MSI’s Four-Way M.2 PCIe Card: It Looks Like a GPU
by Ian Cutress on June 21, 2018 11:00 AM EST- Posted in
- SSDs
- Storage
- MSI
- Trade Shows
- M.2
- PCIe
- Computex 2018
Having seen both ASUS and ASRock’s PCIe cards that support four M.2 NVMe drives each at a x4 connection at CES, and then GIGABYTE’s prototype card at Computex, there was only one company left to actually show one. MSI might be the fourth out of the four, but the design we saw goes above and beyond, perhaps to excess. If you ever wanted to crush an egg with a Buick, this is it.
On the face of it, MSI’s variant looks very similar to the others. A simple PCIe 3.0 x16 card with four M.2 slots and some minor circuitry and everything follows the status quo. If you didn’t look closely enough, then the fact that the card had a double slot back plate might have passed you by, and it’s at that point that the MSI Aero fan comes into view. Yes, that’s right: MSI is pairing its four-way M.2 PCIe card with one of its styled GPU coolers.
This means that if you have that specific workload that causes four high-end NVMe drives to start thermally throttling, MSI has you covered, and then some. This cooler should be easily capable of 50W+ of cooling, if not more, and the PCIe card even has a 6-pin connector in play, should 75W+ be needed.
MSI stated that they will be shipping this card in the same box as their new Threadripper X399 MEG Creation motherboard, which is part of the X399 motherboard refreshes for Threadripper 2. Beyond that, MSI expects to sell the card individually at retail at some point over the next few months.
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jrs77 - Saturday, June 23, 2018 - link
Size is not the question. The question is, if the board actually supports anything else than a graphics card in that PEG-slot. PEG = PCI Express for Graphics. I've had no luck so far with anything else like a TV-tuner or soundcard.jrs77 - Saturday, June 23, 2018 - link
Size of the card is not the question. The question is, if anything other than a graphics card is recognized in that PEG-slot. PEG = PCI Express for Graphics. So far I've had no luck using a TV-tuner or soundcard in that slot for the last 4 or 5 mITX boards I've had.jrs77 - Saturday, June 23, 2018 - link
I don't use a dedicated graphics card, so I allways have that slot free and thought it would be nice to use it for a TV-tuner or whatever, but all the mITX-boards I've had so far from either ASUS or Gigabyte didn't work with anything else than a graphics card in that PEG slot. PEG = PCI Express for Graphics. Somehow this type of slot is adressed differently than a normal PCIe slot and only accepts graphics cards.danwat1234 - Thursday, June 21, 2018 - link
No pics of the underside of the heatsink?zodiacfml - Thursday, June 21, 2018 - link
Lacks RGBkoaschten - Friday, June 22, 2018 - link
Am I the only one thinking:Hmmm would have been neat to see a picture of the heatsinks contact area to the SSDs.
I wonder if it is just one huge thermal pad? or is it 4 stripes? re-usable?
Are there replacement stripes in the box?
What do i do when I gradually go from 1 to 4 SSDs?
FuzzDad - Monday, June 25, 2018 - link
Given this it will not be long before EKWB introduces an M2 waterblock and all discussions on overkill w/power will be overwhelmed by a $100 block and assorted fittings, etc.