3 Gamers Motherboard

[PeteyBoPetey]

Hi Guys,

 

Planning a future build. My last build was on an Asus X299 Gaming E II which works ok but has some flaws, like the location of the GPU pcie slots. I made the mistake of going with this board because it looked pretty cool, but there's no point having something good that doesn't work. Another reason I chose this board was because it had 3 M.2 slots for a nvme for each VM. I've since learnt that V disks are simply a folder and if that folder size exceeds the nvme drive capacity it simply spills over onto the array, so one nvme would have been sufficient.

I was thinking of going with a Asus X299 WS Sage as it only has one M.2 slot and 7 pcie slots which give me more flexibility with my system design. If I want more M.2 slots I can install a hyper card 4 x nvme to pcie and I would then have 5 x nvme drive pool. It comes with 8 x sata ports, or I can install a HBA. I can also add USB to pcie cards. But I don't know how the pcie lanes are allocated. In Asus literature it says a 4 GPU config of x16 x16 x16 x16 which would be good for 3 x GPUs and a 4 x nvme add in card, but does that disable the other pcie slots?

Should I consider a Supermicro board perhaps?. Or do I need more pcie lanes which requires a dual xeon route?. Or Epyc or Threadripper?. What would be the best board/cpu for a 3 gamer Unreal Unraid machine?

 

TIA

 

Peter

[MAM59]

be aware that almost all (but one usally) 16x slots are only physical connectors and have less (8 or only 4) electrical connections. So read the board manuals carefully before you buy.

 

Also, there are rather complicated restrictions on how these slots can be used. Even with supported bifurbication (that Hyper card for instance) it does not mean that all of them are available too. This depends on the used CPU too. For instance, with a "-G" (internal graphics) type CPU, the Hyper card can only use her slot 1,3&4. Slot 2 is dedicated and hardwired to the GPU.

Also, often slots are shut off, if you use internal devices. For my board I had to turn off WiFi to use one 4x Slot (which looks like 16x), or you can only use half of the SATA ports if you want to use another slot.

 

so READ CAREFULLY!!!

 

CPUS are still quite short on lanes, so the more features a board has, the less can be used simultanously.

 

(and before you ask, i have an "ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. TUF GAMING X570-PLUS (WI-FI)" with an "AMD Ryzen 7 5700G with Radeon Graphics @ 4000 MHz" for UNRAID, with 5 NvmEs, 16 Sata Slots (on 4 controllers) )