Is The ASUS Hyper M.2 PCIe Gen 5 Card The FASTEST Thing In Your PC?

[@Penrowe]

Just because you have the physical connector doesn't mean 4x4x4x4 is supported by the bios. I had to learn this the hard way.

[@ChrisM541]

Unfortunately, that's true, and has been for some time. The MB has to support bifurcation of that x16 slot. Not all do.

[@nicfit23]

ASRock always does so I just buy asrock

[@xp0079]

Yup, even with servers bifurcation aren't guaranteed.

[@seansingh4421]

@@nicfit23Asrock had really advanced features to my surprise. I used to think it was only Supermicro with a lot of mb features

[@ADB-zf5zr]

The Irony is that having an Asus motherboard doesn't ghuarantee that this Asus card will work either. I have an AsRock AB350 Pro4 which the original version of the card (Gen 3) worked out of the box, I didn't have to set it in the BIOS, but looked anyway and there is a manual x4x4x4x4 option, but Auto worked. In my Asus Prime X370-Pro it doesn't work at all.

[@joshhardin666]

I am CONSTANTLY frustrated by the lack of pcie lanes on mainstream high end cpu platforms. it's incredibly annoying to only have room for 1 16x gpu and like maybe 3 m.2 drives. MAYBE a 10g nic if you're lucky.

[@daveg4417]

I tend to buy HEDT or Workstation systems for my main editing computers, just for the PCIe lanes, and more memory channels. I have two X99 and a W2400 system, and I am looking at an X299 as well. I do have a few additional systems, Intel 9th and 12th, and AMD R9, but those are only used for production testing my software and games. I do the development on HEDT Workstations.

[@tek_soup]

me too, where is my new HEDT Intel? i have x99 and x299 but getting long in the tooth

[@vincentschumann937]

intel treated lga 1700 + 14900k as hedt imo

[@daveg4417]

@@vincentschumann937 - HEDT level hardware has higher processor pin count so it would be an entirely different socket, and higher PCIE Lane counts typically 100%+ more than the consumer level processors, and at least quad-channel or octal-channel memory. The 14900K doesn't have any of that. The 14900K is only 20 PCIe lanes which is useless for HEDT, the W2400 is 64 PCIe Lanes in comparison. If anything the W2400 would be the new HEDT from Intel, but the hardware is way more expensive than the previous X99 and X299 HEDT. The 14900K is just the top-end consumer processor, it is not HEDT at all, and has none of the features that makes a processor the HEDT level. What defines HEDT is the ability to use more GPUs, more memory, and more drives and peripherals than the consumer level. The 14900K can't do that. You need more lanes than what the 14900K has.

[@vincentschumann937]

@@daveg4417 i know but intel acts like 14900k isnt just another normie platform with insane prices for what you get

[@cracklingice]

LGA 1700 only supports 8x + 8x + 4x officially. They added the dedicated M.2 but took away the 8x + 4x + 4x to make sure we can still only have three devices on consumer socket.

[@nadtz]

Pretty sure that's why he specifically mentioned Threadripper or Xeon W, those platforms have the PCIE lanes to use this kind of thing.

[@cracklingice]

@@nadtz He mentioned not seeing any boards with that support and if there were any. No - because Intel prevents it. That was what the comment was about - not you could or should use LGA1700 for this.

[@Justifier]

Worse they're also jank on some boards beyond even that - for example, the z790 apex encore for example just outright disables the pcie_2 slot if you use the gen-5 m.2 port (seen on page XV in the manual), so you just get sol'd extra hard. This is not the case on the original encore board

[@erkinalp]

just PLX it

[@cracklingice]

@@erkinalp LMAO. No. The switches to provide four 8 lanes cost so much that it's cheaper to buy the Lite Workstation W790 or TRX50 board. That also would not fix the issue of being unable to have 4 devices on one slot (unless you put the switch on the adapter card and now it's $1000).

[@wannabesq]

I think eventually, mainstream M.2 drives are only going to need 1-2 lanes of bandwidth, and maybe we will see an x4 slot bifurcated to x1x1x1x1

[@MikeKirkReloaded]

I'm fine with keeping x4... but I want M.2 to get chased back to laptops where it belongs... and desktop case manufacturers to start including E1.S slots. I don't need to be giving IcyDock so much money :)

[@timramich]

That's the whole point of them pushing quick for version 7. The limit of direct storage is the number of lanes a CPU has available. X4 is a waste. Going down to 1 lane quadruples the capacity. But there is PCIe switching silicon too...

[@georgypal]

@@MikeKirkReloadedcan you plz elaborate more… u r talking about 2.5 inch enterprise ssd’s right..? Where does icy dock comes in to play…?? Sorry I m noob in the field and learning as u go…

[@ChrisM541]

That's an excellent point but the limiting factor is space on the MB, especially if smaller than EATX.

[@timramich]

@@ChrisM541 You're thinking in terms of M.2 only. Servers don't play with that piddly stuff outside of a boot drive. They would have full x16 cards that attach to a front backplane to take hot-swap drives of some form factor like EDSFF.

[@Zarathustra-H-]

I have three of the older Gen4 variants of these cards in my EPYC (Milan) server and they are excellent. Very happy with them

[@ADB-zf5zr]

That is a beast of a machine.!

[@Zarathustra-H-]

@@ADB-zf5zr Thank you sir. It is an all-in-one VM and NAS server. Twelve 16TB hard drives, and sixteen NVMe drives. running on an EPYC 7543 32C/64T CPU in a Supermicro H12SSL-NT motherboard with 512GB of RAM.

