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Crosshair VIII Formula with Hypercard in PCIE 16_1 and GPU in slots _2 and _3.

pkincy
Level 8

Will the Hypercard allow 3 M.2 drives since I am in the first PCIE slot?

And where should those 3 M.2 drives be?   In M.2_1 and M.2_2 and M.2_3 which is where it appears to be necessary from the Asus website.

RIght now I have the card in PCIE16_1 and the M.2s in the first 3 slots on the card and can only see 2 of them.

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7 REPLIES 7

Jiaszzz_ROG
Customer Service Agent

Hello, @pkincy 

Due to the ongoing local holidays in our area, my response time may experience delays.
I apologize for any inconvenience the delayed replies may have caused.

May I ask if you are currently using a PCIE to M.2 SSD Hypercard and can only recognize one M.2 SSD?
According to the ROG Crosshair VIII Formula specifications, it has two onboard M.2 SSD slots.
Could you please confirm that if you respectively install three M.2 SSDs into the onboard slots, can all of them be correctly recognized?


Please ensure your BIOS version is the latest 4805 from the official website and update if necessary.

Thank you.

As you state the board has only 2 onboard m.2 slots, so it would be very difficult to install 3 m.2 drives in only 2 slots.   But yes, I have both slots populated and have 3 m.2 drives in slots 1, 2 and 3 on my Hypercard PCIE card.   I have my RTX 2080 installed in PCIE slot 2 and the hyper card in PCIE slot 1.   Yes I am on bios 4805.   Thank you for your reply.

 

Jiaszzz_ROG
Customer Service Agent

Hello, @pkincy 

Could you please clarify whether you are currently outputting video signals through the GPU or integrated graphics?
If using the GPU, which specific PCIe slot is it installed in?
Has the SSD been recognized while cross-testing the Hypercard PCIe card in other slots?
Additionally, could you confirm whether all three SSDs are correctly recognized when installed directly in the M.2 slots without the Hypercard PCIe card?

Thank you.

pkincy
Level 8
The Hypercard is in PCIE_1.  The GPU (Geforce 2080) is in PCIE_2.
 
All 3 M.2 drives are recognized individually when in a Mobo M.2 slot.

achugh
Level 14

Hi @pkincy  your HYPER card cardboard box or the few papers inside this box would have said in a very small fine print to refer to https://www.asus.com/support/faq/1037507/ link.

The ASUS Marketing and Product material including this FAQ page is extremely difficult to understand. Since I have also purchased a HYPER M.2 X16 GEN 5 Card for my motherboard Z790 DARK HERO which then I had to return as it will only recognize 1 M.2 drive in this card in my case which is useless.

The information in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-x4LmF0avY video at Time Marker 46:30 is not correct as well because this is why I bought the card just to find out this video information directly from ASUS is incorrect or incomplete. Maybe ASUS NORTH AMERICA can correct this message.

HERE'S WHAT ANYONE NEEDS TO KNOW

All the HYPER M.2 Cards depend upon the CPUs ability to switch the PCIe lanes. This is because the card DOES NOT have PCIe splitters chips and none of consumer desktop boards from ASUS have the PCIe lane splitting chips in them. You would need an ASUS Workstation Motherboard in order for you to get the PCIe lane splitting capabilities.

Another way to understand this cryptic information is that in your UEFI BIOS, you will get the ability to decide which PCIe slot will run at what speed like GEN3, GEN4, GEN5 etc. and you will also see how many lanes the slot will get at those speeds like X4, X8, X16 etc. Now these number of lanes have nothing to do with the physical length of the slot as there are motherboards with PCIe X16 length but they are only getting X4 lanes. This is done to allow hardware support for longer cards even though they run on slower speeds.

The most important information for anyone here is how many PCIe LANES the slot will get. This is fully controlled by the CPU. This is what this FAQ page from ASUS is trying to convey which took me a really long time to understand.

In my case, I am using Intel i9-14900K as the CPU. This CPU from Intel only allows the following configurations for PCIe lane splitting which happens INSIDE the CPU. You can see this information at https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/docs/processors/core/core-14th-gen-desktop-brief.ht... intel page once you scroll down to "Intel® Core Desktop Processors Comparison" section and then click on VIEW ALL link to expand the tabular data.

  1. X16 at GEN5 and X4 at GEN4
  2. X8 + X8 at GEN5 and X4 at GEN4

Here as you can see for my CPU, I can only send X8 GEN5 lane to the PCIe slot. Now since the HYPE M.2 Card has no BULIT-IN splitter I can only connect this X8 lane to one of the M.2 Slot on the card. Which defaults to the very first slot on the card. So I don't get the benefit of even using 2 slots to fully utilize the X8 lanes.

Since my motherboard already has a M.2 Slot for GEN5 which works in tandem with the PCIe Gen5 slot, I get no benefit of buying this card. This is why I returned it once I understand all the technical details.

