Z170 Extreme6+/7+ Linux compatibility

I also am intersted a bit about Linux compatibility with raid 0 nvme drives. As of my research, to answer the original Op post, all components usually being troublesome are/should be supported (network driver, sound, storage). 

We.ll I'm not sure why you answered than but ok :-)

The reason why you don't see same scaling with nvme drives is because they are behind same DMA link which is in Z170X limited to about 3.4GB/sec. However, don't go blind about this,  for normal use, if you raid0 your 950s pro you will still experience sick load times. My windows boots in like 3 secs or so. Actually I don't know, I didn't took time, but it is insanely fast even compared to my laptop which boots off of a 840Pro.

If you are interested to read in more details about raid and limitations you can check up this review/test: http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Storage/Triple-M2-Samsung-950-Pro-Z170-PCIe-NVMe-RAID-Tested-Why-So-Snappy . Check the video, the written article ommits disscussion and most of details.

When it comes to linux this board has, as far as I have checked it, support for autiio & network interfaces which is usually what is lacking. Support for nvme drives and intel sata is build into linux kernel and tools (mdadm) since Intel develops open sourced drivers for Linux. Usuallly there is no problems with Intel's hardware if you want to run it on Linux. I haven't checked yet if there is a Linux driver for 950 Pro, and can't tell how good is implementation in kernel compared to Samsungs windows driver implementation, I will have to check it later on.

When it comes to Linux and  so called fakeraid, which is what motherboard raid is called since motherboards, inclusive this one too, does not come with real raid support (a dedicated hardware) there are some problems. The performance is usually better with software raid (OS does raid) than what one gets with fakeraid, simply bc OS usually have better drivers and better written software due to maturity of implementation and resource poured into it.

The reason why one would use fakeraid is the simplicity of use, and as far as Windows it is much simpler to install fakeraid during the windows installation than to software raid afterwards. When it comes to Linux implementation, both fake and software raid goes through mdadm, and setup is more or less same, so there really is no advantage over using fakeraid,. As much as I am educated about it, I am not an expert so I might be wrong.

Big problem with Linux has been with booting fakeraid 0 arrays, which actually is not so much problem to Linux itself, but was more associted with its bootloader Grub which didn't have support ffor doing it. Things should have become better as I read from blogs and forum posts, but I haven't got it working yet.