[@Hansen999]

@@Zarathustra-H- Got almost same setup, just less of everything 😅 Epyc 7302 16C/32T, 128GB of RAM, 8 HDD's of different sizes (5 in the array and 3 in a ZFS pool) and 5 NVMe's in various sizes and a couple of GPU's

[@CaptTerrific]

I have this very card in my Genoa machine, the Supermicro H13 supports quad x4 bifurcation - it's a DREAM

[@Arktorin]

Verry much needed video! Thank you! Asus product website does not explain a small fraction of what I heard in this video. We definitely fall for it with a LGA1700 machine and had to send it back because the CPU/mobo 8x + 8x bifurcation was not properly detailed. We had to google for 2 days and gather information from several places to realize we f..ked up.

[@radeksparowski7174]

well u.2/u.3 are fine, but are being replaced by e1 form factors in enterprise, would be nice if those would spread amongst power desktop users and gamers too, would be nice to have a nuc like small universal pc with externally easily accessible slots where you can interchangeably put a cheap consumer grade m.2 or an e1 for heavy duty tasks and hoarding /30TB drives were on sale for under 2500 eur with tax/

[@timramich]

Nothing that is a physical standard trickles down from enterprise into retail world. U.2/3 never got there. SCSI was abandoned long ago and relegated to only enterprise. The EDSFF standard isn't ever going to make it down into consumer stuff.

[@xp0079]

That'll be great but...(I am staring at you Mr.SAS HDD.)

[@radeksparowski7174]

@@timramich thank god there are exceptions, I utilise a pcie 16x to U.2 adapter with a 7,68TB intel drive, the adapter was 13 euro and the drive brand new for 563 eur on sale with tax :-D , also there is an interesting nas out there, level 1 have had a review of it too, check "QNAP TBS-H574TX" can use five m.2 OR the e1 form factor drives, currently theoretically 5*60TB = 300TB /pricewise 1500-1800 for the nas and approx 7200 per 60TB drive so almost 40 000 euro in total...for all the linux distros out there.....:-D/

[@zacharytaylor8523]

@@timramich At the very least stuff like this could be more available. I had to go to AliExpress to get a card that could accept 4 U.2 drives, I never did get it to run 4 drives but my old Z590 board could do 4x/4x on the second 16X slot and I could run my optane and 8TB u.2 drive in it

[@oscarcharliezulu]

Here’s me on PCIe 3. Blissfully happy still, running hardware that probably cost about $20k when it came out.

[@SpiritOfTheHeretic]

The limit on lanes for consumer motherboards has always been a painpoint for me.

[@tomiw69]

I'm using gen4 version in my nas PC (am4) and it works flawlessly. It's a pity that you didn't show any performance tests on 4 gen 5 devices. With intel vroc and md.

[@abavariannormiepleb9470]

10:32 Have you heard anything from AMD actually doing active work here, even if it only has a low priority? With Zen 4 motherboards they made their RAID drivers a bit better but so far even these slight improvements haven’t been allowed on Zen 3 platforms, even though it’s just pure software stuff which sucks quite a bit.

[@cracklingice]

There is no 16 core TRX50. There is a 'WRX90' Pro SKU but that thing costs so much that you're better off buying the 24 core non Pro SKU if you do not need octal channel or the additional PCIE lanes. The 7955WX is like $400 more than the 7960X. I actually finally caved in and bought an AM4 setup as a temporary X99 replacement since it's clear that neither Intel nor AMD want to release actual HEDT stuff. I'm OK with 12 cores on a single ring or dual 8 core CCDs with my quad channel and minimum of 48 PCIE lanes, but I'm not going over $1200-$1500 for the board and CPU combined. At that point I'll wait and buy used.

[@dfgdfg_]

HEDT?

[@ChrisM541]

AMD will never release another consumer HEDT after 100% destroying their enthusiast userbase with 1) that very deliberate, now infamous TRX40 'bait and switch' treatment, and 2) the complete failure of non-pro TR's supposed revival in TRX50. A damn shame since TRX40 was a superb base going forward...until AMD instantly killed it.

[@cracklingice]

@@ChrisM541 Agreed. I was ready to buy Zen 2 Threadripper for TR4 to replace my X99 stuff and then AMD is just like - 'no soup for you'. I really did not want to buy AM4 because of it - but there is barely an alternative. It cost like 50% more to get the 12700k and a dual 8 lane board. The $212 X570 Taichi with the $185 5700X3D was just no brainer.

[@cracklingice]

@@dfgdfg_ high performance enthusiast desktop. Basically anything more than the current amount of cores actually needed by consumers (currently 8 IMO) and with more than 2 memory channels and additional PCIE lanes. X58 was the first, then X79, X99, X299; AMD released TRX40 and then abandoned HEDT. Intel has also abandoned HEDT. Both companies now offer Professional Workstation (8 channel memory and more than 64 PCIE lanes) and Lite Workstation (4 channel memory and 64 PCIE lanes). They could also have some of the parts be considered HEDT - but they need to have parts that start at reasonable prices. Intel is $1080 for a freaking 12 core! AMD is $1400 for a 24 core. HEDT parts used to be available at like $390 for nerfed 28 PCIE lane parts or $690 for the same 6 cores with all 40 PCIE lanes. The modern version of that would be a 12 core for like $900. The X99 Taichi I run was $330 at launch. W790 intel board starts at $500 for a stripped down model and TRX50 starts at $566 for a stripped down model. It's a little on the high side IMO but not entirely unreasonable (though the TRX50 Aero D definitely should be at least $100 cheaper IMO). It's the CPU price that's holding back both platforms though.

