X570 Crossfire VIII Dark Hero and Hyper M.2 Build Questions

[ctwilson77]

Working on my first computer build in a very long time and am trying to figure out if I can successfully build/configure it the way I want before the parts become available and I spend money. I would appreciate any insight on whether this is doable. I tried reaching out to ASUS tech support with no luck. I do not intend to use it for gaming or overclocking.

Parts List:

ASUS X570 Crossfire VIII Dark Hero Motherboard
AMD Ryzen 9 X5900 CPU
Noctua NH-D15 cooler
32 GB (2x16) DDR4-3200 Memory @ CL16
ASUS Hyper M.2 x16 Gen 4 Card
2 x 0.5 TB Western Digital SN850 M.2 drives installed in the Hyper M.2 card
2 x 2 TB Western Digital SN850 M.2 drives installed in the Hyper M.2 card
GeForce GT 1030 PCIe 3.0 x16 video card
Antec HCG850 power supply

My questions/concerns:

1. Can I install the ASUS Hyper M.2 card, with the four Western Digital SN850’s, in PCIEX16_1 slot with 4 x4 bifurcation and get it to run on PCIe 4.0? The MB manual on page 1-9 implies yes but only at PCIe 3.0 for this CPU (maybe a typo?). I understand that I will have to leave slot PCIEX16_2 empty for PCIEX16_1 to get all 16 PCIe lanes.

2. I want to configure the drives as a 0.5 TB RAID 1 mirror and a 2 TB RAID 1 mirror. Is this configuration supported by the MB and the Hyper M.2 card? I understand that RAID 1 will come with a performance hit but I’d rather have redundancy to reduce potential downtime due to failure. Data will still be backed up externally.

3. Can I boot off of one of the RAID 1 mirrors?

4. In order to support the Hyper M.2 card in slot PCIEX16_1 with PCIEX16_2 empty, I will have to install my video card in chipset slot PCIEX16_3. I believe the video card only requires 4 PCIe lanes. I am not worried about GPU performance as I won’t be using it for games. I’d rather have my storage on the CPU lanes than my GPU. Will the video card work in PCIEX16_3?

The X570 Crosshair VIII Dark Hero isn’t listed in https://www.asus.com/us/support/FAQ/1037507/ and I haven’t been able to find any other useful info.

Any guidance / info / confirmation is much appreciated!

[mrmousse00]

ctwilson77 wrote:
Working on my first computer build in a very long time and am trying to figure out if I can successfully build/configure it the way I want before the parts become available and I spend money. I would appreciate any insight on whether this is doable. I tried reaching out to ASUS tech support with no luck. I do not intend to use it for gaming or overclocking.

Parts List:

ASUS X570 Crossfire VIII Dark Hero Motherboard
AMD Ryzen 9 X5900 CPU
Noctua NH-D15 cooler
32 GB (2x16) DDR4-3200 Memory @ CL16
ASUS Hyper M.2 x16 Gen 4 Card
2 x 0.5 TB Western Digital SN850 M.2 drives installed in the Hyper M.2 card
2 x 2 TB Western Digital SN850 M.2 drives installed in the Hyper M.2 card
GeForce GT 1030 PCIe 3.0 x16 video card
Antec HCG850 power supply

My questions/concerns:

1. Can I install the ASUS Hyper M.2 card, with the four Western Digital SN850’s, in PCIEX16_1 slot with 4 x4 bifurcation and get it to run on PCIe 4.0? The MB manual on page 1-9 implies yes but only at PCIe 3.0 for this CPU (maybe a typo?). I understand that I will have to leave slot PCIEX16_2 empty for PCIEX16_1 to get all 16 PCIe lanes.

2. I want to configure the drives as a 0.5 TB RAID 1 mirror and a 2 TB RAID 1 mirror. Is this configuration supported by the MB and the Hyper M.2 card? I understand that RAID 1 will come with a performance hit but I’d rather have redundancy to reduce potential downtime due to failure. Data will still be backed up externally.

3. Can I boot off of one of the RAID 1 mirrors?

4. In order to support the Hyper M.2 card in slot PCIEX16_1 with PCIEX16_2 empty, I will have to install my video card in chipset slot PCIEX16_3. I believe the video card only requires 4 PCIe lanes. I am not worried about GPU performance as I won’t be using it for games. I’d rather have my storage on the CPU lanes than my GPU. Will the video card work in PCIEX16_3?

The X570 Crosshair VIII Dark Hero isn’t listed in https://www.asus.com/us/support/FAQ/1037507/ and I haven’t been able to find any other useful info.

Any guidance / info / confirmation is much appreciated!

https://www.asus.com/us/support/FAQ/1037507

[ctwilson77]

Here's an update for anyone who bumps across this thread. I ended up building the computer just about as planned. The only real change was that I got an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X cpu instead of the 5900X. I'll suffer.

