Cigarjohn
New member
Looking to talk to those who own or have experience with the APEX or HERO or both motherboards.
I need some help as well as advice. I'm looking to purchase one of these for my next build. I'd really appreciate it if anyone could help me with these questions.
My questions are as follows for the HERO:
On the HERO, when you use a M.2 drive in PCIe mode x3 Gen4, sata ports 5 & 6 will be disabled. My question is if I were to add a second M.2 drive in PCIe mode, will any additional ports be disabled on top of the 5 & 6 ports. I'm asking this as I need a few sata ports open to run a raid system as well as connect one optical drive to my system and was curious where the bandwidth would come from if the other 4 ports not disabled. I wouldn't want the extra bandwidth to be shared with the first PCIe x16 slot where my GPU will be mounted.
Also I have a dedicated sound card as well as an additional two port Asus 3.1 card to install. If I were to install anything other than a GPU in slot 4 which is PCIe 3.0 x8_2 will the bios think that slot is another graphics card and force my single GPU from x16 to x8, thinking I was using a SLI setup?
And on the Rapid Storage Technology, if I were to setup up a RAID 0 or 1+0, can I also wanted to setup a Rapid Storage disk where I can use a SSD as a caching drive that's linked to a mechanical drive? Will both work a the same time or will I have to choose between using a RAID setup or a Rapid Storage setup.
Now pretty much same questions for the APEX:
But on the APEX, there are only 4 sata ports instead of 6 like the HERO. So my question for the Apex is whether I use 1 or 2 M.2's in PCIE gen 3 x4 mode, where are those drives going to get their bandwidth from? Will they also disable any of the 4 sata ports or take bandwidth away from any of the PCIe slots?
And same thing about adding additional PCIe cards to any of the slots. Will they effect the slot 1 of the x16 where the GPU is located?
Thank you in advance for your time in answering my questions.
I need some help as well as advice. I'm looking to purchase one of these for my next build. I'd really appreciate it if anyone could help me with these questions.
My questions are as follows for the HERO:
On the HERO, when you use a M.2 drive in PCIe mode x3 Gen4, sata ports 5 & 6 will be disabled. My question is if I were to add a second M.2 drive in PCIe mode, will any additional ports be disabled on top of the 5 & 6 ports. I'm asking this as I need a few sata ports open to run a raid system as well as connect one optical drive to my system and was curious where the bandwidth would come from if the other 4 ports not disabled. I wouldn't want the extra bandwidth to be shared with the first PCIe x16 slot where my GPU will be mounted.
Also I have a dedicated sound card as well as an additional two port Asus 3.1 card to install. If I were to install anything other than a GPU in slot 4 which is PCIe 3.0 x8_2 will the bios think that slot is another graphics card and force my single GPU from x16 to x8, thinking I was using a SLI setup?
And on the Rapid Storage Technology, if I were to setup up a RAID 0 or 1+0, can I also wanted to setup a Rapid Storage disk where I can use a SSD as a caching drive that's linked to a mechanical drive? Will both work a the same time or will I have to choose between using a RAID setup or a Rapid Storage setup.
Now pretty much same questions for the APEX:
But on the APEX, there are only 4 sata ports instead of 6 like the HERO. So my question for the Apex is whether I use 1 or 2 M.2's in PCIE gen 3 x4 mode, where are those drives going to get their bandwidth from? Will they also disable any of the 4 sata ports or take bandwidth away from any of the PCIe slots?
And same thing about adding additional PCIe cards to any of the slots. Will they effect the slot 1 of the x16 where the GPU is located?
Thank you in advance for your time in answering my questions.