[@bosstowndynamics5488]

​@@ChrisM541I highly doubt the end of TR40 was planned in advance, AMD almost certainly intended to continue it forwards when they first launched and instead changed their minds later when seeing a) what their high end customers were using Threadripper for and b) how many cores they could easily stick in AM4 with their chiplets (the x950x part number series literally got moved across from TR40 to AM4). That still really sucks, don't get me wrong, as someone with an old 1920x who had to move to AM4 as well with some janky nonsense to get enough PCIe lanes, but we don't need to add marketing conspiracies to the mix.

[@SilentDecode]

I have the Gen4 (version 1) of this in my Dell PowerEdge R730 with a single WD SN850X 1TB SSD. The R730 supports bifurcation, but I currently don't have the workload to go higher than 1TB. Might add another 1TB drive in a while though. The R730 doesn't have PCIe RAID functionality, but when I move over to Proxmox, I can just have two M.2 NVMe SSDs in a ZFS mirror. The only reason I'm still running ESXi, is because I've been using Veeam B&R for the past 10 years and I'm waiting on official support for Proxmox that's coming in Q4 2024. When that is released and everything works, I'm switching to Proxmox.

[@jeremyfmoses]

There are a few Z690 and Z790 boards such as the Asus ProArt Creator boards that will do x8x8 bifurcation, but as far as I'm aware, no LGA1700 Intel Chipset supports x4x4x4x4. Also, take a look at the OWC U2 Shuttle for an interesting way to add a lot of M.2 NVME drives to consumer PCs.

[@abavariannormiepleb9470]

X8 x8 is just regular muxing, since it splits the lanes between two physical PCIe slots. But yes, the as of yet current Intel LGA 1700 desktop CPUs can’t do PCIe Bifurcation.

[@fwiler]

​@@abavariannormiepleb9470 Which does work for 2x m.2 drives at full speed without switching hardware, if anyone is wondering.

[@jeremyfmoses]

@@abavariannormiepleb9470 Thank you for pointing out my error - in my haste I listed one of only two Asus Z690 boards that muxes, but _doesn't_ x8x8 bifurcate (the other one being the ROG Maximus Z690 Hero). All Asus Z790 boards should be able to x8x8 bifurcate as shown on Asus' bifurcation compatibility webpage. The majority of Z690/Z790 boards from ASRock, Gigabyte and MSI should x8x8 bifurcate as well, but check the BIOS manual for each individual board.

[@tek_soup]

it does not have the raid speed, JBOD speed. neat device

[@dutchinfinity5991]

Hope the fan is of a better quality then previous versions

[@flagger2020]

My only failure was an out of box dead fan that Q&A should have caught

[@icmann4296]

I didn't hear you mention ZFS in your list of raid options. But you did mention Linux md. I'm curious. When you get 4 gen5 m.2 drives, will you performance test ZFS?

[@RichardFraser-y9t]

The capabilities of modern machines have far outstripped the needs of the vast majority of users, this is madness

[@railerswim]

This 100%. I do some video editing, programming, docker, k8s, etc. I’m still running intel 9th gen lol.

[@ibex485]

Very true. My mother still considers her 2011 vintage i5-2400S (ex-corporate Dell SFF) to be rediculously overpowered, and she will quickly complain if a computer keeps her waiting for anything. (Thanks to a cheap SATA SSD upgrade a while back, it feels faster now despite all the accumulated Windows 10 baggage than it did originally with Windows 7.) I remember when the IT consultants in a publication I used to subscribe to began talking about being in an era where even average machines had a surplus of CPU procesing power, that was way back in 1997.

[@rotors_taker_0h]

Now imagine medium term future, where just regular windows setup will require something like that to run somewhat decently. Yeah, sounds crazy, but if you show regular today's PC to an XP user from 2001 and say that that thing will still not be enough to run without random freezes they will be as shocked as we are at the thought that someday hardware from the video will be average requirement.

[@ibex485]

This is arguably why MS imposed an arbitrary lockout on older hardware with Windows 11. Most people just don't need to replace even a decent 10 year old computer for performance reasons (or its operating system). And if they don't buy a new computer, as well as hitting MS' hardware partners it also means no new Windows license fee for MS.

[@ibex485]

If it wasn't for forced obsolescence by ending security patches, virtually the entire Windows userbase would be quite happy running 7 or XP forever. (Indeed significantly happer than they are now with 10/11.) Desperately hoping someday someone will succeed in making an open source OS fully compatible with Windows XP. Then bye-bye MS forever...

[@daveg4417]

It would be nice if Wendel gave some of us Intel W2400 and W3400 users some lovin' too, instead of mostly/only discussing AMD. There is more to life than just Threadripper... I just made the AMD crowd mad... :) I looked at this Quad card plus the Gen4 version of it, but I only require 1 additional 4TB NVMe drive. It's going in an Intel Xeon W7-2495X 24C, ASUS W790 ACE, 512GB, RTX-3090 system. I have a 2TB SN850X for the OS, a 4TB SN850X for Data, and I want to split the data across two 4TB SN850X units, one for UE4 and UE5 installs, and the second for projects. The 5000D case has two 3.5 bays, so I use one for a 2TB OS Clone drive and the other for an 8TB Data Robocopy backup drive. I still really like this ASUS Quad card, but I feel that it is overkill for just one more drive.

