M.2 on Asrock Extreme 4

Hello, i read everything in moterboard's manual (Asrock Extreme 4) but it is not clear. If I use an ultra M.2 SSD PCIe3 x4 for boot drive, am I going to lose 2 SATA connectors? Or this fact is true only about  M.2 SATA SSDs ?

z170 sorry i forgot to mention

ok thank you :)

Paulos wrote: Hello, i read everything in moterboard's manual (Asrock Extreme 4) but it is not clear. If I use an ultra M.2 SSD PCIe3 x4 for boot drive, am I going to lose 2 SATA connectors? Or this fact is true only about  M.2 SATA SSDs ? Am I need to update the bios firmware in order to use as boot drive the samsung 960 evo NVMe m.2 205gb? (I read some threads about havng recognise problems) thank you  in advance :)

I wish I could answer your question, but there is a problem. ASRock has at least ten mother boards currently sold that have "Extreme4" as part of the model name. Three in the Z170 series, three in the X99 series, and three in the Z97 plus Z87 series, for example. That's just for Intel boards.

It also depends upon which chipset is used in a board, whether or not SATA ports will be shared with the M.2 ports.

In general, M.2 ports need resources from a mother board for their connectivity. For Intel boards, that is either the PCIe lanes provided by the CPU or chipset, or chipset resources also used by the SATA ports. No mother board, whether for AMD or Intel processors, has special, extra connectivity added for M.2 ports. Mother board manufactures can only use the limited resources made available to them by a processor and chipset system. They also cannot add extra chips of some kind to increase the amount of resources available for M.2 SSDs.

So, a mother board can either use PCIe lanes provided by the CPU or chipset in a board, or the similar PCIe-type lanes used for the SATA ports, if that is even possible. If the PCIe lanes in either of these things is not PCIe 3.0 (most SATA resources are PCIe 2.0, and all current AMD processors and chipsets only support PCIe 2.0), then a PCIe M.2 SSD will not be able to provide all its potential performance.

Using one or the other of these resources for the M.2 ports is not a perfect solution. Use the PCIe lanes from the CPU or chipset, and that leaves fewer PCIe lanes for video cards. Use the resources provided for the SATA ports, and that leaves us fewer SATA ports.

As you can see, this is not a simple question. Which would you rather sacrifice for use by the M.2 ports, the PCIe lanes used by video cards, or the SATA port resources? Everyone has their own answer. The main limitation in all of this is the amount of connectivity provided by the processor and chipset system, provided by AMD or Intel. Also, it may only be possible to use one or the other of these resources for the M.2 ports. Don't blame the mother board manufacture for these limitations, they can only work with what is provided to them by AMD and Intel.

The only current system that shares the M.2 ports with the SATA ports is the Intel Z170 boards, and the other Intel 100 series chipsets. If you use a PCIe M.2 SSD on those boards, you will lose two SATA ports, and it makes no difference if it is used as a boot drive or not. But you don't lose any of the PCIe lanes used by video cards. All other boards use the PCIe lanes from the CPU (Intel) or PCIe lanes from the chipset (AMD) for the M.2 ports. But that is not the end of the details.

An M.2 SSD can be PCIe or SATA. A SATA M.2 SSD will always use SATA resources from the SATA chipset.

NVMe is a protocol like SATA. Any NVMe SSD can be used with any mother board (with an adapter card, if necessary), but the UEFI/BIOS must have NVMe support ONLY if the SSD will be used as the boot/OS drive. Not all boards have NVMe support out of the box, and older boards may not have NVMe support in their UEFI/BIOS/firmware. Again, we have no idea which mother board you are asking about.

I have seen a few posts about problems with the Samsung SM961 or PM961 being recognized. That does not make sense, since any mother board can work with an NVMe SSD, and needs NVMe support only if used as the OS drive. NVMe, like SATA, is a storage protocol. Since we can use any SATA drive with a mother board, we also should be able to use any NVMe SSD with any mother board, as long as we install an NVMe driver. If any NVMe SSD needs a special firmware update to allow it to work with a board, then the manufacture made a big mistake.

Paulos wrote: I am talking about this motheboard: http://www.asrock.com/mb/intel/z170%20extreme4/ Is there an option for me to keep chipset lanes on sata and lose lanes from graphic cards? Am i able to manage that with a motherboard under 200e? Also i have only one graphic card and i am not thinking of SLI i just toled that to understand about pcie lanes, but i need all 6 sata connectors and the m.2 without adding extra controllers I also read at the manual that the 6 pcie takes x4 from the chipset. So those lanes are empty when i am not using that slot (Iam not using it). Why m.2 needs to take 2 sata to find bandwidth?

As I tried to explain in my other post, Intel changed the way the M.2 port is connected to the system.

With any Z170 board, made by anyone, the M.2 port uses two SATA ports instead of the PCIe lanes. That connection is how the Z170 boards are made, by any mother board manufacture, we cannot change that.

The only way to work around that is to use an M.2 to PCIe adapter card with an M.2 SSD. Then it will use the PCIe lanes instead of the bandwidth of the SATA ports.