SOLVED PCIe Gen-4 M.2 Carrier Card

[adityaharsh]

Hi Community, any recommendations for M.2 Carrier Card with x16 Bandwidth having 4x Gen-4 slots and which fits low profile.

I know it's quite niche requirment. But I've Supermicro H12SSL-I based Epyc TrueNAS Scale system and I've 3x Gen-4 x16 slots empty. I'd like to utilise these slots by adding such cards and create a NVMe pool.

My Motherboard does support PCIe bifurcation. Any help is highly appreciated

P.S.- it's a 2U node with 12bays

 

[Etorix]

Like this? (No "recommendation" since I don't own it, and cannot confirm PCIe4.0 support.)

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003877778925.html

 

[Ericloewe]

Hi Community, any recommendations for M.2 Carrier Card with x16 Bandwidth having 4x Gen-4 slots and which fits low profile.

I don't think you can get four M.2 80mm SSDs onto a low-profile card without stacking them, which increases cost and complexity a bunch. Have you considered U.2 2.5" SSDs instead?

 

[Ericloewe]

Like this? (No "recommendation" since I don't own it, and cannot confirm PCIe4.0 support.)

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003877778925.html

(Sidenote: This sort of thing may encroach upon other cards, use with care).

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

You could use three of the tried and true Supermicro AOC-SLG3-2M for 2 SSDs per slot. That gives you 6 at least and fits the low profile requirement.

 

[adityaharsh]

I don't think you can get four M.2 80mm SSDs onto a low-profile card without stacking them, which increases cost and complexity a bunch. Have you considered U.2 2.5" SSDs instead?

Yes, I have searched almost every corner on all well known brands websites. (At least that's what I think)

 

[adityaharsh]

Have you considered U.2 2.5" SSDs instead?

Yes I want to incorporate those. Actually they were my first options but I'll need a new chassis with built in nvme backplane or something like icydock cage (but that'll require a chassis as well). M.2's for now.

 

[adityaharsh]

You could use three of the tried and true Supermicro AOC-SLG3-2M for 2 SSDs per slot. That gives you 6 at least and fits the low profile requirement.

That is fair enough, I will definitely buy these one or from something like sonnet which have Gen-4 M.2's but I was just trying to explore if there are any low profile 4 slot cards.

 

[probain]

Beware! The H12SSL motherboards (revision 1.0 & 1.01) have a bunch of VRMs and other electronic dodads for the BMC, placed extremely close to the edge of the motherboard. Ripe for having a bottom of bracket damaging them. If the BMC/IPMI breaks, then you have your self a bricked board. Don't ask me how I know .

But basically I had just a small, tiny, misalignment. And that was enough.
Luckily I had a seller that had a similar board in stock. But if you so much as look at those components wrongly, they break. So beware!

If you have a 1.02 revision board. Then they seem to have moved those components to somewhere less prone to accidentally breaking by user.

Big thread over at the ServeTheHome forums, discusses just this.
Forumpost-Link

Edit/Update:
I'm too waiting for my PCIe M.2-card. But my chassi is 3U, so should fit easier. But there are those that have the drives laying horisontally. In a 2U, those would probably be more feasible

 

[Etorix]

(Sidenote: This sort of thing may encroach upon other cards, use with care).

Indeed. But putting two M.2 on the back of the card avoids stacking.
Putting several of these cards next to each other should work.

@adityaharsh If you go for the Linkreal carrier, please report how it goes.

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

@adityaharsh what about these?

