how to tell how many .nvme drive slots a motherboard has?

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barny.z

Member
Im looking to buy a new desktop for video editing (from PC specialists) and I need as many .nvme drives as possible. I know most MBs have at least 2 slots and some have more so how do you tell?

When checking MBs on the configurator I see stuff like this:
Expansion Slots - 1 x PCIe 5.0 x16, 1 x PCIe 3.0 x4, 4 x PCIe 3.0 x1
Is that the NVME slots? Im assuming the x16 refers to something else and not meaning it has 16 slots?

Or is this NVME slots?
SATA Ports - 6 x SATA 3.0 Gb/s ports, 3 x M.2 Socket

Sorry if its a dumb question but all the different slots and terms is confusing as hell so i would appreciate it if someone could help me decipher this

Im looking to buy an MB that can fit an 13th gen intel processor btw if it makes any difference

thanks

thanks :)
 
T

TonyCarter

VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
"3 x m.2 slots" is the bit that refers to the m.2 NVMe slots. These are the very fast interfaces for your m.2 SSDs.

The 'x16' on the expansion slots is the number of PCIe channels on that slot...however the motherboard will also have a maximum number of channels to allocate across ALL slots...and can usually only split them into batches of (for example) x4 channels.

If you want more NVMe m.2 cards, then your options are to:
  • buy a higher end motherboard with more PCIe channels and m.2 slots;
  • buy an add-in card to hold 4 m.2 SSDs;
  • buy a server type motherboard with more PCIe slots/channels, so you can add more m.2 SSDs and/or more add-in cards.
The motherboard (that's available on the PCS configurator) with the most PCIe channels and m.2 slots (5) would be either the Asus ROG Maximus Z690 Hero or Asus ROG Z790 Maximus Hero (extra m.2 slots are provided by the bundled Hyper-X add-in card).
 
Last edited:
SpyderTracks

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
TonyCarter said:
"3 x m.2 slots" is the bit that refers to the m.2 NVMe slots. These are the very fast interfaces for your m.2 SSDs.

The 'x16' on the expansion slots is the number of PCIe channels on that slot...however the motherboard will also have a maximum number of channels to allocate across ALL slots...and can usually only split them into batches of (for example) x4 channels.

If you want more NVMe m.2 cards, then your options are to:
  • buy a higher end motherboard with more PCIe channels and m.2 slots;
  • buy an add-in card to hold 4 m.2 SSDs;
  • buy a server type motherboard with more PCIe slots/channels, so you can add more m.2 SSDs and/or more add-in cards.
Click to expand...
Just additionally, you may have heard of thunderbolt 4, it's a very dmfast external interface which can make use of nvme external drives and they can be daisychained.

Just for information, if you extras in top of M2 ports, it's always beneficial to have a thunderbolt port if you can on the motherboard
 
B

barny.z

Member
TonyCarter said:
"3 x m.2 slots" is the bit that refers to the m.2 NVMe slots. These are the very fast interfaces for your m.2 SSDs.

The 'x16' on the expansion slots is the number of PCIe channels on that slot...however the motherboard will also have a maximum number of channels to allocate across ALL slots...and can usually only split them into batches of (for example) x4 channels.

If you want more NVMe m.2 cards, then your options are to:
  • buy a higher end motherboard with more PCIe channels and m.2 slots;
  • buy an add-in card to hold 4 m.2 SSDs;
  • buy a server type motherboard with more PCIe slots/channels, so you can add more m.2 SSDs and/or more add-in cards.
The motherboard (that's available on the PCS configurator) with the most PCIe channels and m.2 slots (5) would be either the Asus ROG Maximus Z690 Hero or Asus ROG Z790 Maximus Hero (extra m.2 slots are provided by the bundled Hyper-X add-in card).
Click to expand...
Thank very much for the clear and detailed explanation, that will certainly help me pick the right MB for me!
 
B

barny.z

Member
SpyderTracks said:
Just additionally, you may have heard of thunderbolt 4, it's a very dmfast external interface which can make use of nvme external drives and they can be daisychained.

