Why hasn't someone made a MB with 10+ m2 vertical slots?

[ItsFlybye]

A board with ton of m2 slots on it. And each slot would have a small vertical plate on it to hold the ssd. Yeah they take up a lot of mb real estate space when laying on the mb, but standing up would take up a lot less space.

Why wouldn't a configuration like this work?

 

[RLGL]

It would probably work But it would be expensive due to the number of cpu lanes needed to support the slots. Also The market would be very limited.

 

[sdifox]

There are only so many pcie lanes.... Go get a server if you need that.

 

[JEDIYoda]

perhaps wrong forum....

 

[PingSpike]

Yeah, there aren't really enough lanes on anything but HEDT offerings. Even 2 m.2 slots are a pretty much joke on Intel platforms since they all go through the DMI which is only 4x. Its like putting a y adapter on a garden hose and expecting double pressure to come out.

 

[JEDIYoda]

Its like putting a y adapter on a garden hose and expecting double pressure to come out.

Say what?? You mean it doesn`t work that way?? hhmmmmm

 

[nakedfrog]

But who is this for?

 

[ItsFlybye]

But who is this for?

For noone. It was meant as just a fun theoretical question.

 

[nakedfrog]

For noone. It was meant as just a fun theoretical question.

Well, that may be the answer to why someone hasn't made one yet

 

[IronWing]

So why does my case have ten drive bays if there aren’t enough lanes to use them? This is a serious question BTW.

 

[sdifox]

So why does my case have ten drive bays if there aren’t enough lanes to use them? This is a serious question BTW.

You can hook up ten sata drives without exceeding pcie lane limit, sata ssd does not warrant high bandwidth. But sharing lanes on nvme defeat the purpose.

 

[ItsFlybye]

Well, that may be the answer to why someone hasn't made one yet

Lol. I was also curious why it would or wouldn’t work.

 

[sdifox]

For noone. It was meant as just a fun theoretical question.

Get a TR3, slap on 3 of these?

AORUS Gen4 AIC Adaptor Key Features | SSD - GIGABYTE Global

GIGABYTE, Chassis, Thermal Solution, Power Supply, Optical Device, TV Tuner Card, gamer, PSU

www.gigabyte.com

 

[ItsFlybye]

Get a TR, slap on 3 of these?

AORUS Gen4 AIC Adaptor Key Features | SSD - GIGABYTE Global

GIGABYTE, Chassis, Thermal Solution, Power Supply, Optical Device, TV Tuner Card, gamer, PSU

www.gigabyte.com

Didn’t know those existed!

 

[13Gigatons]

Since Bandwidth tops out at 64 Gigabits that is the fastest you will get with standard motherboards with NVMe.I know some boards offer 3 slots but is still limited by the 64Gb/s limit.

Hopefully they will double this again with the 600 and 4000 series but I'm doubtful.

Bypassing NVMe and going through the x16 is interesting idea...not sure main streamers really need that....yet.

 

[ItsFlybye]

I'm ok to hijack my own thread, right?

So sdifox had mentioned the pcie m2 card. I started reading around and noticed there are several variants.
1) A dual m2 card that has 1 m2 using the pcie slot for data, and the other has a SATA port on the card for it.
2) Some cards require the uefi to support bifurcation which is typically only found on high end boards.
3) I saw a card from SYBA with 4 m.2 slots that states bifurcation is not required, but the drives can not be boot drives. There is a chip on it which is able to somehow not need bifurcation.

Quad M.2 NVMe Ports to PCIe 3.0 x16 Bifurcation Riser Controller - Support Non-BiFurcation Motherboard

SI-PEX40152; pcie nvme solid state drive;pci ssd 1tb;two ssd drives;nvme m2;nvme ssd connector;m 2 pcie nvme;pci express ssd;nvme ssd adapter;pci express hard drive;pcie nvme ssd adapter;pci ssd;pcie nvme;pcie nvme ssd;ssd m2 nvme;nvme m 2 adapter;nvme m

www.sybausa.com

Again, I am not really building anything at the moment. I just started wondering about the whole multi m2 slot thing.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

I'd rather have a 2-unit hotswap ejectable for $50, but that ain't happening anytime soon.

 

[ItsFlybye]

I'd rather have a 2-unit hotswap ejectable for $50, but that ain't happening anytime soon.

I have seen the sata ssd pcie slot hot swappable brackets. Making one that holds 2 should be totally doable.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

They DO make hotswap cartridge style SATA, as you said, but they are expensive as hell. But I want one that taps directly into the PCI, not the SATA. I wam looking for the benefits of NvMe to not be made mute just for HS.

 

[sdifox]

I'm ok to hijack my own thread, right?

So sdifox had mentioned the pcie m2 card. I started reading around and noticed there are several variants.
1) A dual m2 card that has 1 m2 using the pcie slot for data, and the other has a SATA port on the card for it.
2) Some cards require the uefi to support bifurcation which is typically only found on high end boards.
3) I saw a card from SYBA with 4 m.2 slots that states bifurcation is not required, but the drives can not be boot drives. There is a chip on it which is able to somehow not need bifurcation.

Quad M.2 NVMe Ports to PCIe 3.0 x16 Bifurcation Riser Controller - Support Non-BiFurcation Motherboard

SI-PEX40152; pcie nvme solid state drive;pci ssd 1tb;two ssd drives;nvme m2;nvme ssd connector;m 2 pcie nvme;pci express ssd;nvme ssd adapter;pci express hard drive;pcie nvme ssd adapter;pci ssd;pcie nvme;pcie nvme ssd;ssd m2 nvme;nvme m 2 adapter;nvme m

www.sybausa.com

Again, I am not really building anything at the moment. I just started wondering about the whole multi m2 slot thing.

The aorus one is pcie 4 x16 so dedicated 4 lanes for each nvme.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Why haven’t they made a motherboard with 32 ram slots, why haven’t they made a motherboard with 96 fan headers, why haven’t they made a motherboard that can support a 80 pound cooler?

OP I suspect you know why

 

[Red Squirrel]

What I'd like to see is motherboards with like 24+ sata ports. Or even SAS ports so you can use fan out cables. I have seen the odd ball ones but they are so rare and specialized you're not likely to find them for sale at the few computer online stores we have left here.

Or more widely available non raid HBA cards that have like 24+ ports. That stuff seems so hard to come by without paying an arm and a leg. When I built my file server I ended up having to buy like 3 used HBA cards off ebay and had to flash them to "IT firmware" to get rid of raid. That requires a machine with a floppy drive. Would be nice to be able to buy stuff like this off the shelf without having to do anything weird.

There needs to be a "go between" for people who want to build servers but don't want to pay the insane server grade prices.

Even if the bandwidth to the cpu would be shared to make more ports it would not be a big deal. Sata is what, like 3GB/sec? No hard drive is going to be able to use all of that anyway.

 

[PingSpike]

jmicron recently came out with a 5 port SATA controller chips that interfaces with PCIE 3.0. First new controller in this space I've seen for years.

 

[ItsFlybye]

Why haven’t they made a motherboard with 32 ram slots, why haven’t they made a motherboard with 96 fan headers, why haven’t they made a motherboard that can support a 80 pound cooler?

OP I suspect you know why

32 ram slots? All you needed to do was ask. ;-)

Supermicro | Products | Motherboards | Xeon® Boards | X9QR7-TF+

www.supermicro.com

 

[aigomorla]

you could use plx chips and cheat the cpu lanes limitations