[@markmonroe7330]

Looking forward to some test numbers on this card. I have a Lenovo P620 with a 3995wx Threadripper and I have been thinking about adding one of these in Slot-1 with some fast PCIE-4 drives. This system board supports bifurcation with x4x4x4x4. I wonder what kind of speeds are realistic with RAID0 read/write on this combo.

[@AndreiNeacsu]

Most AM4 motherboards that I have support 4x4x4x4 on the top PCIe slot, the one connected to the CPU. I can't think of any of my AM4 (X370, B350, B450, B550, and X570) boards that don't support it. The downside is that you are left with 4x for the GPU.

[@jenesuispasbavard]

I just cannot go back to regular M.2 NVMe drives after switching to Optane. The latency improvement is staggering.

[@johnknightiii1351]

Really wish they would start focusing on latency again and not just throughput

[@timramich]

@@johnknightiii1351 Blame Intel and Micron for not dotting their i's and crossing their t's legally, or else Optane would still be here. It didn't go away because it wasn't selling. Such a shame, because NAND flash sucks ass. We need a successor.

[@evanharris1629]

D4 Strix Z690 Wi-Fi(ddr4) Gen3 X16 Length-slot/ X8 PCIe dimm contacts / x4 signal lanes. Can run x4 or x2x2 or x4x0* non-NVME PCIe devices of X4 in the "M.2 card" bios labeled (2x2) bifurcation will run @x4x0. have not tested if two(non-NVME) x1 or x2 PCIe devices. Probably*~(m.2 Card label). Gen5Pcie x16 @ 16 or x8x8 some i/o overflow seems to cause no hindrance while others ... 💣 ** Chipset is apt to get hot well over 80'C. Fairly thin finless aluminum heatsink.

[@dp70737]

😅 please fix the focus issue going forward, i keeps making me think KZbin bumped down my resolution

[@mauzz]

I got the Gen4 version, x4+x4 2 drives in raid reaching 14k and the other pci at 8x, for gpu 4.0 the gaming experience of this combo is insane really recommended.

[@JimSmith-z4v]

off-topic but bro's looking slim. good on ya mate.

[@bearxor]

@Level1Techs I don’t have a bunch of these to test, let alone a Gen5 server board, but my understanding of these cards are that they just physically take the lanes and put them for an NVMe connection with nothing in between. If that’s the case, is there a difference between the Gen3, Gen4, or Gen5 versions of these Hyper M.2 cards? Or is there something else going on?

[@MWHM2]

I swear that I can remember back with socket 1366 you could have plenty of pci-e expansion. Okay, back then it was pci-e 2.0 but I used my Gigabyte X58 UD7 motherboard for my NAS/Home Server for manny manny years!

[@Bob-of-Zoid]

Wendell "Data Pump" (Whatever his last name is)! 😆 I could use something like that for AM4, because the prices of SATA SSD's at higher capacity are ridiculously highly priced compared to M.2 NVME's, despite much lower performance!🤯

[@Pro720HyperMaster720]

The only viable AM5 motherboard/s I’ve seen to use that Quad M.2 PCIe 5.0 card would be a MSI X670E GODLIKE or ACE, as those are the two o my motherboard with 3 PCIe 5.0 slots wired to the CPU. 3 x16 slots, but if you use the 1° and the 2° slots they will change to x8 each, but the 3° one is separate, is phisically x16 but wired x4 (that in other mobos usually goes to an M.2 port). So one could use the first slot for the Quad M.2 car, not use the 2nd one to not halve the bandwidth of the first slot and then use the 3rd PCIe 5.0 slot for a GPU, this will be specially viable when the next generation of GPUs release, as if the GPU supports PCIe 5.0 that will mean that will get PCIe 3.0 x16 speeds on that 5.0 x4 connection, and right now an RTX 4090 loses around 2% performance on x16 PCIe 3.0 (that is a thing quite the amount of modern MiniITX builds still use due to the risers used) so a todays GPU like a 4090 itself may suffer a little more from an effective PCIe 3.0 x8 connection than a future GPU using x16 PCIe 3.0 speeds (reminder in case of losing track: A given device would only be able to use how many lanes are phisically present at the devices max speed, so a PCIe 5.0 x4 connection on a PCIe 4.0 GPU would be a x4 PCIe 4.0 connection that is equivalent to an x16 PCIe 3.0) Lastly, about bifurcation itself I could find many documentation about it on MSI AM5 boards but given that those boards come with a Dual M.2 PCIe card is quite probable they support the needed level of bifurcation And as a bonus those two boards have on board 10Gbps NICs

[@MikeKirkReloaded]

I keep telling myself I'll move beyond volume CPUs/MBs to something with all those PCIe lanes and more memory support. But you can do SO MUCH with 20/24 lanes and 128GB RAM and the high clock+cores of modern CPUs. Consumer CPU/MB combos are a such a good deal these days!

[@denvera1g1]

What i'd love is a card like this that takes 8 5.0 lanes, and turrns it into 32 3.0 lanes so i can have 8 high capacity, low power, and relatively cheap M.2 drives front and back

[@denvera1g1]

Maybe you need 8 lanes for your GPU and 8 lanes for high speed networking. Or, maybe you can throw 2 more of these cards in and have dual SFP28 on board for networking and use the integrated GPU.

[@hokatichenci]

If you're already getting a HEDT motherboard - why would you use a generic m2 rather than getting a high end nvme like a kioxia which will have more sustainable performance?

