Dual NVMe M.2 modules on a PCIe 2 bus

Phishfry

Phishfry

I bought a 20 dollar OEM Inventec C202 SandyBridge era Motherboard off ebay. Its a server board with LSI-SAS2008 onboard.
Just for kicks I added in a M.2 NVME drive. Surprisingly the NVMe showed up. Just for kicks I added a second and it worked.
Not terrible scores for PCIe 2.0 bus, 953 Megabytes/sec max. Single drive.

Code: 
diskinfo -t /dev/nvd0
Transfer rates:
    outside:       102400 kbytes in   0.134819 sec =   759537 kbytes/sec
    middle:        102400 kbytes in   0.114932 sec =   890962 kbytes/sec
    inside:        102400 kbytes in   0.107369 sec =   953720 kbytes/sec
Code: 
root@Inventec:~ # nvmecontrol devlist
nvme0: THNSN5512GPU7 TOSHIBA
    nvme0ns1 (488386MB)
nvme1: THNSN5512GPU7 TOSHIBA
    nvme1ns1 (488386MB)

For the price I was happy and adding a E3-1220L at 20W I am running fanless.
I had no idea I would be able to add a NVMe for storage too. No booting off this module. Suprised it works at all.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/273245612048
Some weird board quirks though. I can't get BIOS to hold some changes I make. Turning on VT-d does not stick but VMX is supported by CPU.
So no virt for this board. With my 2 core 20W chip it is not a big deal.
These boards only take Xeon E3 chips.
There is a version with no BMC. It uses only the AST1300 Video chip.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/273232710090
15 bucks for a server board. What a country...
*manual not included*
Do notice that the SATA connectors on the cheaper board on are slighlty flimsy style.

Another source with some details. There are Inventec LGA1150 boards up too and LGA2011.
https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/half-decent-all-in-one-build.7423/
 
2 M.2 drives NVMe in a geom mirror on PCIe 2.0 bus:
Code: 
Transfer rates:
    outside:       102400 kbytes in   0.136609 sec =   749585 kbytes/sec
    middle:        102400 kbytes in   0.136271 sec =   751444 kbytes/sec
    inside:        102400 kbytes in   0.137927 sec =   742422 kbytes/sec

root@Inventec:~ # diskinfo -t /dev/mirror/gm0
 
Here are a sampling of the adapter cards I have bought to connect M.2 drives to PCIe bus.
https://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/AOC-SLG3-2M2.cfm
This card works in 2 of my Supermicro X10DR boards. It needs settings in IOMMU for each CPU.
bifuracatuion. I can choose in the x16 lane from 4x 4x 4x 4x or 8x 8x.
So I can get 2 M.2 cards on a x8 slot. I bought 2 of the cards for quad NVMe.

My ebay purchases for 1U low profile slots. Stacked in 4 NVMe in a 1U chassis. Each upright. Very nice but first adapters are x16
https://www.ebay.com/itm/132719642057

Second batch I found some with notches for shorter slots.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/192542865283
These are recommended. They are the lowest profile card I found and will clear the case lid on a 1U build.

Third Batch-Wanted a cooling fan solution for some Samsung drives which run hot even with copper heatsinks added.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/392069622889

So I have 5 Toshiba XG3 512GB and Two Samsung PM960 so far for testing. I bough more adapters than cards.
 
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