I’m currently in the process of upgrading to a new Threadripper 7960X system, and the ASRock TRX50 WS Motherboard seems to fit my needs the best. I greatly appreciated Wendell’s recent review of it ( youtube qLKiGkDA69E ), but that actually brought up more questions when he mentioned SlimSAS.
The ASRock page ( asrock com/mb/AMD/TRX50%20WS/index.asp#Specification ) lists:
1 x MCIO PCIe Gen5x4 Connector
2 x SlimSAS SFF-8654 Connectors (PCIe Gen4x4 or 4 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s)
This looked pretty simple, until I started looking around to find ways to utilize them, as well as watching Wendell’s video above. I have experience with LEDT and older HEDT, but I have no experience with enterprise drives, U.2, U.3, SAS, or SlimSAS.
My immediate goal is to put either one of my PCIe 4x4 cards or one of my M.2 (pcie4x4) drives on the SlimSAS port. The 4x SATA option seems simple enough, as were finding cables for this option, but that isn’t what I was looking for for now. I also have seen some SlimSAS U.2 cables, though the video mentions these are tricky. Googling M.2 to SlimSAS, I seem to get lots of things that plug into M.2 slots and create SlimSAS ports, which is the reverse of what I want. I have seen a few carriers that maybe do what I want, but now with Wendell mentioning the issues of SlimSAS I’m not so sure, plus the whole package seems to cost more than a new M.2 drive.
So specifically, I have the following questions:
To confirm, I’m looking for “SlimSAS 4i” and not “8i” connectors, correct?
This is the cable I want, right? microsatacables com/slimsas-4i-to-slimsas-4i-cable-l-50cm
PCIe (slots) to M.2 cards are less than $20, If I want to go from SlimSAS to M.2, I would need this? microsatacables com/slimsas-4i-to-m-2-nvme-ssd-adapter
That combination is about on par with M.2 drive costs, is there some cheaper way to adapt?
For the PCIe slot option, is this reasonable? microsatacables com/slimsas-4i-sff-8654-to-pcie-x4-slot-and-u-2-sff-8639-to-pcie-x4-slot-adapter
Would it make more financial sense to sell my M.2 drive and buy an U.2 nvme drive+SlimSAS to U.2 cable? If so, what are reasonably-priced options?
What are the gen 3 vs gen4 issues I need to watch out for that Wendell alluded to in that video?
Are the parts I linked to reasonable prices at a reputable vendor? I’m not familiar with this space
Are there search terms or stores that I may not be aware of to better find what I’m looking for?
I realize this is a lot of questions, but I’m totally new to the Enterprise and SlimSAS space and want to make reasonable decisions and not waste performance or money.
For now, leave the SlimSAS port as is. You can get a decent 4x M.2 NVMe board for a PCIe x16 slot for very little, I bought this one earlier: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005186941984.html
Just make sure you have bifurcation enabled for the slot you’re putting it in. You don’t need to populate the entire board in one go, as long as bifurcation is enabled the CPU will find the 1-4 NVMe drives you mounted and treats them accordingly. I first ran mine with just 2 drives, later I expanded with another 2 for the full compliment and added them as RAID6 to my system.
That’ll be data integrity. PCIe Gen 4 requires much stricter design rules for everything in the chain to allow for the higher speeds over Gen 3. Most vendors don’t care if they sell you a genuine Gen4 product or not, having build the thing for Gen 3 speeds. Truth is, most folks won’t ever notice the difference between a Gen 3 and Gen 4 product, so those makers get away with it, very easily too.
Looking around a bit more, I found that there are significantly cheaper cables, are they likely the gen3 only sort of cables that Wendell was mentioning? amazon: gp/product/B073FQKDSQ
Did you ever figure this out? I am unable to get the BIOS to recognize the SATA drives when connected via the SlimSAS connectors on my ASRock TRX50 WS motherboard. I used these cables: " XMSJSIY Slimline SAS 4.0 SFF-8654 4i 38 Pin Host to SATA 7 Pin X4 Target Hard Disk Server Data Transmission Cable Array Drive Cable for Compute," but my SATA drives still don’t get any love from SlimSAS. I also confirmed that the drives were good and could be seen by the BIOS and OS when connected via the SATA connection. The ability to add eight drives via the SlimSAS connectors was a big reason for me getting this Mobo over the Asus or Gigabyte Mobos was the 2 SlimSAS connections, so not having them is more than a little disappointing.
@Todd_W_Bucy You have to tell the bios to use sata protocol on those ports. It defaults to pcie.
@avicks512 Sorry for nbot seeing this back when you posted. I used MicroSATA brand cables to go from SlimSAS to U.2 and plugged in two Optane 905P 1.5TB drives to the connectors. It works great and has no issues yet, and performance is very good. The cables are gen 4 cables and have test reports showing they pass frequency tests, but the drives I used are gen 3 so that is likely why I havent had any issues at all. But even though the 905P’s are gen 3, their latency and small queue depth random performance means they are better performing gaming drives than normal NAND based m.2 SSDs are anyway, and with two of them in raid0 the performance is extremely high in all categories.
MicroSATA sells a lot of different specialty cables like for these connectors and others. You can even find SlimSAS to m.2 cables+ boards like you wanted
Ahh, yeah, that is an M.2 drive. I’m trying to get the SATA ports working on it. I enabled SATA in the BIOS, but I got no love. I suspect I have a gen3 cable, and that is the problem. I’ll try a MicroSATA cable and see if they have gen4 cables.
Yeah, my settings were all the same as yours. I have these cables coming in tomorrow, Slimline SAS 4.0 SFF-8654 4i 38 Pin Host to SATA 7 from Amazon. I’ll try again this weekend. Do you know the manufacturer of the cables you are currently using? I hope this is some user or cable problem. I don’t want to have to RMA this board.
@wendell thanks for that. I tried a different cable and still no luck. Interestingly, when I installed Ubuntu 2404 I lost all my PWM sensors so no fans now. I have a feeling I may need to RMA this board. Not looking forward to that process, joy
sorry, yeah, I installed it twice. No love. ATM I can only seem to find a single manufacturer who is selling this type of cable. Guess I’ll have to leave my cave and actually talk to a human being and purchase one at Altex.
Cause I think that is what the MCIO connector on the board looks like, not the SlimSAS connectors. So those SlimSAS bios options wont do anything for the MCIO port, and I dont think the MCIO connector supports sata on this board.
Hello sorry to bring up an old thread but I am needing some help. I have the Asrock TRX50 WS and can’t seem to get the slimsas 4i connections to see my SATA drives. Haven’t tried different cables yet. They are on the way. But is there anything else it could be?
Bios is latest10.xx.
Bios set to SATA in SLIMSAS option under chipset configuration. Can anyone recommend a good cable for this? I searched what Wendel showed in his picture but didn’t come up with much.
I too bought this board for the 8 sata drives I could get with the 2 slimsas connectors.
I have amazon dot com/gp/product/B0C6Z8VFG2 for SlimSAS to SATA, and am writing this reply from an OS booted off of a SATA drive attached via them. The only issue I had is that I had one SlimSAS to SATA and one SlimSAS to M.2/NVMe drive, so I forgot which is plugged in where the first few times I updated the BIOS. Otherwise, it all works fine for me. My bios notes show I change the settings under Chipset > SlimSAS 1 = SATA. I do have to save that setting, then F10 and re-enter the BIOS to see the drives detected. It doesn’t change instantly, it requires a save+reinit.
I’m using these cables amazon co uk/gp/product/B0C712HXCJ XMSJSIY Slimline SAS 4.0 SFF-8654 4i 38 Pin Host to SATA 7 Pin X4 Target Hard Disk Server Data Transmission Cable Array Drive Cable for Computer
Works a treat simple to use. Plug them in set SATA mode for the SlimSAS connectors in the BIOS and the ports work. I presumed any SFF-8654 cable would work, but not sure if I got lucky and others would cause issues. Good luck. The cable has worked from the first ASRock BIOS to the latest v10 one.
I have a similar card in my current system