[@bosstowndynamics5488]

Because in some applications using 4 cheap M.2 will give more performance and more capacity than 1 enterprise grade drive for a similar overall price. There's even specialised PCIe switched carrier cards that will jam over 20 M.2 drives into a single x16 slot, you can't even buy those retail if you try because they're high end enterprise only for specific types of workloads where buckets and buckets of cheap storage works better than a few high end enterprise devices. (Even the original concept of RAID was introduced to avoid using enterprise grade stuff - Redundant Array of *Inexpensive* Disks)

[@johnpaulbacon8320]

Thanks for these great videos.

[@durdy911]

The best product Asus can make. Ive used these Hyper M.2 Cards since PCIe Gen3 version on all my workstations. I have raid0 arrays of minimum 4 nvvme drives up to 12 on two of my workstations ( Gen4 EPYC 3rd Gen and Genoa Gen5). This means my slowest array was already at or faster than current Gen5 nvme drives all while not needing to worry about cooling. And on some of these machines I still use Primocache (Slowest Raid0 array is 4 980 evos with primocache and I get 17 to 22GBps sustained reads/writes and insane random/iop figures X399 TR build). for work these are great and on some games it can definitely make up for the loss of Microsoft direct storage since direct storage does not support raid

[@stephenreaves3205]

You always talk about how good Linux md is. Can you do a @Level1Linux video comparing md, zfs-fuse, and zfs native for this card?

[@axescar]

Intel don't have bifurcation on desktop sockets :( With WS/Server class - bifurcation works even on 2011-3. Bought something like that but Gen4 on AM5 for small silent nvme NAS. Ryzen 7600x, 5x Gen4 WD Black SN770, and Intel Optane m.2 16Gb can fit in 30w idle.

[@rontastic4u]

I have been running the card in my ASUS Pro WS WRX90E-SAGE SE since 8th July. Wasn't recognised correctly straight away, first had to change the setting in the bios

[@ChrisM541]

As an enthusiast, I used to have a top end Asus TRX40 board. That was, until AMD broke their now infamous "long term support" / "TRX40 ain't going anywhere" promises, and we ended up with only those original three Zen2 CPU's, 100% destroying their enthusiast userbase. The extra features/bells and whistles on those many TRX40 boards, especially the Zenith II Extreme that I had have all but been stripped off for those extremely few in number TRX50 boards (and WRX90). That's pretty shocking, and mirrors what MB manufacturers think of TRX50. As a Gen5 board with lots of lanes, TRX50/WRX90 are excellent of course, but it reflects badly on AMD when compared to those feature-laden TRX40 boards. Such a damn shame since TRX40/enthusiast Threadripper showed a lot of promise.

[@rontastic4u]

@@ChrisM541 ok, I understand, but now? What does this have to do with the ASUS Hyper M.2 PCIe Gen 5 Card or the fact that I shared my experiences on the WRX90 and the M.2 PCIe Gen 5 Card? I am confused

[@chrisw1462]

@1:25 Gotta love the slow pan of an m.2 COOLING FAN. (No, not really.)

[@mklinteback]

Extra 5 watts from external 6 pin connector? That's not how electricity works....

[@MrNeocortex]

I still have the PCI-E 3.0 version installed in my Asus X299 board, running an i9-7900X.

[@DJDocsVideos]

What about the HighPoint Rocket 1628A or Rocket 7628A

[@50shadesofbeige88]

Proud Owner of a 4.0 Hyper M.2 Card that doesn't work with any of the bifurcation enabled motherboards I've used it on.

[@tim3172]

Did you also enable NVME RAID under the SATA config options?

[@Tecnoc22]

I really want cards like this but with an onboard switch that allows install in an x4 slot. I don't need the performance of a threadripper system for my home server, but I yearn for the pcie lanes.

[@GlennBerrySQL]

Hopefully you can get T705 SSDs rather than T700

[@pitz_nous]

I personally use one of thoses (older pci3 one) in my homelab with a first gen ryzen and a second hand 470x mobo, and it's awesome, i have a 10gb nass with a raid z1 nvme aray i mad for 500 buck (i got my 4x 1tb corsairs ssd for 30buck each at the end of pci gen 3 drives, i recomand if there is 3d artist neading fast network storage on a budget ( also have hdd for long therme storage)

[@siaoguai]

I was just looking at this card a few days ago and wondering if this would work with Micron 7450 (22110)?

[@fit4dataction142]

Does the Asus gen5 hyper m.2 support the maximum gen5 ssd speeds when connected to the wrx90 motherboard?

[@fit4dataction142]

Essentially how many m.2 slots and x16 PCIE slots are connected directly to the cpu?

[@rush2489]

I'm running the gen4 version of this card. I'm using windows storage spaces to great effect. Had to manually mess with the column config to get it running the best....

[@Proton_Decay]

Rise of the re-driver -- return of the NorthBridge/SouthBridge layout, but in an older way, like ISA daughter boards?

[@ChrisM541]

The MSI Meg Ace x670e has a bottom PCIe Gen5 x4 slot that is also, and unusually, connected direct to the CPU (there might be other AM5 boards that do this also but there's not many). So, you could use this Hyper card in the x16 slot and - if you can make it fit - put your GPU into the bottom slot. Remember...PCIe Gen5 x4 = Gen4 x8 = Gen3 x16. Even the 4090 is not(!!) reduced in speed in a Gen4 x8 slot compared to a Gen4 x16 - there's plenty PCIe scaling videos proving this. To help, perhaps a riser cable would work in that bottom slot?

