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Asus Ranger + Samsung XP941

372 views 5 replies 3 participants last post by  RamCity 
#1 ·
Hey,
I decided to upgrade my rig recently to 16gb ram and throw in a faster SSD. Whilst looking I figured why not just go M.2 as my board supports it. And this is where my problem begins. I eventually received and installed it this weekend and after some (LOTS) of messing around I finally got it recognised by the bios and by the windows installation. All good so far. However on boot the SoundBlaster Z wasn't recognised, so I moved it to a different PCIE port and tried again, but it still wouldn't work.

I went to google and read a little and was shocked to find I can put it in the PCIE x 8 (16) slot normally used for SLI, so I did that and it works fine.

However more issues arose, no1 been that the 970 GTX is now only 8x PCIE rather than 16x PCIE, will that affect the performance of the card ?

My next questions are reference the XP941. When I ran the SSD bench the drive is only hitting 830MB write speeds, and its rated upto 1190MB. Ive narrowed this down to the onboard M.2 controller only using 2x PCIE lanes and so therefore require a PCIE x4 to M.2 adapter to get max bandwidth. I know the "black" PCIE port is a 4x PCIE slot, so I can put the adapter in there with Samsung onboard and get max bandwidth. My question is, will the Asus still recognise the Samsung as a boot device if I use the adapter ?

thanks
 
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#2 ·
You cards performance won't be affected even at PCIE x8 speed. No cards out there right now are able to saturate that yet.

It's also normal for the slots to go from x16 to x8 when using the first two slots, that's just how the Z97 boards are made (almost all of them).

You can definitely use the black slot and it should still be recognized as a boot drive. Asus has rolled out BIOS updates for all their boards to accomodate M.2 drives and boot with no issues (At least according to Asus). Just make sure to check that you have the latest BIOS if it doesn't work when you test it.

As for the M.2 drive being able to run at full bandwidth, unfortunately in a Z97 board it will only run at x2 speed because the M.2 controllers for every Z97 is capped to that. If you look at your board specs it is only an M.2 (PCIE x2). The X99 boards currently are the only boards with an M.2 slot with x4 PCIE (X99s have a ton of PCIE lanes as compared to the Z97).

EDIT: Also check your board, because certain Sata ports will not be usable if the M.2 port is in use (Some boards do this, not sure bout your mobo). Also according to the Asus site - The PCIe 2.0 x 16 slot (PCIEX4_3) shares bandwith with PCIe 2.0 x1 and M.2 slot. The default setting is Auto Mode, which automatically optimizes the system bandwidth. If you install a PCIe 2.0 x4 device, the system will automatically detect and disable PCIe 2.0 x1 and M.2 slot.
 
#3 ·
ye I was using the M.2 socket hence the 830mb read speeds. the adapter arrived today, I switched it to the PCIE 2.0 4x slot and changed the bios settings, works pretty good :

 
#4 ·
I hope you got an adaptor with a heatsink on it as M.2 drives are know to hit 90*C and even over 100*C!

Here's the article talking about it ---> LINK
 
#5 ·
hey thanks for heads up, just had a read, seems the controllers are good for 125C and I have decent airflow so should be ok, but ill keep an eye on and if it does creep up ill make something.
 
#6 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by mark_thaddeus View Post

As for the M.2 drive being able to run at full bandwidth, unfortunately in a Z97 board it will only run at x2 speed because the M.2 controllers for every Z97 is capped to that. If you look at your board specs it is only an M.2 (PCIE x2). The X99 boards currently are the only boards with an M.2 slot with x4 PCIE (X99s have a ton of PCIE lanes as compared to the Z97).
Note, the 'exception' to this rule about Z97 boards is the ASRock Z97 Extreme 6 (and maybe the Extreme 9). This board has a an M.2 socket that is both PCIe 3.0 and 4x lanes, so will run that XP941 flat out.

Rod Bland - vendor rep for ramcity.com.au
 
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