Hi all,

As a proud owner of the old Asus MAXIMUS IV EXTREME-Z for many years 🙂 I am currently replacing this motherboard. Having good experiences with Asus I would like to buy the ASUS RAMPAGE V Extreme in combination with a new processor (Intel Core i7 6900K). Also I am in the possession of two Nivida GTX 1080 Cards (MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Gaming 8G) and I would like to buy two PCI-e SSD cards for a RAID 0 configuration to have an extreme configuration.

The questions are taking into account the following configuration:
- ASUS RAMPAGE V Extreme
- 2x MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Gaming 8 in SLI mode
- Intel Core i7 6900K - support for 40 lanes PCI.
- DDR4 memory
- OS: Windows 10 64-bit (Has NVMe driver support)

Question 1: Which PCI-e SSD with NVMe can be supported in a bootable raid 0 configuration?

Can a bootable raid 0 array be created with:
a) 2x Samsung 950 Pro 256GB, one on the M2 slot, the other in an extension card or
b) 2x Intel 750 Series 400GB (PCIe x4)

Question 2: What would be the slot configuration in that case of a) or b) based on the manual on page I-19:

a) with the Samsung SSDs:
- PCIE_X16_1 slot <-- MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Gaming 8G Card #1
- PCIE_X16/X8_3 <-- MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Gaming 8G Card #2
- M.2 x4 <-- Samsung 950 Pro 256GB #1
- PCIE_x8_2 <-- Samsung 950 Pro 256GB #2 with an extension card to PCI 3.0 x4.

b) with the Intel SSDs:
- PCIE_X16_1 slot <-- MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Gaming 8G Card #1
- PCIE_X16/X8_3 <-- MSI GeForce GTX 1080 Gaming 8G Card #2
- PCIE_x8_2 <-- Intel 750 Series 400GB #1
- PCIE_x8_4 <-- Intel 750 Series 400GB #2 (Disables the M.2 x4)

E.g. expectation is that only a) can be supported with a bootable raid 0 configuration and b) not yet (only a software raid 0 configuration)?

Any tips and suggestions on this are welcome.

Kind regards,

Machiavello