Motherboard Choice for M.2 + RAID0 SSD's

[Scoob]

Hi all,

I'm starting to spec up my new build and was pretty much set on getting the ASUS Z170 Maximus VIII Hero motherboard. My plan was to use a fast M.2 drive for the OS and other stuff, plus a pair of conventional SATA SSD's in RAID0 for fast storage, foregoing a spinner entirely. Possibly adding an additional pair of SSD's at a later stage.

However, after reading some reviews there appears to be a fundamental flaw in either the Z170 chipset, or ASUS's implementation of it in this (and other) boards. Basically, as soon as you enable RAID on the SATA controller, the M.2 slot is disabled, so I cannot have my ideal M.2 + SSD Array configuration.

Now, as I'm going for a Skylake 6700k I know I have 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes from that - so, 8 for each of my GPU's, which is perfect. I also know that the Z170 Chipset adds a further 20 PCIe 3.0 lanes for use by other devices. Sure, these 20 lanes are potentially bottlenecked (hate that phrase) by having only a 4 PCIe 3.0 Lane DMI interface with the CPU, but that's fine - i.e. there are more than enough PCIe 3.0 lanes to go around.

So, my questions are as follows:

i) Is anyone out there with the ASUS Z170 Maximus VIII Hero successfully using a fast M.2 drive and RAID0 2xSSD array together?

ii) Are users of other Z170 boards experiencing the same issue, or is it just this particular range of ASUS boards that has issues having the M.2 slot and a SATA RAID array active concurrently?

I had been debating the ASUS Extreme or Workstation boards as an alternative, but they are a chunk more money and most of the additional features are useless for me. The £150 or so saved, would be far better spent on other components.

I'm experienced at building PC's and I've done a lot of water cooling work, but my last new build was a while ago (2500k on an ASUS Z68 Pro) and it's the motherboards that have changed the most, so I want to get this right.

I'm not in a huge hurry to begin my build, I want to see what the new offerings from AMD and NVidia deliver before I commit. I would however like to understand this potential restriction with M.2 and SSD Arrays though.

Any advice welcome.

Cheers,

Scoob.

 

[Tolemac]

X99 maybe?

 

[Scoob]

X99 maybe?

I did consider an X99 build, but Z170 does everything I need. In theory, with the extra 20 PCIe 3.0 lanes provided by the chipset, there is ample capacity to have two GPU's plus an M.2 and a 2xSSD RAID0 array all playing nice together. Hence why I'd like to understand this issue a little more.

Scoob.

 

[steverebo]

I'm currently running a samsung 950 pro M.2 SSD plus 2 evo 850's in raid zero on my Asus Maximus Hero VIII no issue at all

 

[Scoob]

I'm currently running a samsung 950 pro M.2 SSD plus 2 evo 850's in raid zero on my Asus Maximus Hero VIII no issue at all

Now THAT'S what I wanted to hear! Sounds like the issue was resolved then, likely via a BIOS update. I suspect the reports were for very early Z170 boards, which makes sense.

So, to be 100% clear, you have:

1x Samsung 950 Pro M.2 in the motherboards M.2 slot

and

2x Evo 850's (conventional SSDs) in RAID0 on the Intel SATA 3 controller?

If so, that's perfect.

Edit: May I ask if you had any particular issues configuring your BIOS? Did you need to supply additional drivers during Windows install? Or was it a simple case of Here's my M.2 drive, it's bootable and, here's my SSD Array, use these two drives. I've set up numerous conventional SSD arrays, and the BIOS handles everything seamlessly. I have no experience however with setting up M.2 drives.

Cheers,

Scoob.