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M2 Drive Question and RAM Question

jpsgaming
Level 8
Hello

EDIT - Added a sound card question as well.


Im looking at buying a Crosshair VI and have a question about the M2 drive.

I plan on putting one GTX 1080 TI in the system. So if I want to throw a samsung 950 M2 in there will that hurt the 16x PCI lanes?

Beena while and Im way out of these things so Im a bit behind on the tech.

Ive been reading that M2 uses PCI lanes, was wanting to make sure this wont hurt performance of the GPU in any way and if so I will just use regular SATA SSDs instead.

My end goal was to use the M2 for my OS and select games.

Then another larger SSD for storage on SATA.

Finally about RAM. Was looking at some Corsair (vengeance or dominator) 16GB 3200 RAM. Can the Crosshair do XMP? or does that other method (DOCP I beleive its called) handle those settings? WIill I need to do much manual configs or can I set it (like XMP) and forget it? WOuld like to get it to 3200 or whats the sweet spot?

Sound Card - I have an old sound blaster Recon 3d PCI card. I liked it cause I could use headsets and speakers at the same time...something I have not been able to do on motherboard soundcards. Will putting that in hog up any PCI lanes as well if I already have the GPU and M2 drive in there? Or is the built in one good enough?

Thanks
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5 REPLIES 5

PeZzy
Level 7
There is no PCI slot on this motherboard. Get a PCIE sound card if you don't like the on-board sound.

The M2 slot will not affect the first graphics card slot (16x).

I have a GTX970 with a 960 Evo 1T and Xonar Essense STX.

Memory is a more complicated issue.

I've heard people talk about the M.2 affecting secondary cards in the others slots, but with a single card in my rig it's not causing any issues. All I'm using is a 1TB M.2 for storage.

I haven't tested it, but I'm using on-board sound and have seen settings for allowing both the headphones and speakers to run at the same time. Again, can't confirm the functionality in use though.

For RAM, the DOCP setting is there, yes. But memory functionality is rather delicate currently with Ryzen.
If you're content with 2 sticks of RAM, you might be able to get away with not having to do any manual settings.
If you want it running higher than 2666, that increases the chances of having to do some manual BIOS tweaking.
If you want four sticks, you'll almost assuredly need to manually set it, especially if running higher than 2666. And you may not be able to run at stock timings currently.

This is all subject to change with improvements in future BIOS updates.

Your mileage may vary, but IMO I would say if your goal is adamantly to not have to manually setup RAM, plan on buying two sticks of 3200 and under-clocking them to 2666 or 2933 with the DOCP setting.
If that doesn't sound appealing, plan to manually set the memory voltage, speed, and timings.

BaneSilvermoon wrote:
I've heard people talk about the M.2 affecting secondary cards in the others slots, but with a single card in my rig it's not causing any issues. All I'm using is a 1TB M.2 for storage.

I haven't tested it, but I'm using on-board sound and have seen settings for allowing both the headphones and speakers to run at the same time. Again, can't confirm the functionality in use though.

For RAM, the DOCP setting is there, yes. But memory functionality is rather delicate currently with Ryzen.
If you're content with 2 sticks of RAM, you might be able to get away with not having to do any manual settings.
If you want it running higher than 2666, that increases the chances of having to do some manual BIOS tweaking.
If you want four sticks, you'll almost assuredly need to manually set it, especially if running higher than 2666. And you may not be able to run at stock timings currently.

This is all subject to change with improvements in future BIOS updates.

Your mileage may vary, but IMO I would say if your goal is adamantly to not have to manually setup RAM, plan on buying two sticks of 3200 and under-clocking them to 2666 or 2933 with the DOCP setting.
If that doesn't sound appealing, plan to manually set the memory voltage, speed, and timings.


Thanks for the reply.

Yeh I have no issues having to manually set the RAM.

I was reading that hopefully future BIOS updates will fix that.

jpsgaming wrote:
Thanks for the reply.

Yeh I have no issues having to manually set the RAM.

I was reading that hopefully future BIOS updates will fix that.

If you are using 4 sticks, you will likely need to loosen the timings more than the RAM's rated latency. Don't know if later BIOS updates will help.

PeZzy wrote:
There is no PCI slot on this motherboard. Get a PCIE sound card if you don't like the on-board sound.

The M2 slot will not affect the first graphics card slot (16x).

I have a GTX970 with a 960 Evo 1T and Xonar Essense STX.

Memory is a more complicated issue.


Yeh I meant PCIe..just forgot the E