I have an ASUS ROG Crosshair X870E Glacial motherboard, a Ryzen 9 9950X3D2, and an RTX 5090. I recently acquired three 4TB Samsung 9100 Pro M.2 SSDs and would like to install all of them for storage. The motherboard has three onboard M.2 slots, plus an optional ROG Q-DIMM.2 expansion module that I would prefer not to use. Can I populate all three onboard slots without reducing the graphics card's PCIe bandwidth or causing other hardware to run at lower speeds?
2 Answers
The Q-DIMM.2 module is actually the better option if you want all of the storage installed while preserving the board’s normal connectivity. Using M.2_1, M.2_3, and the two compatible slots on the Q-DIMM.2 avoids reducing GPU bandwidth. By contrast, using the second onboard slot at its highest mode can disable USB4, so check the motherboard’s lane-sharing table before deciding.
You can install drives in all three onboard M.2 slots without taking lanes away from the GPU. The trade-off is that the second M.2 slot shares resources with the USB4 controllers. Depending on how it is configured, that slot may run at PCIe 5.0 x2, roughly equivalent to PCIe 4.0 x4, while only one USB4 port operates at full speed—or using the slot at PCIe 5.0 x4 may disable the USB4 ports. The third onboard M.2 slot is limited to PCIe 4.0 x4.
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