cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Maximus Viii Hero & Samsung 500GB 960 EVO Ok together ?

Adrian1976
Level 10
Hi Guy's I'm about to purchase this https://www.novatech.co.uk/products/components/harddrives-internal/ssdsolidstate/pciexpress/mz-v6e50... ssd, does this work fine with Maximus VIII hero also am I right in understanding SATA ports 1+2 will be disabled with this drive fitted ? can I move my 3 current SSD's to ports 3 onwards ?
16,794 Views
10 REPLIES 10

Toekneee_
Level 7
Mine is working fine. M.2 version. 2202 bios.*

emsir
Level 8
Adrian1976 wrote:
Hi Guy's I'm about to purchase this https://www.novatech.co.uk/products/components/harddrives-internal/ssdsolidstate/pciexpress/mz-v6e50... ssd, does this work fine with Maximus VIII hero also am I right in understanding SATA ports 1+2 will be disabled with this drive fitted ? can I move my 3 current SSD's to ports 3 onwards ?


Yes SATA 1 and 2 will be disabled. And yes you can connect your SSD's in port 3 to 6. No problem.

Thanks guy's that's cleared it up.

Jagdseelen
Level 8
SATA 1 and 2 will be disabled if using a M.2 SATA SSD. With a M.2 NVMe SSD they should be working as normal.

As stated in Specs

"*1 When the M.2 Socket 3 is operating in SATA mode, SATA port 1 will be disabled."

As Samsung 960 EVO does not operate in SATA Mode the SATA ports should be uneffected.

I have the Samsung 961 in the port M.2 with the Bios 2202 and it works to the thousand wonder and as they affirm the companions you can use the remaining ports and the access speed of the BIOS shown in the Task Manager in Home will be of about 17-18 seconds.
However if you decide as I support this spectacular board with another M.2 by PCIe x4_3 the PCIe ports 1_2 and PCIe 1_3 will also be disabled, and with the BIOS 2202 will increase the access time to 24-25 seconds, than with the BIOS 3007 They managed to get down to 20 seconds, by the way, I do not know the access times with 3101 ...

Grettings.

Adrian1976
Level 10
thanks guy's didn't realise the ports could still be used, didn't know that if it was NVME it didn't take bandwidth from the ports ? I take it's direct access from PCIE ?

Adrian1976 wrote:
thanks guy's didn't realise the ports could still be used, didn't know that if it was NVME it didn't take bandwidth from the ports ? I take it's direct access from PCIE ?


Yep I'm using an NVMe 960 Evo as a boot drive and have full use of all the SATA ports. The different connectivity permutations on these boards are a bit confusing! 🙂 Using a PCIe NVMe drive does theoretically take some bandwidth from the offboard ports, just not quite in the way you are thinking.

The board has two SATA Express ports. Connecting an M2 PCIe NVMe drive will disable the 'express' part of these two ports and turn them into regular SATA interfaces.

So, in practice, if you have your PCIe NVMe drive in the M2 slot, you can still use all eight conventional SATA ports, you just can't connect SATA Express devices. 🙂

Brigman wrote:
Yep I'm using an NVMe 960 Evo as a boot drive and have full use of all the SATA ports. The different connectivity permutations on these boards are a bit confusing! 🙂 Using a PCIe NVMe drive does theoretically take some bandwidth from the offboard ports, just not quite in the way you are thinking.

The board has two SATA Express ports. Connecting an M2 PCIe NVMe drive will disable the 'express' part of these two ports and turn them into regular SATA interfaces.

So, in practice, if you have your PCIe NVMe drive in the M2 slot, you can still use all eight conventional SATA ports, you just can't connect SATA Express devices. 🙂


That cleared it up, it's a bit confusing in the manual it just says it disables ports 1+2 when using the M2 slot.

Adrian1976 wrote:
That cleared it up, it's a bit confusing in the manual it just says it disables ports 1+2 when using the M2 slot.


it is very clear in the manual, on page ix it states "When the M.2 Socket 3 is operating in SATA mode, SATA ports 1,2 will be disabled.", and on page 1-2 it states "This motherboard features an M.2 slot, which supports both PCIE and SATA modes. The PCIE mode operates at full PCI Gen. 3.0 x4 speeds. The SATA mode shares bandwidth with SATA ports 1 and 2 and will automatically disable those ports when an M.2 card is inserted.", and again on page 1-40 it states "When the M.2 (Socket 3) is operating in SATA mode, SATA ports 1 and 2 (SATA6G_12) will be disabled."

what is confusing is that there are some M.2 SSDs that run in Sata mode, and some that run in PCIe mode, and this complexity has nothing to do with Asus or their manuals.