Given the absolute dearth of PCIe slots on the latest mainboards (just 3 on one recent PCIe4 board! And one of those used by the GPU!) I'd hold out for some smart company to release a combo card with many more useful expansion ports like 10GBe or more USB-C included, on more than a x4 card. That seems just a pitiful waste of a valuable slot.
I agree, I'm also waiting for a "NAS PCIe card", something with a couple of ports of 2.5GBe or higher, and at least four SATA ports, don't know the required lanes, but if they can fill a 16X bandwidth, that would be great for using with a mini itx motherboard.
It's hard finding a full ATX board that isn't a server board with all that, once you get past all the "using M2.1 disables SATA 1.0 and 1.1" garbage. I want to build a replacement for my aging WHS (which is actually working just fine, problem is cloud backup services are dropping support for server 2008, etc) and I really don;t want to buy all new hard drives (larger but fewer) but it looks like I have to. I'm going to use this for other things as well, so what I want is to put the OS on M2, maybe a pair in RAID 1. 2x2TB SSD for fast cache, and then to be worthwhile (same or more storage than I have now) 3x 8TB or 4x 6TB drives. So that's 6 SATA, 2 M2 that can ALL be used at the same time, and I'd like either 2x 2.5GbE or a single 10GbE since switch costs have come way down. Only my primary desktop would end up getting 2.5GbE, everything else at Gb is more than enough. So - a MB, of any size ATX or smaller, that has 6x SATA (prefer 8x for expansion space) AND 2x M2 AND 10GbE all on board - yeah.... Oh and it would be REALLY awesome if they left off the unnecessary WiFi module and RGB lighting. I really don;t care AMD or Intel, although since the iGPU Ryzens only go up to 4 cores, I guess I'm out of luck. I want 6c/12t or 8c/16t and at least 64GB RAM (again - big storage server but ALSO home lab virtual host).
A single M.2 SSD requires 4 PCIe lanes, so four of these will take entire 16 lanes. There's actually a card made by Asus that does just that, hosts 4 such SSDs. Not only that, it requires PCIe bifurcation, meaning 16 lanes are treated as 4x4 independent ones. Most, but not all motherboards and chisets support bifurcation. And one want to have all these lanes to be CPU lanes, not chipset lanes, to achieve maximum performance. Add a GPU to the mix and you want x299 chipset already.
Actually it could just solve your problem. At the moment your only 4x slot is a one-shot: You fill it, it's gone.
With the 20Gbit USB port you gain flexibility at the price of having to find and pay a matching USB hub (switch, really), which switches that bandwidth into whatever you have downstream. That could be an NVME SSD or three, 10Gbit Ethernet, and various other USB3x devices, oversubscribed but flexible... and a cabling mess perhaps.
I see USB4 becoming the new PCIe slots... not sure I like it in terms of physical cabling mess (reliability?), but I appreciate the flexibility.
Perhaps we'll have tower chassis that contain a separate re-wiring and USB hub compartment.
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asmian - Friday, November 29, 2019 - link
Given the absolute dearth of PCIe slots on the latest mainboards (just 3 on one recent PCIe4 board! And one of those used by the GPU!) I'd hold out for some smart company to release a combo card with many more useful expansion ports like 10GBe or more USB-C included, on more than a x4 card. That seems just a pitiful waste of a valuable slot.rozquilla - Friday, November 29, 2019 - link
I agree, I'm also waiting for a "NAS PCIe card", something with a couple of ports of 2.5GBe or higher, and at least four SATA ports, don't know the required lanes, but if they can fill a 16X bandwidth, that would be great for using with a mini itx motherboard.Jorgp2 - Friday, November 29, 2019 - link
Why not just get a mini ITX board with that all built in?rrinker - Monday, December 2, 2019 - link
It's hard finding a full ATX board that isn't a server board with all that, once you get past all the "using M2.1 disables SATA 1.0 and 1.1" garbage. I want to build a replacement for my aging WHS (which is actually working just fine, problem is cloud backup services are dropping support for server 2008, etc) and I really don;t want to buy all new hard drives (larger but fewer) but it looks like I have to. I'm going to use this for other things as well, so what I want is to put the OS on M2, maybe a pair in RAID 1. 2x2TB SSD for fast cache, and then to be worthwhile (same or more storage than I have now) 3x 8TB or 4x 6TB drives. So that's 6 SATA, 2 M2 that can ALL be used at the same time, and I'd like either 2x 2.5GbE or a single 10GbE since switch costs have come way down. Only my primary desktop would end up getting 2.5GbE, everything else at Gb is more than enough. So - a MB, of any size ATX or smaller, that has 6x SATA (prefer 8x for expansion space) AND 2x M2 AND 10GbE all on board - yeah.... Oh and it would be REALLY awesome if they left off the unnecessary WiFi module and RGB lighting. I really don;t care AMD or Intel, although since the iGPU Ryzens only go up to 4 cores, I guess I'm out of luck. I want 6c/12t or 8c/16t and at least 64GB RAM (again - big storage server but ALSO home lab virtual host).teosoft - Saturday, November 30, 2019 - link
A single M.2 SSD requires 4 PCIe lanes, so four of these will take entire 16 lanes. There's actually a card made by Asus that does just that, hosts 4 such SSDs. Not only that, it requires PCIe bifurcation, meaning 16 lanes are treated as 4x4 independent ones. Most, but not all motherboards and chisets support bifurcation. And one want to have all these lanes to be CPU lanes, not chipset lanes, to achieve maximum performance. Add a GPU to the mix and you want x299 chipset already.abufrejoval - Tuesday, December 3, 2019 - link
Actually it could just solve your problem. At the moment your only 4x slot is a one-shot: You fill it, it's gone.With the 20Gbit USB port you gain flexibility at the price of having to find and pay a matching USB hub (switch, really), which switches that bandwidth into whatever you have downstream. That could be an NVME SSD or three, 10Gbit Ethernet, and various other USB3x devices, oversubscribed but flexible... and a cabling mess perhaps.
I see USB4 becoming the new PCIe slots... not sure I like it in terms of physical cabling mess (reliability?), but I appreciate the flexibility.
Perhaps we'll have tower chassis that contain a separate re-wiring and USB hub compartment.
lilkwarrior - Friday, November 29, 2019 - link
Useless without USB4 or Thundebolt 3.The Von Matrices - Friday, November 29, 2019 - link
Only 100 units in a batch? Is this a typo or is Gigabyte not mass-producing these? Surely they expect to sell thousands of these cards at the least.R3MF - Tuesday, December 3, 2019 - link
i thought this strange too.PeachNCream - Monday, December 2, 2019 - link
That is a lot of PCB for just one USB connector!dlwmacgregor - Wednesday, October 7, 2020 - link
The GigaByte USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 adapter listed in this article is actually available for retail in Australia.profquatermass - Sunday, October 25, 2020 - link
Cost is about $90 US Dollars