July 23, 20241 yr Hello and thank you for your time, HBA in IT mode worked like a charm, however, the NVME Expansion Card is only showing 1 drive out of 4, with one other verified good in a different system, inside both the BIOS and Unraid. I am not sure where to start with troubleshooting other than bifurcation is required, which the board is compatible with, but if you have an idea, I would love to hear it. I'm not sure what information would be useful, but please ask and I'll do my best to give specifics. I feel like the answer is simple, but I'm over here barely hanging onto an IQ over room temp. 13600k 64GB Ram ASUS TUF Gaming Pro z790 Pro WIFI Sabrent NVME Expansion Card the rest of it Will also be linking to Reddit so it might help the next unfortunate soul SOLUTION: The current Expansion Card supporting PCIE 4.0 speeds requires an x8x8x8x8 bifurcation configuration, will replace and test using the Sabrent EC-P3X4. This card will only provide PCIE 3.0 speeds, however, does not require bifurcation support. Edited July 24, 20241 yr by midkifft Posting solution into original post and edit formatting
July 24, 20241 yr Community Expert Solution you need to read the board's manual VERY carefully! These boards come "overequipped", they contain more devices that can be handled at the same time. There are evil restrictions which slot can be used for what or if at all! Look if you have put the card into the correct slot and turn on 4x4x4x4x for this slot (note that many boards only offer 8x8x mode, or even only 8x0x mode if a different slot is used too). Unless you manage to turn on 4x4x4x4x there will be always some nvmes "missing". In 8x8x mode you will only see #1+#3 and 8x mode will only offer #1 alone. Note also that some processors cut off lanes to the outside and reserve them for the internal iGPU. This also will cut off one or more NVmes from the card (my AMD for instance reserves 4 lanes and the card only shows nvmes 1,3&4) Note too that on most board if you use slot #3 for anything, it will "steal" 8 lanes from slot #1! "bifurbication" alone means almost nothing, the details are very important! Edited July 24, 20241 yr by MAM59
July 24, 20241 yr Community Expert I don't see that board in the Asus compatibility list, but AFAIK at most, with z790, it will support x8/x8 bifurcation, never /x4/x4/x4/x4
July 24, 20241 yr Author 12 hours ago, MAM59 said: you need to read the board's manual VERY carefully! These boards come "overequipped", they contain more devices that can be handled at the same time. There are evil restrictions which slot can be used for what or if at all! Look if you have put the card into the correct slot and turn on 4x4x4x4x for this slot (note that many boards only offer 8x8x mode, or even only 8x0x mode if a different slot is used too). Unless you manage to turn on 4x4x4x4x there will be always some nvmes "missing". In 8x8x mode you will only see #1+#3 and 8x mode will only offer #1 alone. Note also that some processors cut off lanes to the outside and reserve them for the internal iGPU. This also will cut off one or more NVmes from the card (my AMD for instance reserves 4 lanes and the card only shows nvmes 1,3&4) Note too that on most board if you use slot #3 for anything, it will "steal" 8 lanes from slot #1! "bifurbication" alone means almost nothing, the details are very important! This was very helpful! I also did not know about the Processor not utilizing certain lines. Thank you very much! 8 hours ago, JorgeB said: I don't see that board in the Asus compatibility list, but AFAIK at most, with z790, it will support x8/x8 bifurcation, never /x4/x4/x4/x4 I was able to verify the supported bifurcation configuration, here on ASUS, and you were correct regarding the x8x8. Thank you for your time! Edited July 24, 20241 yr by midkifft
July 24, 20241 yr Another option might be to purchase a PCIe card that uses a PCIe switch chip (these don't require bifurcation motherboard support). I purchased a LinkReal (via Ali Express) quad NVMe card - http://www.linkreal.com.cn/en/products/LRNV9547L4IPCIExpressx16toQuad.html that can be installed in any gen3 x16 slot. All 4 NVMe/m.2 SSDs appear as separate drives within unRAID and in my case, I created a 4 drive ZFS raidz1 Pool. I also added small heatsinks to each NVMe/m.2 SSDs as they can run hot with a sustained set of file transfers.
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