[@bosstowndynamics5488]

The 4090 is famously not a gen 5 card though so in that bottom slot it would only run at gen 4 x4 speeds (there's 4 lanes available and the max speed on each lane is determined by the lowest common denominator) - that probably would start bottlenecking a lot of high end GPUs. If you were going for a particular kind of build with a low to mid range GPU though you could break out the gen 5 M.2 slot that most motherboards offer (which is probably what MSI pulled those lanes from) with a riser, although even if you could find a gen 5 GPU most risers will struggle even to get you to gen 4 let alone gen 5 signal integrity

[@blkspade23]

The real thing here that Wendell is pointing out is that you don't have the processing power on the consumer platform to make use of this card in the first place, so its a pointless endeavor. There are X670E boards with 2x 5.0 M.2 and and 2x 4.0 M.2 slots, which already provide more bandwidth that you could actually do anything with a Ryzen 9. Boot from a Gen 4 slot, raid the 2 Gen 5's, and have more bandwidth than you'll ever need.

[@bosstowndynamics5488]

@@blkspade23 That's not even remotely true, consumer platforms have tons of processing power, what they lack is PCIe lanes, a big deal for a piece of hardware that requires 16 of them

[@blkspade23]

@@bosstowndynamics5488 Clearly missed what is being said. Yes they have a lot, what they don't have is enough to utilize all the bandwidth already on offer. The absolute fastest thing a 7950X can do itself reading/writing to storage encryption/decryption, which amounts unlocking a bitlocker/LUKS drive on boot. When it comes to performing most types on work inside of applications, they aren't getting it done at a rate equal to a single Gen 5 NVME SSD. Nothing the CPU is capable of needs a 4 Gen 5 NVME array. Even if you were fine giving up a dGPU, it's silly on a consumer platform. That is why Wendell is saying it's meant for HEDT. You can dump bits into memory or on the bus to the GPU/wire that fast, but not having the CPU doing the processing on it. Past a certain point you get a lot of CPU overhead on even that. I'm specifically talking about devices like in this video that aren't solving consumer class problems. You can get away with running any current top GPU at 4.0x8 because it doesn't even need all 16 lanes, let alone any lower tier GPU. My AM5 board can run 2 8x devices, 2x 5.0 NVME, and 2 Gen 4.0 NVME. It has a 3rd PCIe slot that does split to 2x with one of the Gen 4 M.2 slots. That's still faster than the 10Gbe or TB4 included on the board for getting data out of the computer. Maybe something like 1-5% of consumers need (would like) more than that on a standard desktop. There is for sure an argument for more PCIe slots over the excess M.2

[@bosstowndynamics5488]

@@blkspade23 I read what was written, the problem here is that you're being very constrained in your thinking for why you might want fast storage, there's plenty of use cases for fast storage that aren't dependent on the CPU as the primary or sole processing unit. The problem is that those use cases involve either providing a network storage target or processing that data with a GPU or similar, and the reason you can't do those on AM5 is, surprise surprise, not having enough PCIe lanes

[@nadtz]

I have one of the gen 3 and gen 4 cards. The drives can get a bit warm in the gen 4 if I'm really hammering it so I hoped they bumped up the cooling to match how warm gen 5 drives can get. Otherwise been happy with these cards.

[@tim3172]

What does "warm" mean in comparison to the design specifications? LIke "durrr I put my hand on it and it feels like a Popeyes biscuit". or are you comparing what it's actually designed to run at and determining it's running out of spec?

[@nadtz]

@@tim3172 Yes. It's not hard to check the specs for most consumer NVME drives in terms of temps. I didn't say it was running above spec, I said it was running warm.

[@gabiballetje]

I would love one of these things fully kitted with 8Tbs in them, but who am i kidding, i cannot afford, i have no real use case for it whatsoever, but still, this thing is fucking awesome. Also, VERY few motherboards where this will be useful, most that CAN bifurcate will mean you end up with an x8 for your GPU, which if you have a use case for this might be an issue, or you have so much money to burn you will want to max out your RTX 4090 but then maybe can't !?

[@DaveImagery]

I would give anything for Wendell to take an I.Q. test, it's gotta be north of 200.

[@msmrastegar]

Can someone tell me if i use this card on asus sage , does the Esxi support the raid out of these 2 ?

[@dasiro]

so .... hardware raid is UNdead and is a GOOD idea in 2024 ?

[@VELVET462]

ROG Z790 MAXIMUS HERO user anyone? What is the best and FASTEST ALL SLOT 4TB SETUP ?? just saw a video with a crucial t700 or t705 gen5 on the hyper expansion card and it was very throttled, i mean.. it was very very limited, like bugged, unusable slow. I want all slots with the fastest 4 TB M.2's filled. Only my Windows is installed on a 2TB Crucial T700 i dont realy care if i cannot use a GEN5 but if theres anyone which uses the expansion card slot with a gen5 and get realy fast speeds, please tell me the M.2 Model Just ordered another 4TB Samsung 990pro for now because when buying these, i know they will perform pretty well and stable. Not in randoms but still happy with Samsungs..

[@monstercameron]

Love you Wendell but this was effective click bait, where are the benchmarks??????

[@gasracing5000]

Been obsessed with m.2 sleds... Thank you for the video 🤜🤛🏾 Been looking for a gen4 4 stick sled with onboard bifurcation

[@shadowarez1337]

Well you know High point has a new nvme card with PLX Chips to give a x16 Interface and 8x nvme x4 each pcie lanes and doesn't require Bifurcation support on the Motherboard but that card is probably over $2000 usd so $10000 Canadian 🤣

[@oguzhan001]

Isn't infinity fabric the fastest clock speed device on an AMD system?

