ASRock B450M Pro4 PCIe 2.0 for boot drive£
Printed From: ASRock.com
Category: Technical Support
Forum Name: AMD Motherboards
Forum Description: Question about ASRock AMD motherboards
URL: https://forum.asrock.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=25903
Printed Date: 20 Apr 2024 at 12:24am
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.04 - http://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: ASRock B450M Pro4 PCIe 2.0 for boot drive£
Posted By: lessew
Subject: ASRock B450M Pro4 PCIe 2.0 for boot drive£
Date Posted: 17 May 2023 at 4:58am
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Hello there! I have an ASRock B450M Pro4 with a WD Black SN850X installed in the Ultra M.2 Socket as only storage medium currently in the system. To be able to work from home I received a Samsung 970 EVO Plus SSD with a separate Windows installation. The intended usage is that I install the drive into my system and boot from that drive when working on my PC such that work and play is kept seperate. Unfortunately, the other m.2 slot on the motherboard supports SATA3, not PCIe. Instead of having them buy another SSD and transfering data, maybe using a PCIe adapter might be a simple and cheaper solution. The only available PCIe slot in my system is the PCIe 2.0 x16 Slot as the PCIe 3.0 slot is occupied by my graphics card and the space behind the PCIe 2.0 x1 is blocked by the heatsink of the WD Black SN850X. To prevent blocking the air intake of my GPU I currently looking at this adapter: https://akasa.co.uk/search.php?seed=AK-PCCM2P-05" rel="nofollow - https://akasa.co.uk/search.php?seed=AK-PCCM2P-05 HOWEVER there is some wording in the manual that has me confused, hence this post. In the manual ( https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/B450M%20Pro4/index.asp#Specification" rel="nofollow - https://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/B450M%20Pro4/index.asp#Specification ), under the 'slots' header it shows the following: - 1 x PCI Express 3.0 x16 Slot (PCIE2: x16 mode)* - 1 x PCI Express 2.0 x16 Slot (PCIE3: x4 mode) *Supports NVMe SSD as boot disks Does this * imply that only the PCIe 3.0 slot can be used with such an adapter to install a second bootdrive into my system? I am not technical enough to see a reason why I might not be able to boot from the PCIe 2.0 x16 slot. If relevant, I have a AMD Ryzen 2600X CPU and Nvidia GTX 1070 graphics |
Replies:
Posted By: lessew
Date Posted: 21 May 2023 at 4:10am
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Because this post didn't get any replies within 48 hours I tried my luck with cheaper adapter than the one I posted (Savio ak-41, no heatsink, only coolpads). I plugged it in and it was detected as a possible boot drive no problem. The adapter is physically wired to only run PCIE x4 and the drive shows to be using PCIE 2.0 x4. I could not find an option for the PCIE 3.0 x4 mode in the bios (perhaps by setting both slots to x8?) but for my intended use 2GB/s bandwidth is plenty faster than regular SATA. While the adapter solved my problem, I still don't know what the asterisk (*) is meant to say and how the information is useful. Nevertheless, I hope my little experiment can provide answers for others with similar problems/ideas! |
Posted By: bjlockie
Date Posted: 27 May 2023 at 7:01am
That is how I read it. I've only used the 1st slot. ------------- ASRock B450M Pro4 16 GB DDR4, 500 watt PS, AMD Ryzen-5 5600, NVidia GTX-1050, 5.70 BIOS |
lessew wrote: