Maximus Code XI Multiple M.2 SSDs

[Bmfr79]

Last week I purchased serveral items for a new build but I want to ensure they’re going to work as I expect them to. I have googled some information and read some in this thread but it remains unclear to me.*

I have an Asus Maximus Code XI, Intel 9900k, a Samsung 1tb 850 Pro, two Samsung 2tb 860 Evos, EVGA 1080ti FTW3 and a 4tb WD Caviar Black for backup. What I would like to do is change up the drives a bit. I would like to replace the 850 Pro with a 970 Pro 1tb m.2 drive that I’ve already purchased. *I was thinking that I could also replace on of the 860 evo drives with a 2tb 970 evo and gain some speed as they are gaming drives. I plan to keep the 4tb WD drive as a backup. Will this work from a pcie/bandwidth perspective? *I also plan on upgrading to a 2080 ti so I want to ensure that I’m not throttling anywhere if possible. My current setup has never given me any issues (7700k, Strix Gene) but I want to be sure before I purchase more parts.*

If the dual m.2’s don’t work then I will likely consolidate the dual 2tb drives to one 4tb as well as upgrade to the 970 pro. *

Also, are there any advantages/disadvantages to setting the m.2 drives up as SATA vs PCIE?

Any help is greatly appreciated. *

[Bmfr79]

So does no one know if this is possible? *I reviewed the other thread but this still doesn’t seem clear to me.*

[Esoplayer]

You should be able to run two nvme m.2 drives just fine. I do so in my board. I have one mounted to the first slot by the cpu and the other mounted down my rhe sata slots.

I run the one by the sata slots in x4 for max performance. The top slot runs this by default. When running slot 2 in x4 mode you lose sata ports 5 and 6 though which limits you to 1-4.

I would advise against trying to run them in sata mode if they're nvme. They'll only run at sata speeds which defeats the point of having a pcie nvme.

There should not be any bandwidth issues.

[HiVizMan]

The VGA you are using is not going to show any noticeable difference if run at 16x or 8x so use all the M.2 slots and have your VGA running at 8x. Seriously their is less than 1% difference and your eyes are not going to tell the difference between 84 FPS and 86 FPS. Actually in some benchmarks using a 1080p screen I noticed gains by running in 8x.

The M.2 drives you are thinking of using are fantastic been using a OEM Samsung P981 m2 in my system as my main OS drive and my 970's populate the other slots.

Love it mate, you will not look back.

[Sebastian198910]

HiVizMan wrote:
The VGA you are using is not going to show any noticeable difference if run at 16x or 8x so use all the M.2 slots and have your VGA running at 8x. Seriously their is less than 1% difference and your eyes are not going to tell the difference between 84 FPS and 86 FPS. Actually in some benchmarks using a 1080p screen I noticed gains by running in 8x.

The M.2 drives you are thinking of using are fantastic been using a OEM Samsung P981 m2 in my system as my main OS drive and my 970's populate the other slots.

Love it mate, you will not look back.

What exactly has the VGA PCIe lange config todo with the M.2 setup? The recommanded VGA port is directly liked to the CPU and runs always at x16 until you installed a 2nd VGA in the recommanded port for the 2nd card. The M.2 lanes are always routed by the Z390 chipset on this board and both can be used with x4 parallel to a x16 VGA.

For the topic itself: You can run two M.2 without any problem and you should choose PCIe instead of SATA for both of them. You don't lose any performance (except if you need the 3th PCIe port) and the difference between SATA and PCIe is huge.