# NVMe to PCIe Adapter (4x 2tb) a good idea? Or bottleneck?



## Dracarys (Feb 2, 2021)

Hello,

I currently have like 12 SATA SSDs that vary from 500gb to 1tb, using a LSI PCIe adapter. They take up some space, and for roughly the same price and way more speed, I can stack this adapter with 4x 2tb NVMe drives:



My question is, will there be a bottleneck? This adapter is also only PCIe 3.0, not sure of 4.0 speeds really matter. Also, I have no intensions of RAID. I'll still use a 500gb SATA drive for my OS, and probably upgrade to m.2/nvme in the future (outside the PCIe lanes)

Thanks!


----------



## Dracarys (Feb 2, 2021)

Or I could get a dual adapter, which would be even more inexpensive. Not sure if splitting the drives would be better for performance:


----------



## colony nofi (Feb 2, 2021)

Bottlenecks usually occur around the amount of lanes a particular adaptor is using. There are some adaptors around now that can start seeing huge bandwidth numbers.

This one for instance uses 16 Pcie lanes.








Sonnet M.2 4x4 Silent PCIe Card (Four M.2 NVMe SSD Slots • Add your own SSDs up to 32TB)


Four M.2 NVMe SSD slots on a PCIe 3.0 x16 card. Silent operation. Add your own SSDs up to 16TB. Devotes four lanes of PCIe 3.0 bandwidth to support full performance to every SSD.




www.sonnetstore.com





You will always get higher performance going RAID 0 for these kinds of things - and the risk is much lower than it used to be. (Just make sure you have a real backup of all your libraries)

But, something like the Sonnet will allow the full speed of each individual NMVE drive should you go that way. A card with only 4 lanes but with 4 NMVE drives attached would show slowdowns - but for sample libraries, you will probably not notice any difference at all.


----------



## Dracarys (Feb 3, 2021)

Thank's I'll take that into consideration. An extra $150 might be worth it.


----------



## Stevie (Feb 4, 2021)

I’m running the ADWITS. theres no need for the expensive Sonnet one. Even if you put 4 SSDs on that card you will never come close to the 6900MB/s limit, because sample data is not read sequentially but randomly. So spare yourself the bucks and rather get an additional SSD


----------



## Dracarys (Feb 4, 2021)

Stevie said:


> I’m running the ADWITS. theres no need for the expensive Sonnet one. Even if you put 4 SSDs on that card you will never come close to the 6900MB/s limit, because sample data is not read sequentially but randomly. So spare yourself the bucks and rather get an additional SSD


Thanks for sharing your experience, I was probably going to go with the cheaper one anyway. How's the fan noise? That size usually starts acting weird in month 2. To be honest, I turn the fan off on my SATA SSD hub of 8 sssds, and my laptop NVMe doesn't even have a heatsink. Unless you're writing does it even matter? 

Also, how is your DAW and OS setup? I'd like to have my OS on a separate m.2 nvme, then maybe the DAW sessions on one of the 4 PCIe SSDs, you think it would matter if you're streaming samples from the same drive as your DAW session? Or, maybe it doesn't even matter at that level.

Right now my motherboard is still all SATA, so I'm asking for the future.


----------



## Stevie (Feb 5, 2021)

To my surprise, the fan noise is not audible at all. But you could be right with the 2 months.
But if you don’t like the fan at all you can also replace it with single heatsinks for each SSD.

I tried the M.2s without any heatsink (in idle mode) and the temperature indicator of Samsung Magician said 57° - too hot. That made me rethink my cooling strategy 😂

My setup is like:

1 SATA SSD for Windows 10
1 SATA SSD for projects
My sample libraries are spread across various other SSDs (no RAID, since there is no benefit at all).


----------



## Dracarys (Feb 5, 2021)

Would single heatsinks be better then the one big one that comes with it though? 

That's surprising, my laptop sample SSD with no heatsink was 35c during a session, streaming a ton of libraries. And that thing is jammed in there. Maybe it's the combination of multiple m.2's on the same PCIe and heatsink.


----------



## colony nofi (Feb 5, 2021)

There are big differences in power draw for different SSD's. 
Especially drives that connect via very fast pcie based interconnects like u.2, m.2 rather than sata. 
Its not always easy to tell the cooling needed either. How a case is setup can often have just as much effect as the actual device you're trying to keep cool. Heatsinks work well so long as the ambient temperature around them is low enough, and the area is big enough. I have a server coming that is entirely one big heat-sink. No fans. 15.5TB Micron U.2 SSD. But it is installed in an area that is temperature controlled, and the ambient temp outside the case is always kept at 23 degrees C. Heat is actively removed from that environment - which helps a tonne. IF this server was placed in a small room with no air movement, it wouldn't last long.


----------



## Stevie (Feb 6, 2021)

Dracarys said:


> Would single heatsinks be better then the one big one that comes with it though?
> 
> That's surprising, my laptop sample SSD with no heatsink was 35c during a session, streaming a ton of libraries. And that thing is jammed in there. Maybe it's the combination of multiple m.2's on the same PCIe and heatsink.


Yes, I would think so. Another thing to consider is: the PCI card is located under the gfx card, here.
So it gets way more heat as when used in a single M.2 slot located on the main board.


----------



## Stevie (Feb 9, 2021)

After some days of testing, I noticed the fan does emit a very high noise (it’s a small fan).
i removed the fan altogether and tied a silent Noctua fan on top of the heat sink.
works for me!


----------



## Dracarys (Jan 12, 2022)

Stevie said:


> After some days of testing, I noticed the fan does emit a very high noise (it’s a small fan).
> i removed the fan altogether and tied a silent Noctua fan on top of the heat sink.
> works for me!


Awesome, could you link me to the fan you replaced it with? Did you disassemble the stock heatsink as well?


----------



## Stevie (Jan 12, 2022)

Yep, that's the one I used:


No, I kept the heatsink and mounted the fan on top. I used some cable ties to fixate.


----------



## iMovieShout (Jan 12, 2022)

Really depends upon your motherboard.
As long as you plug it in to a x16 lane, so that you can divide it in to x4 by 4 lanes (ie. 4 lanes per NVMe slot) using BIOS, then you should be fine.

I have a SuperMicro X10DAi board and have installed a x16 NVMe adaptor with 4 NVMe slots (all populated with 2TB and 4TB NVMe SSD's) and they work fine.


----------