[@bosstowndynamics5488]

Infinity Fabric isn't actually that fast, overclockers generally aim to run their RAM exactly twice as fast as IF for example for better performance (which gives 1:1 matching of the true underlying RAM clocks and the IF clocks) (edit: 1:1 is for Zen4, Zen5 is 2:3 making IF even slower compared to the rest of the system on a pure clock for clock basis generally running at only 2000MHz on Zen5/AM5)

[@Destructificial]

High bandwidth, low clock speed. It's a wide bus, and it needs to be to keep latency low.

[@AbbasDalal1000]

here before 13600k gets instability issues

[@joeykeilholz925]

I'm hodling for 13400

[@AtroposLeshesis]

Must be nice to have access to hardware like this. I still use a 10 year old laptop and note 9 phone 😂😔

[@rotors_taker_0h]

So, couple of them and we are looking at what, 120GBytes/sec in a regular workstation? Crazy shit

[@mikepict9011]

I have 4 tpus in one . Whole thing runs in 1 gen 4x4

[@stanislavtihohod]

the topic of bifurcation is not covered

[@OsX86H3AvY]

I JUUUUST won an old 7th gen intel bitcoin mobo with all the X1 slots everywhere so i can try it as a budget all-flash NAS with 10Gb and a bunch of 256GB garbage SSD's on x1 NVME cards using ZFS on (probably) ubuntu ...may my garbage fire burn bright and hot!!! i think itll work...i doubt itll be good...but im poor enough that itll make me happy :)

[@shoobidyboop8634]

Benchmarks! Put 4x T700s in the asus wrx90 workstation board, raid 0, show me the IOPS!

[@EyesOfByes]

Latency? Optane P5800X will solve it

[@superjuddy]

To me storage is the lowest hanging fruit in terms of lowering system latency, and responsiveness. And as someone with real experience helping normal people use computers, responsiveness is the only thing they care about, and also the only thing they correlate to performance. American flash companies when???

[@nebadon2025]

3/4 baked seems to be the AMD way.. I love my AMD gpu and cpu, but sometimes AMDs choices make me shake my head..

[@farminglol]

I've never gotten one of those to work in a desktop platform because it won't do 4x4 bifurcation in the x16-slot. :(

[@bosstowndynamics5488]

Eh? I think nearly all of ASUS's modern boards do x4x4x4x4 in the primary x16 slot, and many other manufacturers' boards do as well, at least on AM4 (not sure one way or the other about AM5, I think most Intel platforms will give you x4x4 on the second PCIe slot giving you 2 drives if there's a GPU in slot one, which is a bit of a waste because there's much cheaper ones that will give you x4x4 with only 2 slots on the card while being much more compact). The biggest issue is that most of the time there's only one fully electrically x16 slot so these don't play well with GPUs if you're using one of the AM4 boards with 4 way bifurcation, but Wendell did say that these are really only useful on HEDT/workstation class boards anyway

[@tim3172]

@@bosstowndynamics5488 You're very... *VERY* wrong on that. Gigabyte basically abandoned bifurcation on nearly all of its boards. MSI barely even implemented it outside of HEDT. The 600 and 700 Intel chips are *incredibly* rare to find bifurcation support at all and none of them support quad x4.

[@bosstowndynamics5488]

@@tim3172 I'm willing to concede on other manufacturers but there's definitely wide support on a lot of ASUS boards, as far as I'm aware they specifically implemented it for devices like this (which makes sense since they're one of the main name brand manufacturers of these passive cards and it's at least previously been marketed towards consumers under their "Hyper" branding (I can absolutely without a doubt guarantee it's supported on at least one ASUS AM4 board because I've currently got one in mine)

[@Hawlkeye-e9p]

WENDAL NAILS IT. is also why you need 64 gig ram and primocache. That second read is the max speed of the pcie bus. For me around 26 gig per sec. Its just sooooo good.

[@tim3172]

Primocache = Primo trash. They're now on year EIGHT of trying to figure out why it randomly stops caching and have vowed since 2020 to fix the "forever flush" (where you simply right click and choose 'clear cache' and it runs forever, halting the cache and destroying data in the process before making it so your computer will hang on reboot until you reinstall the entire hunk of POS software.)

[@Vegemeister1]

You don't need "primocache", whatever that is. The OS has disk caching built in. Has for decades.

[@caligummibear]

So when it breaks under warranty, Asus will charge me 1k to repair it? 😂😂😂

[@ARSENiK_Productions]

My beef with Asus. This card was included in my B550XE. Thought it was a great add-in, especially to justify the price. EXCEPT. The B550XE doesn’t support PCI-e bifurcation, no matter how many configurations and slots I tried. So it ended up in my headless Ryzen 1600 B350 (AsRock B350 Pro4) that DID support 4x4x4x4 bifurcation.

[@tim3172]

The B550XE 1000000000000000000000000% supports bifurcation: Straight from the manual: PCIEX16_1 Bandwidth This item allows you to select the bandwidth bifurcation for PCIEX16_1 slot. Configuration options: [Auto Mode] [PCIe RAID Mode] Select [PCIe RAID Mode] when you install a Hyper M.2 x16 card or other M.2 adapter cards. PCIEX16_2 Bandwidth This item allows you to select the bandwidth bifurcation for PCIEX16_2 slot. Configuration options: [Auto Mode] [PCIe RAID Mode] Select [PCIe RAID Mode] when you install a Hyper M.2 x16 card or other M.2 adapter cards. You have to enable both PCIe RAID mode and the NVME RAID mode under the SATA settings. That's what I do on my B550F and X370 Pro. My B550F has dual 1TB drives in its middle slot. (The B550 XE is just the F with wifi.)

