M.2 PCIe adapters and X10SL7-F

[averyfreeman]

I'm using this adapter "HyperX Predator PCIe SSD" and it work perfect, but you can use any other analogue.
Not forget in SUPERMICRO bios setup PCI-e line (x8x8 or x4x4x4x4) if you use more than 1 device on 1 PCI-e line. Default in BIOS enabled x16.

Hey sorry to revive the necrothread,

But I'm looking into buying some similar older motherboards off eBay cheap to build a vSphere HA cluster and I was wondering if you could help me figure something out

Did your X10SL7-F support pcie bifurcation?

M.2 NVMe is a must for me - I WILL NOT go back to SATA3 speeds now that I have tasted the sweet, sweet throughput of NVMe drives (maniacal laughter)

TL;DR
I've gotten an M.2 PCIe NVMe adapter to work on a sandy bridge SM C7Q67 but it has a 2.0 x4 slot - so the slot was the right size but slower speeds (still better than SATA3, though)

I'm looking at the X10SLM-F which either has 2.0 x4 (in x8) or 3.0 x8 slots, but if there's no pcie bifurcation, I don't think I can use the cheaper SM 2x M.2 adapter (I'd have to get one with a controller).

So then it'd be a matter of either using 1x M.2 drive in the 2.0 x4 slot and getting slower speeds, or using 1x M.2 in the 3.0 x8 slot and only using half the bandwidth capability of the slot, or getting a more expensive 2x M.2 adapter with a controller which will make it like twice as expensive.

Summary:
Basically, the short question is does the X10SLM-F / SL7-F or similar line of motherboards support PCIe bifurcation?

If you don't know what that is, I'm asking if you can split the PCIe slot in the BIOS - it's an option that looks like this:

PCIe x8
PCIe x4/x4

Oh crap I guess I could just RTFM, didn't think about that until after I wrote all this ;) UPDATE: I RTFM and I don't see anything about bifurcation.

Thanks!

 

[Ericloewe]

It's rarely mentioned in the manuals. I'd kinda expect the X10SL7-F not to support much if any bifurcation since it predates the explosion in PCIe storage. However, you should ask Supermicro support.