Looking for a X9 board that works with ASUS Hyper M.2 x16


justjosh

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Hi all,

 

I currently possess a X9DRi-F board and a Hyper M.2 card but after extensive testing and research, it seems that it is impossible to make bifurcation work with this combination even though the BIOS clearly has such an option.

 

As a result, I have decided I would need to source for another motherboard. Everything else I have runs on the X9 infrastructure so it would be great if the suggestions were for X9.

 

I also need 3x x16 slots and 1x x8, preferably with the x16s spaced out as I am planning to install double slot width cards.

 

Alternatively, if anyone managed to make the Hyper M.2 card show 4 drives with the X9DRi-F, I would also love to hear about it.

 

Thanks!

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Not a direct yes or no answer but check this forum as is a often asked question. Some time ago i looked for it myself for my X9 board and could not find it other then some mention of custom bios etc but have not looked for a while.

You likely have more chance there to find anyone with experience on that subject as is not unraid specific

 

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?search/43257472/&q=supermicro+x9+bifurcation&o=relevance

 

Edited by glennv
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8 hours ago, justjosh said:

Alternatively, if anyone managed to make the Hyper M.2 card show 4 drives with the X9DRi-F, I would also love to hear about it.

are you using UEFI boot or Legacy? i write very similar question to SM support about X9DRH-7F, here is an answer:

 

"To use NVMe, you must have PCI-e slot where the NVME SSD installed with EFI enabled. Otherwise, the system will not detect it, usually there is an option to set only one slot as EFI if you need Legacy for your other cards, but since this X9 board is relatively old it must not have that feature. Our X9 motherboard series only has BIOS that supports either Legacy mode only or EFI mode only, you can’t combined." 

 

but i never tried cos i don't have any NVMe drive..

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  • 8 months later...
On 12/11/2019 at 9:27 PM, justjosh said:

Hi all,

 

I currently possess a X9DRi-F board and a Hyper M.2 card but after extensive testing and research, it seems that it is impossible to make bifurcation work with this combination even though the BIOS clearly has such an option.

 

As a result, I have decided I would need to source for another motherboard. Everything else I have runs on the X9 infrastructure so it would be great if the suggestions were for X9.

 

I also need 3x x16 slots and 1x x8, preferably with the x16s spaced out as I am planning to install double slot width cards.

 

Alternatively, if anyone managed to make the Hyper M.2 card show 4 drives with the X9DRi-F, I would also love to hear about it.

 

Thanks!

confirmed working bios for x9dr3(i)-f, beta dated Feb'20, also including nvme modded for bootable nvme.

 

https://mega.nz/folder/q0sWiAya#ibXw5vbz08m8RXbaS3IB1A

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 9/6/2020 at 11:29 PM, Mizerka said:

confirmed working bios for x9dr3(i)-f, beta dated Feb'20, also including nvme modded for bootable nvme.

 

https://mega.nz/folder/q0sWiAya#ibXw5vbz08m8RXbaS3IB1A

Where did you get this from? Have you tested it with the Asus Hyper M2 or some other card?

 

I have already sold off my Hyper M2 but if someone can confirm this works in particular with the M2 I don't mind getting a new one.

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18 hours ago, justjosh said:

Where did you get this from? Have you tested it with the Asus Hyper M2 or some other card?

 

I have already sold off my Hyper M2 but if someone can confirm this works in particular with the M2 I don't mind getting a new one.

from Supermicro support, since then I've actually got a newer 3.4 stable, same link, subfolder "3.4 official", had some say they don't trust me or whatever, included email conversation from the tech in email.

 

Also yeah I ran 3.3 beta which worked flawlessly with m2 hyper x4, flashed to 3.4 as well without issues, 2 weeks uptime without issues so far, with each m.2 drive saturating 1.2gbps reads (sn750 1tb)

 

also not sure if it affects nvme, but these and samsung 250gb's I have tested don't break parity like some flash ssd's were reported to.

 

I will add the 3.4 nvme boot modded version as well, I don't need it but I know some do want the option.

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3 hours ago, Mizerka said:

from Supermicro support, since then I've actually got a newer 3.4 stable, same link, subfolder "3.4 official", had some say they don't trust me or whatever, included email conversation from the tech in email.

 

Also yeah I ran 3.3 beta which worked flawlessly with m2 hyper x4, flashed to 3.4 as well without issues, 2 weeks uptime without issues so far, with each m.2 drive saturating 1.2gbps reads (sn750 1tb)

 

also not sure if it affects nvme, but these and samsung 250gb's I have tested don't break parity like some flash ssd's were reported to.

