What is Reddit's opinion of Ableconn PEXM2-SSD M.2 NGFF PCIe SSD to PCI Express x4 Host Adapter Card - Support M.2 PCIe (NVMe or AHCI) Type 2280, 2260, 2242?

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This sounds like a good idea. But I don't know whether it would work or not, quick googling shows various levels of success with compatibility... do you think something like this would work? https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B017JGVTAM Two of these, two M.2 drives. Hopefully my R720 would boot right up and ESXi would see them as usable storage.

Edit: I'll have to think this through. Just crossed my mind that passed right to ESXi means can't rely on FreeNAS to mirror them. Guess I could pass them to FreeNAS, but then I miss the whole point of using them for performance anyway...

Ableconn PEXM2-SSD M.2 NGFF PCIe SSD to PCI Express 3.0 x4 Host Adapter Card - Support M.2 PCIe (NVMe or AHCI) Type 2280, 2260, 2242 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B017JGVTAM/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_cop-BbF35R9TD

This would bypass the limit’s of the motherboard’s M.2 slot. It would make the SSD run at it’s intended speed while sacrificing PCIe lanes (just like on newer chipsets). The performance “hit” on your GPU wont be really noticeable in real-world performance.

Well yeah but I cant find any pci adapter's that accept Sata M.2? Like this one, it explicitly says that Sata M.2 SSD's are not supported. So I'm kind of lost here.

Do you have a Z97? I believe only one Z97 MOBO has a 4 Lane m.2, the ASROCK Extreme

Not sure about the Z170 boards but I think more of them support that.

Edit: Don't go off my word, do what dDitty said and read up on your mobo but I can tell you the MSI Z97 Gaming 5 has 2 lanes.

Edit 2: Link to the adapter I bought m.2 Adapter

Something like https://smile.amazon.com/Ableconn-PEXM2-SSD-NGFF-Express-Adapter/dp/B017JGVTAM/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1545858984&sr=8-3&keywords=pcie+m.2+adapter+card, probably

Hey man! I know it's been a while since this thread but instead of creating a new one, I was hoping you could answer a couple more questions for me. Sorry for continuing to bug you lol, but I see from your profile you are still answering questions on this sub, and you were very helpful to me.

So anyway, at the end of our last discussion, I was kind of leaning toward just building a new computer from the PC Part Picker list you created. However, the more I think about it and the more I research/read, I'm thinking that my current build is still relatively good, it's just that my primary bottleneck is the dated HDD I'm using. I've learned that the programs I use rely heavily on retrieving data (first from the RAM then HDD), so I'm wondering if all I really need is to upgrade my storage. The new build might be overkill, as nice as it would be to have.

I've purchased two 512GB Samsung 970 EVO NVMe M.2 SSDs. I'm planning on using one of the drives for installing Windows on, as well as all of my programs. I'm planning on using the second drive for my media storage. However, we discovered in our last conversation that my motherboard doesn't support these new NVMe-based drives, and I have had trouble finding an adapter that I would need, mostly because I don't understand my mobo too well haha.

So I think my motherboard has PCIe slots, correct? And therefore I need an adapter that goes from PCIe to M.2 since they are different form factors?

Here is my partpicker list for my current build (has mobo info): https://pcpartpicker.com/list/XW8cFt

And if my assumptions are correct, does this seem like a suitable adapter? Could I just get a couple of these, one for each drive? Or do you have a recommendation on a better one?

https://www.amazon.com/Ableconn-PEXM2-SSD-NGFF-Express-Adapter/dp/B017JGVTAM/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1544939887&sr=8-4&keywords=pcie%2Bto%2Bnvme%2Bm.2%2Badapter&th=1

Thank you so much man. This would be a big help.

In case you were interested in an update, I went with this card: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B017JGVTAM

And these are my results: https://i.imgur.com/43YvpT3.png

Fuck yeah!

(1/2)

> I'm looking to the 6850K for the slightly faster clockspeed more than anything I suppose.

You'll need to overclock both of these to get maximum performance out of them. The factory clocks on Intel HEDT chips are very low.

They're both essentially the same binning and will OC to the same point on average, which should be ~4.3 GHz at 230 watts-ish. The only difference is the 6850K has slightly higher factory clocks, and supports 40 PCIe lanes instead of 28.

So you can do x16x16 SLI on the 6850K, while on 6800K you'd need to do x16x8. That's not a huge difference in real-world situations, just kind annoying.

The reason I plug the 5820Ks is because Broadwell-E was a sidestep. Slight IPC gain, but more than offset by a loss of overclock speeds. The 5820K actually outperforms the 6800K when overclocked (on average). Historically it's also been slightly cheaper although prices are trending upwards. X99 is nearing end-of-life and I think stuff is getting cleared out.

Microcenter still has 5820K "tray" processors (in a box, no fan) for $320. Best deal around for that level of performance.

> I hate picking out mobos. I loathe the process.

Unfortunately - the "auto overclock" feature is garbage everywhere. It's not going to get the max clock out of the chip, and it's going to put in too much voltage and generate a lot of needless heat.

On my 5820K I don't change the voltage at all, I plugged in a 36x multiplier, with a 125 MHz BCLK strap (set automatically by many mobos when you enable XMP memory profiles) that translates to 4.13 GHz all-core, done. I'm happy with that overall. In theory Haswell-E can go up to 4.5 GHz or so reliably and Broadwell-E goes to 4.3 GHz reliably - but you'll double your power consumption/heat production.

