Any B550 or B560 users with Dual NVMe?

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openmedia

3329 posts

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#289403 3-Sep-2021 15:16

Looking at a new home server/lab machine and I was initially leaning towards

AMD 5600G/5700G APU
Dual Seagate 980 NVMe

I wanted an APU or integrated graphics as I don't want the overhead of a separate GPU. console will only be used occasionally for debugging as the unit will be effectively headless.

Now one local supplied has stated that with B550 boards the second NVMe slot is disabled if I use an APU, and another stated I'd love my SATA ports if I use two NVMe drives. Their suggestion was to use a B560 + Intel combination.

None of this matches the motherboard manuals from various suppliers.

Anyone here tried out an APU + B550 board recently and can provide guidance or recommendations?

Generally known online as OpenMedia, now working for Red Hat APAC as a Technology Evangelist and Portfolio Architect. Still playing with MythTV and digital media on the side.

Mark

1653 posts

Uber Geek

#2771515 3-Sep-2021 15:53

If it matters to you, the CPUs with built in graphics are all PCIe 3.0 and not 4.0 so if you are wanting the best NVMe bandwidth that might be something to consider.

ratsun81

508 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2771560 3-Sep-2021 16:39

It will depend on the motherboard,

The Ryzen 5000 series APU's support 24 PCI-E 3.0 lanes.
What the board manufacturers need to do is split those lanes up,

typical lane splitting goes some thing along the lines of:

16 for Graphics card slot

4 for chipset (chipset lanes are shared for various things) such as SATA and USB

so you are left with 4 dedicated lanes for 1x NVME, there are other lane splits such as only x8 for graphics and this could allow for more NVME.

If i were you id do some more research to understand what the board manufacturer has done with the lane splitting.

Also, dont try and put PCI-E 4.0 devices in with a PCI-E 3.0 supported system, your pretty much throwing performance away by doing this (as well as money).

Or, since you arent going to be using the graphics card slot you could get a card that allows you to slot NVME drives onto it bypassing that limitation.....

openmedia

3329 posts

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#2771566 3-Sep-2021 16:45

I'm happy with a pair of PCIe 3 NVMe devices for my workloads.

I do plan on sticking a HBA into one of the PCIe slots for my RAID Array?

Generally known online as OpenMedia, now working for Red Hat APAC as a Technology Evangelist and Portfolio Architect. Still playing with MythTV and digital media on the side.

ratsun81

508 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2771601 3-Sep-2021 17:53

This video gives a good picture of the situation with the b550 chipset.

AMD Chipset Differences: B550 Specs Explained vs. X570, B450, & Zen 3 Support (2020) - YouTube

x570 may be more suitable but of course more pricey, Just out of curiosity what are you doing that requires 2xNVME drives?

There can be a lot of confusion with what is actually disabled depending on what is installed and the board manufacturers manuals arent great.

Perhaps the b560 is a better option. Ive not really looked at the intel side myself.

Mehrts

1063 posts

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#2771605 3-Sep-2021 18:03

For homelab/server stuff, you're ideally going to want as many PCIe lanes as possible within your budget for whatever adapter cards you want to run.

You can get PCIe to M.2 NVMe drive adapters such as this one or this one, but a lot of them require that your motherboard supports PCIe bifurcation. This treats the x16 PCIe slot as four individual x4 slots instead of one big x16 one, along with other options. This is perfect for up to four NVMe drives, but again this will only work if you have enough PCIe lanes to play with.

Also be wary that a lot of the smaller PCIe slots don't have open ends on them. This is a very handy feature to have, as it allows a physically larger card to be installed to a smaller slot. A lot of PCIe cards are happy to run like this, albeit at a reduced bandwidth, but in the real world, it's hardly a noticeable restriction.

openmedia

3329 posts

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#2771609 3-Sep-2021 18:09

ratsun81:

This video gives a good picture of the situation with the b550 chipset.

AMD Chipset Differences: B550 Specs Explained vs. X570, B450, & Zen 3 Support (2020) - YouTube

x570 may be more suitable but of course more pricey, Just out of curiosity what are you doing that requires 2xNVME drives?

I always run my core Boot/OS volume as Raid 1 and given the current cost of NVMe drives I was going to use a couple of 500GB NVMe devices so it can also house my main virtual machine images.

Then a Raid-6 HDD array for my main storage.

Generally known online as OpenMedia, now working for Red Hat APAC as a Technology Evangelist and Portfolio Architect. Still playing with MythTV and digital media on the side.

shrub

775 posts

Ultimate Geek

ID Verified

#2771872 4-Sep-2021 03:59

openmedia:

ratsun81:

This video gives a good picture of the situation with the b550 chipset.

AMD Chipset Differences: B550 Specs Explained vs. X570, B450, & Zen 3 Support (2020) - YouTube

x570 may be more suitable but of course more pricey, Just out of curiosity what are you doing that requires 2xNVME drives?

I always run my core Boot/OS volume as Raid 1 and given the current cost of NVMe drives I was going to use a couple of 500GB NVMe devices so it can also house my main virtual machine images.

Then a Raid-6 HDD array for my main storage.

Just remember Raid is not a backup. If you are really looking at Raid 1 then x570 or a pci-e riser card will be an option.

With the speeds and reliability of a good quality gen4 NVMe with a backup plan id personally just run 1 of them.

Sharesies

Trade NZ and US shares and funds with Sharesies (affiliate link).

Shapenz

518 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2772007 4-Sep-2021 11:43

I had a Gigabyte b550 aorus something a rather and can confirm - the first NVME slot is connected directly to the CPU but the second is part of the chipset- so using it will disable one group of your SATA ports.

It didn’t seem to be listed in the manual or anything but I found out from reddit after a bunch of pointless troubleshooting

ratsun81

508 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2772014 4-Sep-2021 12:13

Check out the B450 chipset motherboards. Ive done a bit of reading and it seems that these have better options as far as not disabling SATA when using 2xM.2 slots...

Also make sure you verify that CPU support covers the newer APU's as some might not.

You didnt mention what form factor you are looking at so that could make things interesting.

The board i found that would disable a slot when using both m.2 slots is the MSI B450 Mortar Max.