I got very unsatisfactory technical support from the ASUS Customer Service Phone Line as well as follow up emails. I just had to read this FAQ page and the Intel page 100 times slowly to understand what is going on with this card.

This card is really meant for ASUS Workstation Motherboards where the BIOS will allow your to SPLIT the PCIe lanes. You are really looking for a PCIe slot that gives you X4+X4+X4+X4 split for a single physical PCIe slot in order to get all FOUR (4) M.2 slots to work properly. This is why the YOUTUBE link I shared here is sharing incorrect information and needs correction.

The other visual way to see things is if you checkout https://www.asus.com/us/motherboards-components/motherboards/workstation/ws-x299-sage-10g motherboard. Go to the User Manual of this motherboard at https://dlcdnets.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/Socket2066/WS_X299_SAGE_10G/Manual/E16046_WS_X299_SAGE_10G_UM_... scroll all the way down to the APPENDIX on page 121 of 132 pages. See this board comes with PLX8747 chip on the motherboard which splits the X16 PCIe lane coming directly from the CPU to X8+X8 or pass the full X16 as is. Once it does a split, it needs its own clock synchronization which is done using QSW1480 chips when the splitter is engaged. These chips are missing from the HYPER M.2 board so it can only work with the way CPU does the splitting. This is why these HYPER M.2 boards are only good for the motherboards they are shipped with or with very specialized workstation boards. These are not meant for people like you and me and this information is not easily shared or available to the ASUS Customer Support team causing further confusion for general consumers.

I hope this helps you understand what is going on and why there is no solution available for consumer from ASUS at the moment to put in more M.2 Drives on to the motherboards at the moment.

Disclaimer: I am not an ASUS support person so my information may be incomplete. Always follow official documentation and material provided by ASUS representatives.

INTEL i9-14900K / CORSAIR VENGEANCE RGB 192GB (4x48GB) 5200 CAS38 / ROG Z790 DARK HERO / ROG TUF GAMING RTX 4090 OC / ProArt PA-602 Case / SEASONIC PRIME TX-1300 ATX 3.0 / CORSAIR MP700 PRO 2TB PCIe Gen5 / CRUCIAL T500 2TB PCIe Gen4 / EIZO CG2700X
Get a first look preview at our latest ROG MAXIMUS Z790 motherboards, offering you the best foundation for your next-gen Intel build. Featuring PCIe Gen 5 support for both PCIe slots and M.2 SSDs alongside support for up to five M.2 SSDs, Thunderbolt 4 and 20Gbps and 10Gbps USB connectivity as ...

I had gathered that limitation on the PCIE lanes without the detailed understanding you ended up with.   Thank you for the post.   I do have 2 M.2 drives recognized in the Hyper Card but I had 2 recognized in the much less expensive 2 M.2 slot card I used previously.   I do have a Hypercard in another computer that is using either 2 or 3 drives.   But the summary is I already have 4 M.2 drives in my Crosshair AMD box and have 5 M.2 drives in my Intel box along with 2 SSD drives, so am a bit of a drive space junky even though my OS and File/Folder drive is only running at 1.2 GB of data.   All the extras are because I am OCD about full backups every week and keeping 3 or 4 of them until I undo them.   I definitely appreciate your help.   This fall I will upgrade my main AMD4 box to AMD5 and will get a Mobo with space on the board for 4 M.2 drives and hope I can get 2 more operating in either my old drive PCIE card or the Hypercard.   Looking forward to the new AMD chips and the new boards when they are available.

@pkincy You never mentioned which HYPER M.2 Card do you have. Keep in mind that each HYPER M.2 Card ONLY works for the PCIe speed it is rated at. As an example my HYPER M.2 Card was rated for GEN5. If you try to run the card at any other speed, you will have issues. Next you also need to match the NVMe drives in this card to match the same speed.

The two drives that are recognized probably are a match for your HYPER M.2 Card and the other two drives may not be a match. That is a possibility too. Some M.2 Cards do not support NVMe interface and only support SATA interface. These M.2 Drives will not work in these cards.

The easiest way to remember is that the HYPER M.2 Card is a dumb card and any mix and match or change in protocol or speed is not supported by these cards due to the lower price point these cards have. These are not feature rich cards that can work with auto detection or multiple protocols due to missing electronic circuitry that is typically needed.

Good luck with your new build whenever you decide to proceed. Hopefully, it will go smooth for you.

Disclaimer: I am not an ASUS support person so my information may be incomplete. Always follow official documentation and material provided by ASUS representatives.

INTEL i9-14900K / CORSAIR VENGEANCE RGB 192GB (4x48GB) 5200 CAS38 / ROG Z790 DARK HERO / ROG TUF GAMING RTX 4090 OC / ProArt PA-602 Case / SEASONIC PRIME TX-1300 ATX 3.0 / CORSAIR MP700 PRO 2TB PCIe Gen5 / CRUCIAL T500 2TB PCIe Gen4 / EIZO CG2700X