The X99 lineup tends to get refreshed less than the consumer lineups do. There are mobos with USB 3.1, but they'll be around $300. Try using Newegg's power search, or go to Microcenter and poke around their website. Here's a search I made on Newegg that might get you started

One catch I will warn you about - "USB 3.1" is a very slippery marketing term. USB 3.0 ("SuperSpeed") is technically USB 3.1 5 Gbps. There is also USB 3.1 10gbps ("SuperSpeed+"). A lot of companies just slapped the USB 3.1 label on there - and technically it is USB 3.1, just not SuperSpeed+. This is also different from USB Type-C - which is a connector format. Not all 3.1 is Type-C.

Another important catch: not all M.2 supports NVMe. Sometimes it's just used for wifi cards. Other times it only supports SATA channels, not NVMe/PCIe channels. However, since NVMe M.2 is basically just PCIe in a different connector format, you can get sleds that mate it to a regular PCIe slot.

My personal recommendations are that the board should support SLI (unlike Crossfire not all boards do - unless it specifically says SLI it doesn't), and that you should have an Intel NIC (more reliable, and lower CPU usage vs Realtek). M.2 NVMe , USB Type-C, and USB 3.1 SS+ are strong plusses. Dual NIC and an improved audio section with proper shielding and optical outs are a plus. You also do need to look at the slot layout to figure out if there's a bunch of slots that would be unusable with a SLI configuration, and really you need to dive into the manual to figure out what slots get how many channels. Do this last, when you've narrowed it down to a few candidates.

However - don't obsess about any one thing. The beauty of X99, the thing that distinguishes it from every other platform on the market - is you have buttloads of expandability. Don't have NVMe M.2 support? Put in a PCIe adapter sled. Same for Type-C or USB 3.1 SS+. Get a PCIe sound card, or a USB DAC/AMP (getting it out of the case entirely reduces noise/interference HUGELY). You can even get Thunderbolt cards for many mobos.

The difference between OC on any two motherboards is going to be very, very small, so I would not obsess about that at all. Also - many "overclocking" motherboards end up having less features than gaming-style boards, or sometimes less than basic boards, even.

Personally, both my boards are Gigabyte GA-X99-UD4 because I was trying to do it on the cheap and those boards are cheap cheap cheap. I just bought my second board last week, I'm going to toss a $100 Xeon engineering sample off eBay and make it an encoding machine. That board support quad-SLI, you can run 4 dual-slot cards if you want, has dual Intel NICs, does support addon Thunderbolt card (not included), supports Intel wireless M.2 card (not included), but no USB 3.1 SS+ or Type-C. Unlike most cheap Z97/Z170 boards the audio section is actually quite clean, I was surprised. I wouldn't specifically recommend it, but neither is there anything wrong with it. It's your basic mobo and is priced to match.

If you want my advice on something nicer... I haven't used it but while I was looking for my second board I did some research and personally I think the EVGA X99 FTW and Classified boards look super fucking nice.

I was looking to build a home GPU cluster, basically as many GPUs as I could cram into a box plus an Infiniband card. The X99 Classified had the most optimal slot layout for that. The FTW was very similar but mapped lanes to slots slightly differently (i.e. which lanes came from the PCH). When I saw that UD4 on clearance for $60 I decided to just say "fuck it", can't argue with that for the price. But either of those boards looked real nice to me. Type-C, USB 3.1 SS+, M.2, Intel NIC, the works.

> I'm really not looking to use a mechanical drive in this build unless there's a reason to.

Well... the reason to is capacity, honestly :) I've always divided my storage into three capacities. Boot/application drive (fast but small), scratch drive for working space/specific games/etc (cheapest SSD per GB), and bulk storage. So if you want to work with something intensively enough the HDD will limit you, you copy it to the scratch drive, then when you're done you move it back. It's your build, and I can understand wanting to use exclusively SSDs if you have the money. I'm just saying that if you could deal with only 1 TB of scratch space instead of 2 TB then you could have 6 TB of bulk storage too, for less money.

> I looked at that Acer monitor, but IIRC, it's not IPS.

This is another confusing one but there are three Acer models that have very similar names. The XB270HU abprz is a 144 Hz TN panel with a 1ms response time. The XB270HU (yes, same model) bprz is a 144 Hz IPS panel with a 4ms response time. There is also a XB27*1*HU that is a 165 Hz IPS panel with a slim bezel. Fucking Acer, what the hell. Anyway, Acer and Asus offer essentially equivalent IPS models here (144 Hz wide-bezel, 165 Hz slim-bezel second generation), you just need to be sure what you're getting.

Also, the X34 and PG348Q are both IPS panels too. They only go to 100 Hz but they're ultrawide (essentially the same height as a standard 27" but wider, 21:9 instead of 16:9). Expensive but everyone I know who has one loves it.

> Good point about using an internal drive instead of the external one.

No, that's fine, go for it. Having something offline is a good idea too, in case you get Cryptolocker'd or your power supply dies and takes your PC with it, or something. Maybe burn BluRays - it's cost effective, just time consuming and takes some space. I'm just saying... this is an awful lot of SSD storage, here. And the SSD externals are expensive for what they are, you can buy a 2.5" UASP USB enclosure real cheap and just toss a random SSD in there. Or you could get a 3.5" drive and put a 6 TB HDD in there for the same price. :P

something like https://www.amazon.com/Ableconn-PEXM2-SSD-NGFF-Express-Adapter/dp/B017JGVTAM/ that?