PA41 Quad Slot M.2 NVMe to PCIe 4.0 X16 Adapter for 4 x M.2 NVMe SSD, Not Support PCIe Bifurcation

Quad Slot M.2 NVMe to PCIe 4.0 X16 Adapter Not Support PCIe Bifurcation (So your motherboard must support PCIe Bifurcation) Support Soft RAID Configuration in Windows or Linux (Intel and AMD Platform) Not support Mac Pro 5.1 Setup pcie splitter in BIOS/UEFI into X4X4X4X4 or Hyper M.2 X16 mode...

www.glotrends-store.com

 

[Etorix]

@Patrick M. Hausen Nice find. But the product page is in dubious English, with some contradictory information (MacPro support=?). And the ASM1184E is… a 5-lane PCIe 2.0 switch; what coud be its purpose on an alleged PCIe 4.0 x16 card relying on bifurcation?

 

[Ericloewe]

Yeah, I'm confident they have zero clue what the hell they're selling. I sure don't know, hell, it may be a SATA RAID card for all I know.

 

[joeschmuck]

I think the PCIe cards with the two M.2 slots on each side are a smart way to fit thing into small spaces, however if I understand correctly, most NVMe Gen-4's get hot and should have a heat sink, this would cause me some concern. If I were to purchase something like this, I' take some measurements (many which are standard) such as slot spacing and the overall thickness of a fully populated and heat sink install setup. What is the spacing between two cards put next to each other? Will they get enough cooling air? If you had enough slots, could you space them apart? Or should you settle for Gen-3 which typically do not require a heat sink?

That is where my head takes me. For my test setup I picked a Gen-3 because it didn't require a heat sink. It was a little less expensive but not a major difference. Heat was my main concern.

Now I want to buy two of these cards and plop eight 4TB Gen-3 NVMe's on them to replace my hard drives.

Something I noticed with my NVMe, it has a power setting that uses .009 watts (full power is 3.0 watts) and when used with SCALE, the Power On Hours value increments extremely slowly. I think the NVMe is in such a low power mode that it basically says it's off. It's crazy. But in CORE it runs like any other drive, counts the time like normal. So there is something nice to say about SCALE if you buy the right NVMe. Of course I am speculating, I don't "know" what is really happening. I'm sure YMMV depending on use case. My NAS is there mainly for backups which run every week, nothing major.

Good Luck, I'd like to see a photo of everything installed if you purchase something. A picture is worth a thousand words they say.

 

[Davvo]

What about this?

https://www.amazon.it/dp/B0B5G6MN79

Or a sandwich (but 3.0) design:

https://www.amazon.it/Cablecc-Express-Scheda-Raid0-Adapter/dp/B08G87RNG9

All links are in italian, but I expect you can find the respective models on amazon.com or similar.

 

[Ericloewe]

Not low profile, which I guess means it won't fit OP's chassis.

 

[Davvo]

Damn, misread the numbers.
Pretty difficult to find low profile cards with 4 slots.

 

[joeschmuck]

Yea but I liked the one with the huge heatsink. It would work for me But I can't afford (the wife won't let me) to buy the adapter and four 4TB NVMe sticks X 2. ~16TB mirrored, I would never need another HDD and I could stick my TrueNAS machine in a much smaller case. Damn, now I'm going to price this stuff out and drool for a while.

 

[adityaharsh]

Beware! The H12SSL motherboards (revision 1.0 & 1.01) have a bunch of VRMs and other electronic dodads for the BMC, placed extremely close to the edge of the motherboard. Ripe for having a bottom of bracket damaging them. If the BMC/IPMI breaks, then you have your self a bricked board. Don't ask me how I know .

I've the Rev 1.02 of the Board so I'll good and any ways the top slot is allotted to the 40G NIC and only the remaining x16 slots are empty, so there shall be no problem at least that's what I assume.

 

[adityaharsh]

Indeed. But putting two M.2 on the back of the card avoids stacking.
Putting several of these cards next to each other should work.

@adityaharsh If you go for the Linkreal carrier, please report how it goes.

Yep, will do if I get one of these. What I'm planning is to first get a sample and try for about a month. Will monitor with 4x 256GB drives Gen-4 and if all works I'll get 2 more of the same type.
I want to avoid the stacking M.2s else my sever will be loud as hell and don't want a jet engine at my work room