AIC NVMe PCIe Intel as boot drive on X58

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Has anyone gotten an AIC PCIe NVMe drive to work as a boot drive on an X58 system?

Example card


It was mentioned in an EVGA thread with a link, that it's possible.

Link

 

[Legend_8]

This guy claims to have a method of using a EFI emulator on a bootable drive for a regular bios with an Intel 750. Maybe this could be modified to work with a Samsung 900 series on an add in card.

http://mrlithium.blogspot.ca/2015/12/how-to-boot-nvme-ssd-from-legacy-bios.html

Been keeping an eye on this because I can't justify letting go of a W3680 @ 4.5GHz just to have an awesome SSD.

 

[ClockHound]

Also have a look at the X58/Xeon thread here:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1489955/official-x58-xeon-club/6930_30#post_24840152

And another X58/Xeon user reports his Samsung NVMe drives boots:
http://www.overclock.net/t/1461359/official-xeon-x5660-x58-review-discussion-and-xeon-l5639-benchmarks-inside/6090_30#post_24980722

Also the Kingston Predator PCie SSD boots on X58 and is very fast. Or do you need NVMe specifically for your complex SQL queries and shiny epeen?

 

[Legend_8]

The added durability of the 3DVnand would be my main reason. Also if it can work for the same price the extra performance isn't a detracting feature either.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Also the Kingston Predator PCie SSD boots on X58 and is very fast. Or do you need NVMe specifically for your complex SQL queries and shiny epeen?

Was going to suggest just this. Also because of the fact X58 only supports PCIe 2.0, so no matter what you do you'll be limited to ~1600MB/s with a x4 link. Another thing is that you'll need to hook it up to one of the PCIe slots directly from the CPU. Forget about trying to connect it to anything coming of the southbridge. The ICH10 only supports PCIe 1.1.

 

[Legend_8]

Was going to suggest just this. Also because of the fact X58 only supports PCIe 2.0, so no matter what you do you'll be limited to ~1600MB/s with a x4 link. Another thing is that you'll need to hook it up to one of the PCIe slots directly from the CPU. Forget about trying to connect it to anything coming of the southbridge. The ICH10 only supports PCIe 1.1.

PCI-e 2.0 x4 spec is 2000MB/s. Certainly capable of allowing something like the Samsung 950pro full speed.

 

[Valantar]

PCI-e 2.0 x4 spec is 2000MB/s. Certainly capable of allowing something like the Samsung 950pro full speed.

You're not counting overhead. 2000MB/s is the theoretical maximum, 1600MB/s is the practical limit. Unless you can somehow magically alter how PCIe communicates.