Gen4 AIC PCIe 16x cards

[∀Z‾soʇɐuɐɥ┴]

I see 2 options for the AIC cards.
One from Asus for around R1300, and one from Aorus for around R2400.

Does anyone have any of these, and how does it compare to just using onboard gen4 nvme slots?

Reason I ask is because it looks like I am capping out my pcie lanes with my gen4x4 nvme drives, which is resulting in my drives in raid running at the speed that a single one of them should be running (around 5.5Gbps read/write).

Alternatively is there a better solution to improve nvme drive speeds?

From what I can see the 5950x only has 24 pcie lanes, and GPU uses 16, which leaves 8 total for 3 nvme drives (1xgen3 and 2xgen4).

 

[Wimmas89]

I bought this but never used it, you are welcome to try it out?
ASUS Hyper M.2 x16 Gen 4 AIC Adapter PCIe Gen4x4 M.2 22110 NVMe Add-on Card

 

[Oj0]

I had a customer buy the Asus, return it and take the Gigabyte instead. There must be some sort of difference.

 

[∀Z‾soʇɐuɐɥ┴]

I had a customer buy the Asus, return it and take the Gigabyte instead. There must be some sort of difference.

I only saw one review that compares them, and it looks like the Giga does perform better overall actually giving all of the estimated performance, where as the Asus only gave about half the performance with 4x gen4 nvme's in raid 0.
Same nvme's used in both.

 

[Oj0]

I only saw one review that compares them, and it looks like the Giga does perform better overall actually giving all of the estimated performance, where as the Asus only gave about half the performance with 4x gen4 nvme's in raid 0.
Same nvme's used in both.

I found his reason.

"Offers better cooling as it has additional thermal pad for sdd's with double sided mem modules"

 

[∀Z‾soʇɐuɐɥ┴]

I found his reason.

"Offers better cooling as it has additional thermal pad for sdd's with double sided mem modules"

Cooling seems to be the biggest limiter on nvme performance it seems.

 

[Oj0]

Cooling seems to be the biggest limiter on nvme performance it seems.

Whatever you decide, TCG now does deliveries to Narnia so you'd better get it from me

 

[∀Z‾soʇɐuɐɥ┴]

I checked your site and it said no stock on the Giga one.

 

[∀Z‾soʇɐuɐɥ┴]

Organised with @Wimmas89 to pick up his Asus on on Monday to test.
Will see if it gives sufficient gains on my setup, else I will check out the Aorus one.

 

[Oj0]

I checked your site and it said no stock on the Giga one.

Right. I knew that Checked with the suppliers now, no stock anywhere in the country with an ETA of 6-8 weeks.

My ASUS one is cheaper than your R 1,300 price though. R 1,122 at the moment.

 

[∀Z‾soʇɐuɐɥ┴]

Right. I knew that Checked with the suppliers now, no stock anywhere in the country with an ETA of 6-8 weeks.

My ASUS one is cheaper than your R 1,300 price though. R 1,122 at the moment.

Now add shipping to Narnia?

 

[Oj0]

Now add shipping to Narnia?

There's a driver that swings that way (haha - double entendre) so normal price.

 

[∀Z‾soʇɐuɐɥ┴]

There's a driver that swings that way (haha - double entendre) so normal price.

Will check it out after testing the Asus one next week.

 

[ThatGuyJD]

From what I can see the 5950x only has 24 pcie lanes, and GPU uses 16, which leaves 8 total for 3 nvme drives (1xgen3 and 2xgen4).

Except for the fact that only 4 comes from the first PCIe slot and the other 4 is the chipset. So your performance will differ based on your mobo PCIe layout and how they decided to split the lanes. Can check the manual to see what they decided.

 

[∀Z‾soʇɐuɐɥ┴]

Except for the fact that only 4 comes from the first PCIe slot and the other 4 is the chipset. So your performance will differ based on your mobo PCIe layout and how they decided to split the lanes. Can check the manual to see what they decided.

So checked my manual, and can't find anything in there about pcie lane distribution except for the pcie slots itself (A = 16x, B = 8x, C = 4x)
nothing about the nvme slots at all.

 

[dk27]

I see 2 options for the AIC cards.
One from Asus for around R1300, and one from Aorus for around R2400.

Does anyone have any of these, and how does it compare to just using onboard gen4 nvme slots?

Reason I ask is because it looks like I am capping out my pcie lanes with my gen4x4 nvme drives, which is resulting in my drives in raid running at the speed that a single one of them should be running (around 5.5Gbps read/write).

Alternatively is there a better solution to improve nvme drive speeds?

