIe endpoints, which allow the PCIe NVMe drive to connect to the host as an NVMe device No? https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/uploads/framework3/original/3X/9/d/9d15c562a5bd6e16ae4c69e2b150801b5db0890c.png https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/uploads/framework3/ori... This is an RTL9210B NVMe enclosure. It's a UAS device (and I believe it supports BOT too.) I have not examined this in much detail but I believe these converter ICs are actually rather powerful SoCs with PCIe host, SATA host, and USB device peripherals. The existence of firmware (several hundred KB!) for them is further evidence of this fact.
- jonbiggums22 1y ago
  I don't believe this is true. Something like thunderbolt could allow this but the cheap commonly available ones "simply" appear as a USB disk and can't use any of the NVMe specific features like HMB, can't be secure erased with nvme-cli, etc. Lack of HMB support is a particularly painful limitation these days as dram isn't available on most new drives.
anon6362 1y ago
Oddly enough, I bought a bunch of M.2 format adapter things from the overseas fleamarket. One includes 9 SATA ports in a 2280 form factor. I've also seen PCIe x8/x16 expansion boards that connect via M.2. If I had transfinite funds, I would make a video about turning a dual socket motherboard+CPU combination with the most PCIe lanes with the goal to connect maximum GPUs via Thunderbolt 4 hubs and enclosures, PCIe bifurcation cards, and M.2-to-PCIe adapters (whichever method maximizes GPU count) all powered by many PSUs.
justsomehnguy 1y ago
Honestly I don't quite get why they do have a problem here. That chassis sports a proper 16-port SAS backplane so they can just use... SAS drives? Sure, SAS 7.68Tb drives cost a bit more than some shit like 870 QVO 8Tb SATA drive, but: you will have at least 12Gbps instead of 6Gbps of bandwidth so your storage would be faster; you will not have a shitshow of STP so your storage would be faster; you will not have a USB thumbdrive speeds if you exhaust the SLC cache so your storage would be faster; you will have a better DWPD (1 vs 0.3) so your storage would be faster for a longer time. But okay, even if you don't go the SAS way... I'm again not sure what is going on here, but besides 870 EVO (desktop SATA QLC shit) there are Kingston DC600M, Solidigm D3-S4520 and Samsung PM893 which are the enterprise SATA drives and they cost only 10% more than 870 EVO (and only 10% less than Kioxia PM6-R SAS). Oh, by the way: don't do U.2 in 2025 and later. It would bite you later.
- IgnaciusMonk 1y ago
  youre right. his article does not make sense at all. i do not ... know why it is even here and why some other commenters are inserting additional "points" to that article just to make it seem sane. :)
cbhl 1y ago
For what it is worth, M.2 NAS devices with 4-6 slots can be had for ~$210 USD / ~$290 CAD or less: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/mini-nases-marry-nvme-intels-efficient-chip https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/mini-nases-marry-nvme...
lostmsu 1y ago
Are there any good SATA SSDs?

59 points by kencausey 1y ago

yummypaint 1y ago

You could do this on an FPGA dev board with the right connectors. Might be a nice project for someone with the time

