Question Several questions about this UGreen PCIe NVME adapter card

[samsinger]

https://www.pbtech.com/product/ADPUGR70504/UGREEN-UG-70504-M2-NVME-to-PCI-E30-Express-Card-wi

I'm using this card to mount a 250GB Samsung 970 NVME EVOPlus SSD. The card has two slots, one marked 'NVME', in which I've mounted my Samsung SSD, and the other slot marked 'NGFF'. Apparently NVME stands for 'non-volatile memory express' while NGFF means 'new generation form factor'.

Net searches seem to indicate that NGFF is quite different from NVME. As far as I can tell NGFF uses 'B-key' (or B+M?) technology, while the NVME uses 'M-key' technology.

How am I doing so far? The above are pretty much all assumptions.

My questions are:
1) Is it possible or practical to mount two SSDs to this card and have them both work? The webpage above seems to show two SSDs in photo 3\2. I guess one is NVME, the other NGFF.
2) Are there any PCIe cards that mount two NVME SSDs? I ask because I'd like to use a card for dual booting two OSs.

Advice would be appreciated.

 

[lopri]

Your motherboard also has to support PCIE bifurcation. It's basically lane splitting and not every board will make things easy.

And there are cards that can mount more than 2 SSDs. LIke this one:

Amazon.com

But again, for your purpose, the board has to support booting from PCIE. I think this might be more standard than lane bifurcation, but I am not very sure. Check your board's manual.

One more thing: These days PCIE lanes are at a premium, and some boards will share lanes among slots and sockets. For example, using a card like above might disable another PCIE slot or halve the PEG (PCIE slot for graphics card) to x8 from x16. Going from x16 to x8 is not a big deal in my opinion but some folks are more stickler about it.

 

[tcsenter]

NGFF is merely called M.2 now, the socket/connector (and card form factor dimensions such as 2230, 2242, 2280), . NVME is a protocol. PCI-E is an interface.

NGFF should have been deprecated in favor of M.2 nomenclature, but because it had gained a little traction you can still find some companies using it to mean SATA based M.2 (since that was all you could get in SSD at that time, NVME hadn't been released yet).

 

[Shmee]

NGFF is merely called M.2 now, the socket. NVME is a protocol. PCI-E is an interface. NGFF should have been deprecated but because it gained a little traction you can still find some companies using it to mean SATA based M.2 (since that was all you could get in SSD at that time, NVME hadn't been adopted yet).

A slight correction, but many earlier m.2 / NGFF drives actually were PCIe based, but they used AHCI protocol instead of NVMe. So not SATA, but also not NVMe. These were generally OEM drives though. That said, yes there are also SATA based m.2 drives. The whole thing can be a bit confusing.

As for the card and it's use, the specs online weren't completely clear, and there was a review mentioning that, and seeming to indicate that the SATA m.2 port required a SATA cable connecting from the card to the motherboard.

As mentioned, there are cards which support multiple NVMe m.2 slots, but many of them require bifurcation support, which varies per motherboard, though you can sometimes modify a motherboards BIOS to add/configure support. It often isn't a very simple task though.

 

[samsinger]

Iopri, tcsenter and Shmee: Thanks for your helpful explanations, you've answered all my questions. It sounds like I can forget about using the NGFF slot on my UGreen card. No worries, I don't think my local NZ supplier has any of that type of SSD, anyway.
Re the bifurcation spec, I don't see a reference in the manual. The board is an Asus Z170M-Plus. There's a board mount point for one NVME and this holds my C drive on a 250GB Samsung 970 NVME EVO Plus SSD, which boots OK. The board has two PCIEX 16 slots. No.1 holds my GTX 560 Ti gfx card, no.2 is used for the UGreen PCIe NVME card. There are two PCIEX 1 slots that are unused.
Once again, thanks for the tips. The SSD situation is a lot clearer now

 

[Seba]

two PCIEX 1 slots that are unused

There are cheap M.2 NVME to PCIe x1 adapters (for one M.2 NVME SSD), too. The maximum transfer speed will be limited by the PCIe x1 slot, but still better than SATA SSD.

 

[samsinger]

Seba, thanks, I didn't know that. Are you able to post a link?

 

[Seba]

I got mine from Aliexpress.

LE
One caveat: that model has an annoying green LED (quite bright). My case is without transparent panels, so it is not bothering me too much.

 

[igor_kavinski]

but still better than SATA SSD.

You have a CrystalDiskMark screenshot?

 

[Shmee]

You have a CrystalDiskMark screenshot?

It depends on the generation of PCIe used on the board's x1 slot, but as long as it is gen3 or later, it will support higher bandwidth. A single PCIe gen3 lane has nearly a GB/s of bandwidth, which is up from the SATA 3 standard. Gen4 will about double that.

 

[Seba]

You have a CrystalDiskMark screenshot?

Cristal DiskMark 8.0.4

The PC: Ryzen 5 3600, 32GB DDR4 3200, motherboard MSI X570-A Pro.

Intel SSD 660p 512GB (this SSD is PCIe 3.0, QLC) in an M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 slot:




Same Intel SSD 660p 512GB in an PCIe 3.0 x1 slot with that PCIe x1 adapter:



Right now I can't do other tests (if required), because I sold the CPU from that PC and I am waiting for some good deals to make some sort of an upgrade.

 

[Seba]

It depends on the generation of PCIe used on the board's x1 slot

Yeah, I assumed at least PCIe 3.0.

 

[tcsenter]

Iopri, tcsenter and Shmee: Thanks for your helpful explanations, you've answered all my questions. It sounds like I can forget about using the NGFF slot on my UGreen card. No worries, I don't think my local NZ supplier has any of that type of SSD, anyway.

SATA M.2 are becoming more scarce and more pricey these days, definitely been on the way out for a couple years. Oh yeah, not to sound like Columbo, but one more thing: mSATA (m = mini) is its own thing. Looks very similar to M.2 but it's not. Mostly used in laptops, USFF or "tiny" PCs, all-in-ones, industrial boards. Not too many were found on any desktop mobo.