From what I can see the 5950x only has 24 pcie lanes, and GPU uses 16, which leaves 8 total for 3 nvme drives (1xgen3 and 2xgen4).

I got the Aorus card and 2x gen4 NVME in Raid0 and got the advertised 14-15GBps speeds running when new so it’s doing well.

I use a PCIE4 gpu (x4 or x8 third slot)
Gen3 nvme boot drive (x4 chipset?)
Gen4 Aic card with 2xGen4 nvme (x8) and get full speeds on all.
With x570, 5900x

AIC uses the top x16 slot of the 3, and I think the gen3 nvme is in the chipset x4 slot.

Haven’t tried RAIDing the NVMEs on the mobo directly.

Is there a performance difference when using raid and the chipset and cpu slots for either nvme?

(AIC card From PC Components & Technology | Tekku great experience btw)

 

[∀Z‾soʇɐuɐɥ┴]

I got the Aorus card and 2x gen4 NVME in Raid0 and got the advertised 14-15GBps speeds running when new so it’s doing well.

I use a PCIE4 gpu (x4 or x8 third slot)
Gen3 nvme boot drive (x4 chipset?)
Gen4 Aic card with 2xGen4 nvme (x8) and get full speeds on all.
With x570, 5900x

AIC uses the top x16 slot of the 3, and I think the gen3 nvme is in the chipset x4 slot.

Haven’t tried RAIDing the NVMEs on the mobo directly.

Is there a performance difference when using raid and the chipset and cpu slots for either nvme?

(AIC card From PC Components & Technology | Tekku great experience btw)

Ah ok, so you running your gpu in gen4 mode.
Was considering running mine in gen8 mode to see if that freed up some lanes and on a 3090 the performance loss is <5% so definitely worth it as I won't even notice this on 1440p at all.

Will give this a shot and see if it improves the overall speed of my gen4 nvmes at all.

 

[dk27]

Ah ok, so you running your gpu in gen4 mode.
Was considering running mine in gen8 mode to see if that freed up some lanes and on a 3090 the performance loss is
Will give this a shot and see if it improves the overall speed of my gen4 nvmes at all.

Also running a 3090, it’s using pcie gen4 x4 and I don’t see any performance loss.

It cranks 1440 and 4k. In the Forza benchmark there’s no cpu throttling and the gpu hits ~180fps+ on max IIRC.

 

[∀Z‾soʇɐuɐɥ┴]

Also running a 3090, it’s using pcie gen4 x4 and I don’t see any performance loss.

It cranks 1440 and 4k. In the Forza benchmark there’s no cpu throttling and the gpu hits ~180fps+ on max IIRC.

Tested now with gpu running 8x, and saw 0 improvement on my gen4x4 nvme's...
Not even sure if they are running in x4 mode, and not sure how to check.
Hardware raid could also be screwing with this I guess.

 

[ThatGuyJD]

So checked my manual, and can't find anything in there about pcie lane distribution except for the pcie slots itself (A = 16x, B = 8x, C = 4x)
nothing about the nvme slots at all.

Yeah that manual is kak.

Sometimes there's a pretty good explanation or a block diagram at least. Can't tell you how your board decides to allocate PCIe lanes. Although dropping the main slot to by 8 should give you improvements. It might even do it automatically if you drop the Aic card in there. Could be worth testing.

 

[dk27]

Tested now with gpu running 8x, and saw 0 improvement on my gen4x4 nvme's...
Not even sure if they are running in x4 mode, and not sure how to check.
Hardware raid could also be screwing with this I guess.

Hmm with the AIC, the RAID array is configure on the mobo - raid xpert2.

Does yours show what each slot is running as?

 

[∀Z‾soʇɐuɐɥ┴]

Hmm with the AIC, the RAID array is configure on the mobo - raid xpert2.

Does yours show what each slot is running as?

Not using the AIC yet, but am running through Raid Xpert2 to configure raid.
Didn't notice anything in there indicating link speed though.

Manual does state it has 3x gen4x4 nvme slots however.

 

[∀Z‾soʇɐuɐɥ┴]

So picked up the Asus AIC from @Wimmas89 and it's working perfectly.
Actually getting my full 12GB/s read and 10GB/s write which is much better than it was while running them onboard in the 2x gen4 nvme slots which was 7GB/s read and 5GB/s write.

Thanks again @Wimmas89
And @Oj0 seeing as it was bought from you originally I guess you still got my money indirectly

 

[∀Z‾soʇɐuɐɥ┴]

I must admit though... it's a sad day in hell when a nvme expansion card is larger than my RTX 3090 xD