Setting up unraid on old I7 motherboard

[lg lindstrom]

I have a spare motherboard with gen 4 intel I7 CPU on it.   I decided to replace my NAS and lot of RPI3 with this hardware.

 

Also, I wanted to upgrade my storage volume. So I purchased 4  4T nvme memories and this controller card  https://www.amazon.se/gp/product/B09NB9XJ2B/ref=ask_ql_qh_dp_hza

 

According to instruction it supports PCIE split.

 

My problem is that unraid only sees one nvme card. Do I miss some driver or what else can be the problem?

 

 

[Gragorg]

Alot of gen 4 boards support 1 x16 PCIe or 2 x8 PCIe.  Since this is a x16 card I would think this is the issue.  Maybe check over the bios.  Are you planning on using SSDs in the array or as a cache pool.  If your using in the arrray keep in mind there is no TRIM support.

[MAM59]

this is not a problem of the new controller card but with your old mobo. Search the bios deeply for entries looking  like "bifurbication" or "4x4x4x4x" (or at least "8x8x"). Sometimes also called "NVMe RAID Mode". Not many of those era do have them. If you are lucky to find something like that, turn it on and retry. More NVMe SSDs will show up then, if 8x8x only, you will see two, in 4x4x4x4x mode you will be facing all four of them.

If there is nothing like that, you are lost. This slot cannot be split so any os will only see the first drive.

 

Only high priced server boards used to have such a feature, today you may find it also in more commonly used boards at home too. But Gen 4??? I do have my doubts...

 

(and dont be sad, I also have such a card here laying around and waiting for a board that can get it to work. The bifurbication thing is not widely known yet and I too had to learn about the "the hard way")

But if you still have a chance, return your card, even if you can get it to work, without a heatsink and a fan you wont be able to run 4 nvmes at highspeed for more than a few seconds. Even one of them gets hot like hell (and slows down then) in no time, packing 4 together is a sure overkill.

 

Edited January 15, 2022 by Michael Meiszl

[lg lindstrom]

So,, seems like I have alot of problems.

- Heating,,,   

- Motherboard

 

ASUS have a controllerboard which claims that it can split x16 to "x4,x4,x4,x4". When I checked with the shop they claimed that I could use their controller with all motherboard as long it had PCI-e x16.

 

Their board was quite expensive and when I found this board, link above, I purchased it.  

 

But you guys claims that the motherboard must support the split whatever controller board you have ?