Questions about using an Asus Hyper PCI-E to M.2 adapter

ZodaEX

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I recently picked up an Asus Hyper M.2 adapter to hopefully finally upgrade to one of the latest current-gen SSDs. Before I drop a $150 dollars on a M.2 drive I wanted to run a couple of questions by you guys.
It's my understanding that I won't be able to boot Windows off of this on an older AM3+ board right? Just use it as a secondary drive right? I'm cool with that, just curious about how that works exactly since it dosen't look like Asus provides a driver for it. I'm assuming Win10 just has native built-in support for it?

The other thing I wanted to run by ya'll, is my board is indeed older. It's an Asus M5A97 that only supports PCI-E 2.0. Would PCI-E 2.0 cause any specific newer SSDs to not work with the Asus Hyper? Is it safe to buy a super current PCI-E 4.0 M.2 drive with it, or do I need to stick with a last gen PCI-E 3.0 model for compatibility reasons?
 
you won't be able to boot unless you get an nvme with an oprom (plextor m6e has one for example) there's some info in the 1366 owners club thread about some others also...

I've never run across an nvme that didn't fall back to pcie v2 without issue (except you are limited to 4x pcie2 lanes obviously), I'm using a western digital 1tb nvme in an old 1366 ibm server (pcie2) as vm storage without issue

if the hyper m2 adapter you got is just the one that lets you put a single nvme into an x4 slot the reason there are no drivers is that the board basically does nothing, just converts the nvme connector to a pcie connector
 
I recently picked up an Asus Hyper M.2 adapter to hopefully finally upgrade to one of the latest current-gen SSDs. Before I drop a $150 dollars on a M.2 drive I wanted to run a couple of questions by you guys.
It's my understanding that I won't be able to boot Windows off of this on an older AM3+ board right? Just use it as a secondary drive right? I'm cool with that, just curious about how that works exactly since it dosen't look like Asus provides a driver for it. I'm assuming Win10 just has native built-in support for it?

The other thing I wanted to run by ya'll, is my board is indeed older. It's an Asus M5A97 that only supports PCI-E 2.0. Would PCI-E 2.0 cause any specific newer SSDs to not work with the Asus Hyper? Is it safe to buy a super current PCI-E 4.0 M.2 drive with it, or do I need to stick with a last gen PCI-E 3.0 model for compatibility reasons?
Do you have the Asus Hyper card or the new Hyper GEN4 card?
I recently picked up an Asus Hyper M.2 adapter to hopefully finally upgrade to one of the latest current-gen SSDs. Before I drop a $150 dollars on a M.2 drive I wanted to run a couple of questions by you guys.
It's my understanding that I won't be able to boot Windows off of this on an older AM3+ board right? Just use it as a secondary drive right? I'm cool with that, just curious about how that works exactly since it dosen't look like Asus provides a driver for it. I'm assuming Win10 just has native built-in support for it?

The other thing I wanted to run by ya'll, is my board is indeed older. It's an Asus M5A97 that only supports PCI-E 2.0. Would PCI-E 2.0 cause any specific newer SSDs to not work with the Asus Hyper? Is it safe to buy a super current PCI-E 4.0 M.2 drive with it, or do I need to stick with a last gen PCI-E 3.0 model for compatibility reasons?
That big hyper card won't run without a bios that allows bifurcation. X16 becomes X4 X4 X4 X4. The bios sees 4 seperate drives. In an 8X slot it needs X4 X4. Asus GEN4 card compatibility chart: https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1037507/. I have 2 of the GEN4 PCIe socket cards and six GEN4 Sabrent drives on an old Threadripper with GEN3 cpu lanes, but with GEN3 drives I got 3300/2200 with GEN4 drives I get 3500/3500 R/W. So GEN4 drives help, even in a gen3 mobo. I don't think you will see much storage drive improvement. If you like I will try my Hyper card into my Asus 990FX/FX8350 system and check it, but it's on a Linux distro. My AM4 socket B350M is a micro board and only has one X16 PCIe socket.
 
Do you have the Asus Hyper card or the new Hyper GEN4 card?

That big hyper card won't run without a bios that allows bifurcation. X16 becomes X4 X4 X4 X4. The bios sees 4 seperate drives. In an 8X slot it needs X4 X4. Asus GEN4 card compatibility chart: https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1037507/. I have 2 of the GEN4 PCIe socket cards and six GEN4 Sabrent drives on an old Threadripper with GEN3 cpu lanes, but with GEN3 drives I got 3300/2200 with GEN4 drives I get 3500/3500 R/W. So GEN4 drives help, even in a gen3 mobo. I don't think you will see much storage drive improvement. If you like I will try my Hyper card into my Asus 990FX/FX8350 system and check it, but it's on a Linux distro. My AM4 socket B350M is a micro board and only has one X16 PCIe socket.
Every GEN4 drive ad/review said the GEN4 drives are backwards compatible with GEN 3 lanes. I don't think your bios will recognize an NVME drive. After you boot up Windows may see the storage drive.
 
It depends on the board. Some old boards did get NVMe support (990FX Sabertooth comes to mind), but the vast majority of them did not. I had a Samsung 950 Pro drive which also has a oprom to allow boot from legacy bioses. It worked fine even at PCIe 2.0 speeds on my LGA1366 setup.

As for PCIe 4.0 vs. 3.0 drives, how long do you plan on not upgrading this system? I mean, if you're not going to move to a PCIe 4.0 system soon, then why spend the money? I'd just get a cheap PCIe 3.0 drive. You don't even have to get a fast one because you can't go beyond PCIe 2.0 speeds.
 
It depends on the board. Some old boards did get NVMe support (990FX Sabertooth comes to mind), but the vast majority of them did not. I had a Samsung 950 Pro drive which also has a oprom to allow boot from legacy bioses. It worked fine even at PCIe 2.0 speeds on my LGA1366 setup.

As for PCIe 4.0 vs. 3.0 drives, how long do you plan on not upgrading this system? I mean, if you're not going to move to a PCIe 4.0 system soon, then why spend the money? I'd just get a cheap PCIe 3.0 drive. You don't even have to get a fast one because you can't go beyond PCIe 2.0 speeds.

Wouldn't I still be able to benefit from the faster 4k random reads from a newer SSD even on PCI-E 2.0? Unfortunately I'm not in a position to upgrade my motherboard any time soon. And unfortunately even the board in my sig broke recently so i've had to move back to my 2009 Athlon II system for the foreseeable future.
 
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