IgnaciusMonk 1y ago
Writing SATA to NVME adapter is nonsensical endeavor. It is as writing RoCE to HTTPS adapter. Makes no sense at all. And im not even talking about voltages etc. Any NVME disk can be connected even over PCIE3 x1 so there is plenty of capability on DESKTOP computers he is "managing". And what is he writing and how is he writing it is unbelievable that he can not seem to understand what SAS expander is etc.
- userbinator 1y ago
  No, it makes as much sense as USB-NVMe, which does exist, and as the article mentions, so does the other direction (a PCIe SATA controller in the shape of an M.2 SSD) but there's just not enough of a market for NVMe-SATA yet. They're just block device protocols, and the conversion between them is well-defined. A bidirectional example is IDE/SATA, for which plentiful cheap adapters in both directions (one IC automatically detects its role) exist; IDE host to SATA device, or SATA host to IDE device. For another "directional" example, it's worth noting that SATA to MMC/(micro/mini)SD(HC/XC)/TF adapters exist which let you use those cards (often multiple, even in RAID!) as a SATA drive, but the opposite direction, exposing a SATA drive as an SD card, does not (yet).
  - account42 1y ago
    > No, it makes as much sense as USB-NVMe I don't think that's true. USB is accessible in lots of places where SATA and PCIe is not, i.e. as external connectors. Yes eSATA is a thing but eSATA without being able to use USB or PCIe? Or in other words, SATA->NVMe would at best serve users unwilling to upgrade their legacy racks while USB->NVMe has plenty of non-legacy use cases.
    - IgnaciusMonk 1y ago
      do not encourage nonsense. pls :) it is totally pointless endeavor because you CAN still buy NEW sata disks.... so why the.. you need to have 60 dollar converters added on top of essentially same disk ??? so no sata -> nvme is total nonsense and provides absolutelly nothing in technical terms to anybody in any situation. "" rest of your comment is "ok" ""™ XD
  - IgnaciusMonk 1y ago
    USB is on same "OSI model" layer as PCIE is. SATA is not. PCIE sata controllers in m.2 ssd are a thing, as are m.2 direct sata ssd, as are sata controllers on m.2 card with sata connectors capable of connecting 4-6 disks ( ASM1166 ). so i do not seem to see point you want to make there sata -> memory card is solution for embedded market of 2000s not today, for refurbishments or efforts to keep using old embedded stuff. and again it has nothing to do with guys point, it is absolutelly different use case. he is talking about servers, ( servers with a lot of drives have expanders ) ! ! ! ! M.2 NVMe to CFexpress Extender is something else entirely, so depends highly on what EXACTLY are we talking about ! ! ! ! simple reason why it is nonsense - how much does 256 GB m.2 ssd cost? so just use that. or use M.2 to PCI-E 4X 1X Riser Card ( adt-link K42ST ) and connect standard ubiquitous SATA/SAS/NVME HBA/RAID card into it and use any freaking disks. or M.2 Key M to SFF-8643 and use cable to connect it to something like H3platform Falcon 4118... which is "just" PCIE switch + psu + connectors. or m.2 to pcie connector and use HBA with optics to connect to 5 miles remote ARRAY.
    - rasz 1y ago
      OSI model makes no sense when applied to USB vs PCIE vs SATA :) But if you really insisted SATA and USB would occupy layers 1 and 2 while PCIE goes all the way to 3, so would ancient Firewire. PCIE (and FW) support bus mastering, USB does not. USB/SATA devices are purely host pooled and unable to initiate any transfers, PCIE device can talk to any other PCIE device without host help.

privatelypublic 1y ago

I think You're looking for something called a "tri-mode HBA." They run about $200 on ebay and as you mentioned- the m.2 to u.2, u.3, etc is passive (minus power)

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
rmb938 1y ago
That's not really a M.2 nvme to sata converter though. That's just something that can take pci-e lanes and either give them to nvme drives through a pci-e multiplexer or convert the pci-e lanes to saas or sata. It also isn't passive, there's lots of processors to make it happen.
- privatelypublic 1y ago
  Once they talk about adding a SATA controller- imho, trimode controllers become the obvious solution. If you want to get super hacky, if the SATA backplane is direct instead of multiplexed, passing a single lane of PCIe over SATA is possible. Probably limited to pcie 2.0 though. And they're absolute abominations, real frankensteins monster stuff. Edit: I mean the physical layer. Obviously you can't control a pcie device with a sata controller, but the cable will do a single wide pcie link.

kube-system 1y ago

It would be kind of an awkward to adapt a new and fast NVME drive to a clunky old SATA controller. M.2 conversions would typically not have the physical space required for any active conversion circuitry, and it would be more expensive than buying a SATA drive. If you've got a full 2.5" bay, you can get native 2.5" consumer SATA SSDs up to 16TB... which is more than I want to read/write at SATA3 speeds. And if you want to take advantage of fast storage, you can just skip the whole SATA controller and use PCIE. In an enterprise environment, nobody is really hooking up fast new storage to old slow storage controllers. They are either maintaining old systems, where they will use the legacy storage technologies, or they are deploying entirely new systems.

stephen_g 1y ago
Yeah, there is very little reason to want to do this. It may become more of an issue if new SATA/SAS drives stop being produced anymore for maintaining those legacy systems - but at that point something based on an FPGA (as was suggested in another comment) is probably going to be more economic than a company bothering to spin an ASIC for the purpose. But I don't see SATA drives dying out for a fair while yet.
- kube-system 1y ago
  Usually the tail end of legacy systems are adequately supported by new-old-stock for quite a while. e.g. 3.5" floppies are 40 years old, were obsolete 25 years ago, went out of production 15 years ago, and are just about ready to deplete their stock today. Yes, there are flash-to-floppy adapter, and a similar thing may happen for SATA, but we may not see that as a necessity until 2050.
aidenn0 1y ago
I looked into this as an option because (similar to the author, from the sounds of it[A]): 1. I already had a 2.5" hotswap setup 2. 2.5" 8TB SSDs are 4x as expensive as 8TB NVMEs. A: https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/NVMeOvertakingSATAForSSDs https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/NVMeOvertaking...

