ASRock X370 Taichi/Professional Gaming M.2 Support

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 InvisibleArrow wrote:

Hi Guys
I was looking at the ASRock X370 Taichi and Professional Gaming motherboards. According to the specs, the second M.2 slot works only in PCIe 2.0 x4 mode, but it doesn't mention whether SATA M.2 are supported or not. Can anybody please confirm if SATA M.2 drives are supported on the second M.2 slot?

BTW, the ASRock X370 Killer SLI/AC and Gaming K4 motherboards do seem to support SATA M.2 drives on the 2nd M.2 slot as per the specifications. So I was guessing the same would be true with the Taichi and Professional Gaming, which is why I wanted to confirm.

This table is from the FAQ list for ASRock Ryzen mother boards, found in the Support -> FAQ link:

To specifically answer your question, the M2_2 slot on the X370 Taichi and Fatal1ty X370 Professional Gaming boards do not support SATA M.2 SSDs. The M2_2 slot on these boards only support PCIe M.2 SSDs.

You can see which ASRock Ryzen boards in the table support M.2 SATA SSDs in the M2_2 port.

If we look closely at all of these boards, particularly the X370 boards, we can see why the X370 Taichi and Fatal1ty X370 Professional Gaming boards do not support SATA M.2 SSDs. 

 The X370 Taichi and Fatal1ty X370 Professional Gaming boards have a third PCIe x16 slot (PCIE5, PCIe 2.0 x4 electrical) that the other X370 boards do not have. These boards provide eight standard SATA III ports. Also, the M2_2 slots on these two boards are PCIe 2.0 x4 interfaces, and share those resources with the PCIE5 slots.

The M2_2 slot on the other X370 boards that support SATA M.2 SSD are PCIe 2.0 x2 interfaces. Those boards provide six standard SATA III ports. So two fewer standard SATA III ports, but M.2 SATA support.

We find two different design decisions between the two groups of boards, and how they allocate the available resources to the various feature interfaces, and the number of interfaces of each type provided.

As with any PC platform, we need to carefully check the specifications regarding how the various (limited) resources are used and distributed on Ryzen systems.