Just for information, if you extras in top of M2 ports, it's always beneficial to have a thunderbolt port if you can on the motherboard
Click to expand...
Thank you. I thought Thunderbolt was just for Macs. However when scanning through the different motherboards in the configurator I dont see it mentioned in any of the detailed specs but a few of them have it in the description eg: "Thunderbolt™ (USB4®) header support" How do I tell for sure how many Thunderbolt ports a motherboard has? Thanks again :)
 
T

TonyCarter

VALUED CONTRIBUTOR
barny.z said:
Thank you. I thought Thunderbolt was just for Macs. However when scanning through the different motherboards in the configurator I dont see it mentioned in any of the detailed specs but a few of them have it in the description eg: "Thunderbolt™ (USB4®) header support" How do I tell for sure how many Thunderbolt ports a motherboard has? Thanks again :)
Click to expand...
The specs should tell/show you what ports a motherboard has...but if it doesn't have any but has a Thunderbolt header, you can add a card in the specs to give you a couple (or couple more) TB ports.

The picture for the Z690 Maximus below shows 2 Thunderbolt ports (with the little lightning symbol on them):
2_big.jpg

...and the description says:
USB Ports​
Rear USB: 2 x Thunderbolt™ 4 port(s), 7 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 port(s), 2 x USB 2.0 port(s) Front USB: 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 connector(s) (suppport(s) USB Type-C®), 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 header(s) support(s) additional 4 USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, 2 x USB 2.0 header(s) support(s) additional 4 USB 2.0 ports​

...however, I've found Thunderbolt 3/4 external drives/enclosures to be a bit hit & miss (i.e. advertised as TB3 or TB4 and max out at 1500MB/s) and expensive compared to USB-3.2 gen.2 ones, so I've stuck to internal m.2 drives where I can, and have slightly slower ones in external enclosures (you just have to be careful that the internal USB to NVMe bridge is a good one...otherwise you'll get no.

However, I have got one of these connected to my Mac (not in RAID, just houses 2 'cheap & slow' gen3 m.2 SSDs for local copies of cloud files)...
sabrent.com

Thunderbolt 3 To Dual NVMe M.2 SSD Tool-Free Enclosure

FALSE
sabrent.com sabrent.com
 
B

barny.z

Member
TonyCarter said:
The specs should tell/show you what ports a motherboard has...but if it doesn't have any but has a Thunderbolt header, you can add a card in the specs to give you a couple (or couple more) TB ports.

The picture for the Z690 Maximus below shows 2 Thunderbolt ports (with the little lightning symbol on them):
2_big.jpg

...and the description says:
USB Ports​
Rear USB: 2 x Thunderbolt™ 4 port(s), 7 x USB 3.2 Gen 2 port(s), 2 x USB 2.0 port(s) Front USB: 1 x USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 connector(s) (suppport(s) USB Type-C®), 2 x USB 3.2 Gen 1 header(s) support(s) additional 4 USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, 2 x USB 2.0 header(s) support(s) additional 4 USB 2.0 ports​

...however, I've found Thunderbolt 3/4 external drives/enclosures to be a bit hit & miss (i.e. advertised as TB3 or TB4 and max out at 1500MB/s) and expensive compared to USB-3.2 gen.2 ones, so I've stuck to internal m.2 drives where I can, and have slightly slower ones in external enclosures (you just have to be careful that the internal USB to NVMe bridge is a good one...otherwise you'll get no.

However, I have got one of these connected to my Mac (not in RAID, just houses 2 'cheap & slow' gen3 m.2 SSDs for local copies of cloud files)...
sabrent.com

Thunderbolt 3 To Dual NVMe M.2 SSD Tool-Free Enclosure

FALSE
sabrent.com sabrent.com
Click to expand...
Thanks again. I wanted the extra slots for more smaller NVME drives as the 4tb ones are crazy expensive... however these do it all MBs are also crazy expensive... however im looking to buy something to last for 4-5 years so i guess its better to go with the better MB now seeing as NVMEs are easier to upgrade later. Also the price of things... well i noticed PCS doing finance that is interest free so long as you pay it off within 12months so that gives me the ability to stretch my budget more than I expected!!!

Thanks again for the informative post, it certainly clears up a lot of things that were muddled in my mind :)
 
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