kccqzy 1y ago

> there also doesn't currently seem to be any high capacity M.2 SATA SSDs I have a high capacity M.2 SATA in my computer. It's 4TB which I think qualifies for high. I bought it because I found out about that empty slot in my computer and wanted to fill it, not because of a particular need. Having a rare part in my computer gives me an indescribable sense of joy. And don't worry it's entirely used for extra redundancy so I won't lose data even if it dies.

SteveNuts 1y ago
> And don't worry it's entirely used for extra redundancy so I won't lose data even if it dies. Just make sure to still back up the data!
aidenn0 1y ago
The author uses a number larger than 4TB as "high" (source https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/NVMeOvertakingSATAForSSDs https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/NVMeOvertaking..., where they lament that SATA SSDs stop at 4TB).
- kube-system 1y ago
  They don't stop at 4TB though... consumer SATA drives go up to 16TB. And I've heard there are even larger enterprise drives. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09FJFMQBB https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09FJFMQBB
  - aidenn0 1y ago
    From the article I linked: "...capacities larger than that only available from a few specialty vendors at eye-watering prices" From what I can tell, this was true when it was written, but has changed since with the Samsung QVO 8TB SATA only at a roughly 25% markup compared to a 8TB QLC M2 2280 drive. When I searched last winter it was 2-4x expensive as soon as you crossed the 4TB mark, with 4TB and under being similarly priced between SATA and nvme drives.
    - 1y ago

IgnaciusMonk 1y ago

[flagged]

tomhow 1y ago
Could you please not fulminate like this on HN? It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- IgnaciusMonk 1y ago
  i do not understand what exactly you mean by - "It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for." because i thought it is for technical things. not braindead nonsense which does not make any sense ( FOR PEOPLE WHO FULLY UNDERSTAND AREA HE IS EXPLORING not for ai kind of 80% understnading by googling and looking up in wikipedia by 50+ year old social studies major working as middle manager ) because that is what that article is about. yes it can seem it is highly technical , writen by person by a lot of knowledge, but it is not. OR HE HAS ANEURYSM OS CALL DOCTOR FOR HIM, so why the fffffffffuuuuuuuuuuuukkkkkkk is it here then. AI can hallucinate more accurate content than that. so remove his nonsensical post and no fulmination anywhere, whole post is technical retardation, yet it is still here. conclusions, in that article are total retardation. way of thinking about problems in that article is total retardation. he is mixing apples with cars, and inserting totally nonsensical "economical" conclusions for problem no one sane even manage to invent yet.

CyberDildonics 1y ago

I don't understand this title.

timzaman 1y ago

What a surprisingly insightful post

mikestorrent 1y ago
Yeah, it explains why I can't buy one of these. Now, what I am puzzled by is why none of the various PCIe (standard form factor) cards that offer m.2 nvme slots on them will work with any of my older computers; they have PCIe lanes to spare but I suppose the system firmware itself just doesn't know what to do with them. Maybe I need to use a little sata SSD as /boot?
- aidenn0 1y ago
  Author has an article on that too[1] To explain what I learned on my own: If you want to (for example) put 4 NVME drives (4 lanes each) in a 16x slot, then you need two things: 1. The 16x slot actually needs to have 16 lanes (on consumer motherboards there is only one slot like this, and on many the second 16x slot shares the lanes, so it will need to be empty) 2. You need to configure the PCIe controller to treat that slot as 4 separate slots (this is called PCIe bifurcation. For recent Ryzen CPUs, the first 16x slot usually goes directly to the CPU, and the CPU supports bifurcation, so (assuming your BIOS allows enabling bifurcation; most recent ones do) all you need to do is figure out which PCIe lanes go to which slots (the motherboard manual will have this). If you aren't going to use the integrated graphics, you'll need a 16x slot for your GPU. This will at best have 4 lanes, and on most motherboards (all 800 series chipset motherboards from all major manufacturers) will be multiplexed over the chipset, so now your GPU is sharing bandwidth with e.g. USB and Ethernet, which seems less than ideal (I've not benchmarked, maybe someone else has?). In the event that you want to do a 4x NVME in a 16x slot I found that the "MSI X670E ACE" has a 4x slot that does not go throught the chipset, and so does the "ASRock B650M Pro x3D RS WiFi" either of those should work with a 9000 series Ryzen CPU. ThreadRipper CPUs have like a gajillion PCIe lanes, so there shouldn't be any issues there. I have also been told that there are some (expensive) PCIe cards that present as a single PCIe device to the host. I haven't tried them. 1: https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/PCIeBifurcationAndNVMe https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/PCIeBifurcatio...

