ASUS Hyper M.2 X16 PCIe 3.0 X4 Expansion Card V2 Supports 4 NVMe M.2 (2242/2260/2280/22110) Upto 128 Gbps for Intel VROC and AMD Ryzen Threadripper NVMe Raid

Love this thing. Great addition to the computer for large storage capacity

So the main thing to know about this device is that you need to be able to split your pcie bus or whatever into multiple different channels, so to speak. In my case, my motherboard can only split the pcie 16 bus into 8x8 which means I can only use 2 hard drives in this thing.That's not bad though. Look.I have entirely Crucial m.2 nvme drives, just of varying generations. In most of my testing, they are basically equivalent to each other. The newer ones (the ones in this product) are newer, but in my previous testing, while better, they aren't a huge amount better.That said, the first image you see is the result of a single crucial m2 nvme drive mounted directly on my motherboard...The second image you see is of 2 of basically the same m2 nvme drives mounted on this device, using a striped volume, using 8x8. This card is capable of 4x4x4x4, and I am only using it at 8x8, which is overkill for the drives.There's probably notes to be made about the free space or how much older exactly the single m2 drive is, but the difference is stark. Having a 2nd drive didn't just double the speed, it more than tripled it.I will put it this way. My next motherboard will be capable of 4x4x4x4 so I can use this card in an even better mode. I am going to build around this device because it's that good.

You need to enable "bifurcation" or x4x4x4x4 setting on the usb slot you're going to plug this into, and that setting is in the bios. Once you've done that, you can create a shared file system across the 4 nvme drives you've plugged in, or a software raid setup of some sort (I chose the former).The problems happen when you update the bios. This might happen months later, where you decide your machine's bios needs an update, and all your changes to the bios get wiped. Suddenly you try to boot your system and it can't find the drives. With Linux, this can cause the system to not boot, if you're auto-mounting the combined drive, because only one of the 4 nvme drives attached to the card, can be seen.Anyways, not totally for the inexperienced, definitely understand the limitations. Your system might not even support bifurcation, and you'll see a lot of complaints along those lines like ("can't see all 4 drives"). etc.Overall review of 5/5 because it does what it says, and does it without failure (maybe 3 months so far).

Most pcie 3.0 motherboards will only support one nvme m.2 in this card. Granted this is meant to be a 4.0 card, I have no reason to be upset with that. If that was my only gripe then it would be a 5 star review. The bearing on my card's fan has started to go bad, when it first started I was panicking because I thought it was my AIO (and it's super easy to forget this card even has a fan). Good thing there's a switch to disable the fan otherwise my review would be 1 star for making me take the card out to unplug it's fan.For anyone wondering, I bought the card fully aware of it's pcie 3.0 quirk. I don't care about this quirk because eventually it won't matter in however many years when i've upgraded. It's got so many slots that it should still be future proof by then

I bought this and two Crucial T500 NVME modules ( without heat spreader ) that I configured in a RAID1 mirror. The modules are pcie 4.0 capable, but my computer only has pcie3.0 which is limiting the performance. Still, I am seeing large block reads peak at 6435 and writes at 3144 MB/s. By comparison, a single mid-range SATA SSD gave 558 and 507 MB/s. This is where pcie NVME shines. For random access the drives will be the limiting factor and even SATA overhead becomes secondary.As others have said, your motherboard _must_ support pcie bifurcation to use more than one NVME drive, and you must have a full-width ( x16 ) spare slot with enough pcie lanes for the number of drives that you want to install. For one NVME drive you could get by with a pcie x4 slot. For two, an x8 slot _and_ bifurcation support is required, and for three or four an x16 slot _and_ bifurcation support. Note that the physical width of the slot is not a guarantee of having enough lanes - check the documentation on your computer or motherboard. Many, many motherboards have only a single x16 slot which is typically used for the graphics card, and an x8 slot, then either nothing more or a very small one. The Xeon boards or systems designed for workstation use are likely to be well equipped. Some new graphics cards with pcie 4.0 get by with an x8, which would allow this NVME card to use the x16. Keep in mind that any network card faster than 1G will also need at least an x4 slot.I should add that these modules were configured in a mirror using Intel's VROC, and the motherboard has a VROC dongle to enable the functionality. The computer boots from this mirror without needing any other drives.One caveat: the board is pretty heavy due to the aluminum heatsink. It is not exactly secure in a pcie socket but should be fine if the system is not being moved around.Second caveat: the system's drive LED is not connected to this module and never goes on when it is being accessed