[@ARSENiK_Productions]

@@tim3172 and I’m telling you no matter the configuration of drives, the pci-e slot, etc (even with help from the support email), we couldn’t get it working. Edit: 2 drives would work but I wanted the 4 full drives** Anything less was unacceptable to include

[@nemesis851_]

I have the previous Gen3 pcie3 x16

[@tek_soup]

Where is Intel with my HEDT! i want a new X399 499 599? Why! i want multiple gpu capture cards and high speed storage with thunderbolt 5 and occulink.

[@shadowarez1337]

OCulink is on the way out Copperlink is coming to replace it from what iv read OCulink is the hot 💩 because it's *New* it's old from the server world.

[@specter6633]

where is the speed test wendel?

[@TheJensss]

Is there a way to split 1 - x16 slot to to 16 - 1x slots? So you can use 16 - m.2 gen5 drives in applications like a NAS?

[@ColinABarr]

afaik most CPUs/Motherboards only support quad x4 bifurcation, some have some combination of x8 and x4 as well. Maybe in the future we will see more bifurcation options including down to x1

[@fwiler]

There is a way, it requires a switch. Just like the Asus Flashstor 12 Pro. (although I believe that has 2 separate switches)

[@TheJensss]

@@ColinABarr okay, thanks for the comment

[@TheJensss]

@@fwiler okay, are there any pcie cards with such switch?

[@Mattia_98]

but but, I want a 24 Gbps SAS SSD in my Gaming PC..

[@williamdouglas8040]

When you put the PCIe IC close to the connector it becomes very difficult to get the signals all the same length. If you have to stretch a differential pair by 10mm but the IC is 5mm from the connector - it gets ugly. But if the IC is 50mm from the connector then it becomes much easier thereby allowing for better shielding. And this is not atypical - the connector is flat and the ICs are rectangular. It never works out perfectly. And fyi, the distance is not that big of a deal. As long as the PCB impedance is correctly implemented and the traces are well shielded then the signal will travel quite far. But adding those extra layers to facilitate better shielding cost money. The motherboard manufacturers are only aiming for good enough.

[@harryshuman9637]

What's faster, Lightning Fast PCIe or Lightning Fast VCR Repair?

[@Carittech]

The ROG STRIX z790-a gaming wifi D4 will do x8/x8 bifurcation

[@Decenium]

seriously, why the F are we still stuck on 75 watts on PCI-E? its been 2 decades now...seriously why dont we up that spec so we dont need extra cables for all kinds of stuff?

[@dfgdfg_]

No cables would be a total dream. Imagine how slick the builds would look, not to mention how much quicker to assemble

[@ibex485]

Alas increasing the amount of power which can be delivered through expansion sockets would greatly increase the cost of motherboards. The trace density is already very high and the routing complex. (Motherboard designers are already struggling with PCIe 5, trying to reach the slots/sockets further from the CPU.) Increasing the capacity of the expansion slots would likely need additional PCB layer(s), which is expensive. Cables aren't pretty, but they're cheap, practical & efficient.

[@kotekzot]

@@dfgdfg_ There's Project Zero that aims to have cables obscured from view with connectors on the reverse side of the motherboard. Some GPUs also have power connectors on the PCIe connector side. Obviously this requires a compatible case.

[@crash.override]

There was that ASUS GPU & Mobo combo that used a proprietary power slot past the edge of the PCIe slot. Seems difficult. Could we at least move the 12VHPWR connector somewhere else on the GPU so that the cables don't have to make a 180° bend so close to the chassis panel?

[@antonmuffin6214]

because I dont want my mother board to practically be an other psu and things should take less power over time not more.

[@mikepict9011]

Zfs pool with a bluefield 2 all sorts of vmsvand ai agents runningaround building py hamster wheels makingthem go brrrrrrr

[@kelownatechkid]

This is kind of a joke. Going from 8 sata SSDs easily on one board and now not even enough pcie for storage. My older boards are better

[@donloder1]

asus be bussin

[@pankothompson5903]

dont trust the longevity of gen 5 they run so hot, 4x4 is fine

[@tim3172]

FUD, party of one.... FUD, your table is ready! (Back up anything you don't want to lose.)

[@douggrove4686]

That's not a bus, it's a wave guide....

[@shammyh]

That's... Actually a really interesting way to look at it!

[@dangerwr]

The ASUS Hyper M.2 Gen 4 was fantastic for me when I was testing and using it.

[@trixter192]

Can you please show us those drives in a raid 0 just for fun :)

[@scudsturm1]

well its the fastest before being screwed by their RMA support

[@dfgdfg_]

🤣

[@Jagerbomber]

No? Can I Have One?

[@MazeFrame]

M.2 is a mistake Give me U.2 and E.1 in desktops!

[@auturgicflosculator2183]

No, and it will never be in my PC.

[@Kattakam]

Mucho appreciate your hard work. I love my x4x4x4x4 gen 4 card with all its wonderful speed. Give me more please and it will still be fantistico

[@crypcase150]

WiFi 7 SIM laptop

[@MikeBob2023]

👍🏼

[@joeykeilholz925]

Ha. Level one. aaaaaaaaaaa

[@cornbread10378]

U gave me a chub!