Aurornis 1y ago

> Since (M.2) NVMe to USB adapters exist, protocol conversion is certainly possible, and since such adapters are surprisingly inexpensive, presumably there's enough demand to drive down the price of the underlying controller chipsets. > (These chipsets are, for example, the Realtek RTL9210B-CG or the ASMedia ASM3242.) The NVMe to USB adapters aren't converting the NVMe protocol to another disk access protocol. They are USB3-connected PCIe endpoints, which allow the PCIe NVMe drive to connect to the host as an NVMe device. This isn't equivalent to the protocol conversion the author is seeking, which would accept SATA commands on one end and translate them to NVMe on the other end. I would actually call that SATA drive emulation, not protocol conversion, as SATA and NVMe aren't 1:1 such that you can convert SATA commands into NVMe commands and vice versa.

userbinator 1y ago
They are USB3-connected PCIe endpoints, which allow the PCIe NVMe drive to connect to the host as an NVMe device No? https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/uploads/framework3/original/3X/9/d/9d15c562a5bd6e16ae4c69e2b150801b5db0890c.png https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex001/uploads/framework3/ori... This is an RTL9210B NVMe enclosure. It's a UAS device (and I believe it supports BOT too.) I have not examined this in much detail but I believe these converter ICs are actually rather powerful SoCs with PCIe host, SATA host, and USB device peripherals. The existence of firmware (several hundred KB!) for them is further evidence of this fact.
jonbiggums22 1y ago
I don't believe this is true. Something like thunderbolt could allow this but the cheap commonly available ones "simply" appear as a USB disk and can't use any of the NVMe specific features like HMB, can't be secure erased with nvme-cli, etc. Lack of HMB support is a particularly painful limitation these days as dram isn't available on most new drives.

anon6362 1y ago

Oddly enough, I bought a bunch of M.2 format adapter things from the overseas fleamarket. One includes 9 SATA ports in a 2280 form factor. I've also seen PCIe x8/x16 expansion boards that connect via M.2. If I had transfinite funds, I would make a video about turning a dual socket motherboard+CPU combination with the most PCIe lanes with the goal to connect maximum GPUs via Thunderbolt 4 hubs and enclosures, PCIe bifurcation cards, and M.2-to-PCIe adapters (whichever method maximizes GPU count) all powered by many PSUs.

justsomehnguy 1y ago

Honestly I don't quite get why they do have a problem here. That chassis sports a proper 16-port SAS backplane so they can just use... SAS drives? Sure, SAS 7.68Tb drives cost a bit more than some shit like 870 QVO 8Tb SATA drive, but: you will have at least 12Gbps instead of 6Gbps of bandwidth so your storage would be faster; you will not have a shitshow of STP so your storage would be faster; you will not have a USB thumbdrive speeds if you exhaust the SLC cache so your storage would be faster; you will have a better DWPD (1 vs 0.3) so your storage would be faster for a longer time. But okay, even if you don't go the SAS way... I'm again not sure what is going on here, but besides 870 EVO (desktop SATA QLC shit) there are Kingston DC600M, Solidigm D3-S4520 and Samsung PM893 which are the enterprise SATA drives and they cost only 10% more than 870 EVO (and only 10% less than Kioxia PM6-R SAS). Oh, by the way: don't do U.2 in 2025 and later. It would bite you later.

IgnaciusMonk 1y ago
youre right. his article does not make sense at all. i do not ... know why it is even here and why some other commenters are inserting additional "points" to that article just to make it seem sane. :)

cbhl 1y ago

For what it is worth, M.2 NAS devices with 4-6 slots can be had for ~$210 USD / ~$290 CAD or less: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/mini-nases-marry-nvme-intels-efficient-chip https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/mini-nases-marry-nvme...

lostmsu 1y ago

Are there any good SATA SSDs?