The ASUS Hyper M.2 Gen 4 card is installed in slot 1 which is bifurcated x4x4x4x4. Four Western Digital SN850 NVMe drives are installed in the card and configured into two RAID 1 arrays using RAIDXpert2 in the BIOS. I am booting off of one of the arrays.

My GeForce GT 1030 video card is installed in slot 3 and is working.

All in all, I am very pleased with the build.

[jincuteguy]

ctwilson77 wrote:
Here's an update for anyone who bumps across this thread. I ended up building the computer just about as planned. The only real change was that I got an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X cpu instead of the 5900X. I'll suffer.

The ASUS Hyper M.2 Gen 4 card is installed in slot 1 which is bifurcated x4x4x4x4. Four Western Digital SN850 NVMe drives are installed in the card and configured into two RAID 1 arrays using RAIDXpert2 in the BIOS. I am booting off of one of the arrays.

My GeForce GT 1030 video card is installed in slot 3 and is working.

All in all, I am very pleased with the build.

Is your GT 1030 card running at x16 with all the Hyper NVME ssds?

[ctwilson77]

jincuteguy wrote:
Is your GT 1030 card running at x16 with all the Hyper NVME ssds?

No. The GT1030 card is in an x16 slot associated with the chipset. As a result, it is sharing the 4 PCIe lanes that connect the chipset to the CPU.

[jincuteguy]

I have the Asus Dark Hero VIII x570 board, and a 3090 FE card, my cpu is 5900X.
My question is, can I run my 3090 FE card @ x16 on the 2nd PICE slot and still have the Hyper M.2 with 4 ssds on the 1st PCIE slot?

[RedSector73]

jincuteguy wrote:
I have the Asus Dark Hero VIII x570 board, and a 3090 FE card, my cpu is 5900X.
My question is, can I run my 3090 FE card @ x16 on the 2nd PICE slot and still have the Hyper M.2 with 4 ssds on the 1st PCIE slot?

X570 chipset / CPU is the same working in this graphic for 3000 series to 5000 series

[ctwilson77]

jincuteguy wrote:
I have the Asus Dark Hero VIII x570 board, and a 3090 FE card, my cpu is 5900X.
My question is, can I run my 3090 FE card @ x16 on the 2nd PICE slot and still have the Hyper M.2 with 4 ssds on the 1st PCIE slot?

I don't believe so. Both slots are connected to the CPU. There are only 24 lanes of PCIe 4 supported on the CPU. 4 are for the chipset connection, 4 are for NVMe storage, and 16 are left for slot 1 & 2. If you put cards in both slots they will only get x8.

[jincuteguy]

ctwilson77 wrote:
I don't believe so. Both slots are connected to the CPU. There are only 24 lanes of PCIe 4 supported on the CPU. 4 are for the chipset connection, 4 are for NVMe storage, and 16 are left for slot 1 & 2. If you put cards in both slots they will only get x8.

So how many PCIE 4.0 NVME cards (not talking about the Hyper M.2 card anymore) I can use along with my 3090 FE card?
My 5900X is 24pcie lanes - 16 from 3090 card = 8lanes left. So that means I can have 2 x PCIE 4.0 nvme cards . And then how many PCIE 4.0 lanes I can get from the X570 chipset? I just want to know what is the maximum PCIE 4.0 nvme cards I can have on the system

[ctwilson77]

jincuteguy wrote:
So how many PCIE 4.0 NVME cards (not talking about the Hyper M.2 card anymore) I can use along with my 3090 FE card?
My 5900X is 24pcie lanes - 16 from 3090 card = 8lanes left. So that means I can have 2 x PCIE 4.0 nvme cards . And then how many PCIE 4.0 lanes I can get from the X570 chipset? I just want to know what is the maximum PCIE 4.0 nvme cards I can have on the system

I believe the answer is two. You'll have one in the M.2 slot connected directly to the CPU, using up the remaining 4 PCIe 4.0 lanes on the CPU. You can have a second NVMe drive in the second M.2 slot but it will be connected to the chipset and will share the connection / PCIe lanes to the CPU with the rest of the chipset needs.

You might be able to put the Hyper M.2 card in the chipset slot but I don't know whether it would work, whether bifurcation would be supported, or how many drives it could support in that location. Even if it did work, all of the NVMe drives on the card would still share the 4 lane connection to the CPU, potentially bottlenecking performance when accessing multiple drives. That's why I put my Hyper M.2 card with four drives on the CPU lanes so each drive could be directly connected to the CPU without sharing PCI lanes and be accessed to its full potential without bottlenecking. I put my video on the chipset lanes as I only needed 4 lanes for video and I don't care about video performance (I'm not gaming).