I'm building a NAS and I'm looking at the AsRock E3C246D4U2-2T motherboard. I noticed in the manual that the M.2 slot M2_1 shares resources with the SATA_0 connector. It specifically states that if M2_1 is used with an M.2 SATA3 module, SATA_0 gets disabled. My question is: if I use an M.2 NVMe SSD in M2_1 instead, will that keep SATA_0 enabled? I'm hoping to retain all 8 SATA ports for my setup. Any insights would be greatly appreciated!
4 Answers
The manual isn't super clear, but based on what I've found, it sounds like if you put an M.2 NVMe in M2_1, it probably frees up the SATA_0 port. There are reports suggesting that using the NVMe slot leads to SATA_0 being disabled. Check out this thread for more context!
It’s worth mentioning that SATA and NVMe are different protocols, so using an NVMe drive typically shouldn't affect SATA_0. That's what I thought too, but sometimes manufacturers will cut corners and disable extra features when something is socketed. However, since the manual explicitly mentions only the M.2 SATA module, you should be safe!
Unfortunately, it seems that using an M.2 NVMe drive will still disable the SATA_0 port. It’s a shared lane situation, so if one gets populated, the other usually gets turned off.
The slot is actually SATA-only, so unless you're using an adapter for a PCIe NVMe card, you'll lose SATA_0 with an M.2 module. Just a heads up, I double-checked the manual and it confirms this behavior.
Good catch! The manual does say that M.2 supports both SATA and PCIe models, which can be confusing. I think the SATA_0 gets disabled only when M2_1 is loaded with a SATA module.