 

I will add the 3.4 nvme boot modded version as well, I don't need it but I know some do want the option.

Thanks for replying. I actually tried emailing supermicro support as well and this is the reply I got from them

 

For any custom bios, it would be a special request which is not free for customers.  And not all motherboard has bifurcation feature for PCIE because of hardware limitation.  Lastly, this product you have already EOL so we no longer have new bios for the motherboard.

 

You tried the 3.4 bios release June 2020 on the official site? I don't need NVMe boot so I will try that out. I just want to confirm because I don't think I can downgrade to 3.3 beta once upgraded.

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  • 2 months later...
On 9/25/2020 at 5:12 PM, Mizerka said:

from Supermicro support, since then I've actually got a newer 3.4 stable, same link, subfolder "3.4 official", had some say they don't trust me or whatever, included email conversation from the tech in email.

 

Also yeah I ran 3.3 beta which worked flawlessly with m2 hyper x4, flashed to 3.4 as well without issues, 2 weeks uptime without issues so far, with each m.2 drive saturating 1.2gbps reads (sn750 1tb)

 

also not sure if it affects nvme, but these and samsung 250gb's I have tested don't break parity like some flash ssd's were reported to.

 

I will add the 3.4 nvme boot modded version as well, I don't need it but I know some do want the option.

Just came across this thread as I'm looking to do some NVMe caching at some point here and don't want to use up multiple PCI-E slots.

 

Are you saying that you mod the BIOS first, then you upgrade to the official 3.4 BIOS?

 

Or does the official unmodded 3.4 BIOS allow PCI-E bifurcation?

 

I have a X9DR3-F which is different than yours I think, not that I think it matters in this case.

Edited by aidenpryde
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2 hours ago, aidenpryde said:

Just came across this thread as I'm looking to do some NVMe caching at some point here and don't want to use up multiple PCI-E slots.

 

Are you saying that you mod the BIOS first, then you upgrade to the official 3.4 BIOS?

 

Or does the official unmodded 3.4 BIOS allow PCI-E bifurcation?

 

I have a X9DR3-F which is different than yours I think, not that I think it matters in this case.

bios firmware is modded to allow for nvme boot, if you're only planning to use nvme for cache pool (like what I have), then you can use the official bios. I never bothered with nvme boot and also it's not needed for unraid since we boot from usb anyway.

 

after all this supermicro ended up adding the official bios to their download pages so you can get it legit from them if you don't trust my links etc.

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7 hours ago, Mizerka said:

bios firmware is modded to allow for nvme boot, if you're only planning to use nvme for cache pool (like what I have), then you can use the official bios. I never bothered with nvme boot and also it's not needed for unraid since we boot from usb anyway.

 

after all this supermicro ended up adding the official bios to their download pages so you can get it legit from them if you don't trust my links etc.

Jeez.  I'm glad I didn't end up ordering that High Point adapter with the PLX chip.  That thing costs $300.

 

It will be a few days before I can confirm that it works with my motherboard, as I'm preclearing four drives right now.

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On 12/24/2020 at 1:01 PM, aidenpryde said:

Jeez.  I'm glad I didn't end up ordering that High Point adapter with the PLX chip.  That thing costs $300.

 

It will be a few days before I can confirm that it works with my motherboard, as I'm preclearing four drives right now.

Hurrah.  I can confirm that the official 3.4 Supermicro BIOS for the X9 boards resolves the bifurcation issue present in the previous 2018 BIOS I was running.

 

edit: for posterity, this applies to the X9DRi-F in my case, though many of the Supermicro motherboards share the same BIOS changes for the same generation, so give it a shot if you have an issue with an Generation 9 Supermicro board and want bifurcation to work.

Edited by aidenpryde
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  • 1 month later...

Hi so I have the X9DRi-F I just bought an Asus hyper m.2 x16 card v2 I have 3.4 bios for my motherboard I have 2 crucial P1 500 GB NVMe SDD's installed on the card. I have the card  in slot 6 I'm not sure which setting I need to change in the bios to change to 8x8 as I only see 1 NVMe in my VMware. One other thing is this thing not bootable?

Edited by Starlinkgazer
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You still need to enable bifurcation on the right slot, you'll want to use 4x4x4x4 in most cases if you split 8x8 you can end up not seeing both depending on how card splits lanes internally. and your nvme won't get saturated over x4 pcie3 anyway. 

 

For booting you'll need to use a custom bios. But if it's vmware just stick it on USB and it'll be fine. 

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