July 14, 20232 yr Hello Members, I got a Dell 730xd with Dual Intel Xeon E5-2673 v3 CPU on the way and I am planning to order a PCI-E NVME card to add 2 M.2 drives for cache/appdata. I am planning to add a GPU (Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000) and I want to know if anyone tried a PCIE NVME with such server without compromise to the GPU. I checked few options below: 1- ASUS Hyper M.2 x16 PCIe 3.0 x4 Expansion Card V2 which requires bifurication support from the MB (will enabling this feature compromise GPU?) 2- Syba Dual M.2 M-Key NVMe Ports to PCIe 3.0 x16 Bifurcation Riser Controller - Support Non-Bifurcation Motherboard (SI-PEX40129) Now, I would prefer option 1 unless if it has any compromise to the GPU or it won't work with my server. and lastly, will those two work with the dell server and unraid anyway? Thanks!
July 15, 20232 yr I have a Dell R730xd as well and I purchased the Asus Hyper M.2 expansion card. I currently have 4xM.2 NVME drives running in a 4x4x4x4 bifurcation and it is running great. I also have a GTX 1660 hooked up on the second x16 PCIE slot for transcoding and tensorrt. No problems here. In your case, I might be worried about the size of both of those on the inside of the machine. If you're comfortable with it, you can run a riser cable through one of the back slots and have your GPU sitting externally. I would make sure to measure the internal tolerances but compatibility wise, you should be fine if you can connect it up.
July 16, 20232 yr Author 4 hours ago, SpartanXXX said: I have a Dell R730xd as well and I purchased the Asus Hyper M.2 expansion card. I currently have 4xM.2 NVME drives running in a 4x4x4x4 bifurcation and it is running great. I also have a GTX 1660 hooked up on the second x16 PCIE slot for transcoding and tensorrt. No problems here. In your case, I might be worried about the size of both of those on the inside of the machine. If you're comfortable with it, you can run a riser cable through one of the back slots and have your GPU sitting externally. I would make sure to measure the internal tolerances but compatibility wise, you should be fine if you can connect it up. Thank you for confirming compatibility. Just so I understand, when I use the bifurcation setting, I am only affected the setting on that specific PCI-E slot and not the rest of the slots right?
July 16, 20232 yr 7 hours ago, Zippox said: Just so I understand, when I use the bifurcation setting, I am only affected the setting on that specific PCI-E slot and not the rest of the slots right? Correct, bifurcation settings are per PCIE interface. So in relation to my setup, I have the Asus Hyper m.2 at x4x4x4x4, the GPU at x16, a SAS HBA at x8 and a USB 3.0 at x8. Edited July 16, 20232 yr by SpartanXXX
July 18, 20232 yr Author On 7/16/2023 at 12:10 PM, SpartanXXX said: Correct, bifurcation settings are per PCIE interface. So in relation to my setup, I have the Asus Hyper m.2 at x4x4x4x4, the GPU at x16, a SAS HBA at x8 and a USB 3.0 at x8. Thank you again, just ordered both the Asus Hyper M.2 PCI-E and the Quadro GPU!
July 18, 20232 yr 10 minutes ago, Zippox said: Thank you again, just ordered both the Asus Hyper M.2 PCI-E and the Quadro GPU! R730/R730XD only have one x16 slot in their default configuration. If you want 2x x16 electrically you need to pickup the "alternate" riser used in Dell's GPU kits (can be found on ebay cheap). Otherwise the GPU will need to run at x8. You'll probably want to pick up the correct pcie power cable for your GPU also, which are powered off the riser. https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-au/poweredge-r730xd/r730xd_ompublication/expansion-card-installation-guidelines?guid=guid-48fdcedc-e689-4cb6-a83c-7b9ea4e31449&lang=en-us
July 18, 20232 yr Author 14 hours ago, tjb_altf4 said: R730/R730XD only have one x16 slot in their default configuration. If you want 2x x16 electrically you need to pickup the "alternate" riser used in Dell's GPU kits (can be found on ebay cheap). Otherwise the GPU will need to run at x8. You'll probably want to pick up the correct pcie power cable for your GPU also, which are powered off the riser. https://www.dell.com/support/manuals/en-au/poweredge-r730xd/r730xd_ompublication/expansion-card-installation-guidelines?guid=guid-48fdcedc-e689-4cb6-a83c-7b9ea4e31449&lang=en-us Thank you for this information, will check once I receive the unit in 2-3 days. Edited July 18, 20232 yr by Zippox Misspelling
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.