Solved: Working NVMe solution (Kioxia CM7-V (U.3) on OEM W790)

Hardware Hub Motherboards
1

Background
For about half a year I’ve been troubleshooting my HP Z4 G5 desktop and the Kioxia CM7-V drives which I couldn’t get to work.

Solutions that were tried were:

  1. Direct to HP SFF i8 with an SFF i8 cable was tried with no luck. The NVMe port 0 is supports Gen4 and is supposed to give native access.
  2. Serialcables Gen5 adapter

link here

  1. C-Payne PCIe Gen5 adapter with cable

Link to cable
Link to card

Solution
First of all a big thanks to Wendell for helping out with the problem.

In the end the solution was to get the C-Payne host adapter which allows you to set the bifurcation via a simple UEFI bootable tool. One flash and setting the BIOS settings to 4x4x4x4 and the system came alive with no further troubleshooting.

I can’t speak more highly of Christian and C-Payne. Even offering help and customer support on a Saturday afternoon.

In terms of value, customer support, build quality and features, my experience is that the C-Payne products are the better choice.

The SerialCables offering of 699$ per PCIe card will set you back 1400 for connecting two drives. On the other hand C-Payne’s host adapter will host 4 drives and a complete kit to run 4 drives will cost 425$, or 350$ if you opt to run two drives.

For a solution that works and offers the flexibility to change the settings on the card, it seems like a no-brainer in terms of cost vs. performance.

Haven’t gotten to benchmark the drives yet. But the simple benchmark in Linux vary between 11 to 15 GB/s

9 Likes
Need Help reprogramming C-Payne MCIO PCIe gen5 Retimer Host Adapter
A Neverending Story: PCIe 3.0/4.0/5.0/6.0/Sci-Fi+ | Bifurcation, Adapters, Switches, HBAs, Cables, NVMe Backplanes, Risers & Extensions - The Good, the Bad & the Ugly - Will there be a final solution?
2

Glad you got everything working. I’m in the process of flashing this exact card to x8/x8. What steps did you take to get this done? Thank you

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I booted the USB key and flashed the card to 4x4x4x4 - feel free to send me a DM if you need the instructions.

You do have the USB key to program the card?

1 Like
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@tm07x thank you for posting this write-up. I am in a similar situation, trying to connect a CM7-R to an ASRock TRX50 WS. The motherboard does supply a single MCIO 4i port (Gen5), however the drive is currently undetected. I am using a Micro SATA cables Gen5-rated MCIO 4i to U.2 cable.

I think I will go with the C-Payne retimer you recommend, as I would like to add more enterprise drives in future.

For the cable, I see the C-Payne website says it is ‘untested with Gen5’. Are you able to confirm what your benchmarks looked like using this cable-drive combination?

Thanks again.

5

I need you to provide me with the specific benchmarks you want me to run. Please list your OS, the suite of benchmarks you need me to run and I will do this for you.

To be honest I am not that good at tweaking settings for drive performance, however I am willing to invest the time into learning this so if you can provide me with the details and benchmarks you want to get a result from I can do this.

I currently run the drives (2 of them) in a W2465X xeon rig with 128GB RAM in DDR 6400. Sorry for the late reply.

PM or Email me.

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No problem, thanks for getting back to me. In the end I was able to verify sequential/random performance using fio (on Ubuntu).

I went with the C-Payne cables and can confirm they support Gen5 speeds when connected to the retimer.

I was able to connect a 5090 and CM7-R to the same X16 slot, freeing one of my mainboard slots, which was a nice bonus.

1 Like
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Were you able to do this running the 8x8 or 8x4x4 config on C-Payne?

I didn’t have much luck with Gen 5 and 3/4 drives running on the same PCI bus despite the redriver having two cable outlets. Despite the BIOS also allowing for bifurcation, it doesn’t seem like it allows for mixed use, but then again, this was to be expected?

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I believe I am running the 8x8x config on C-Payne and 8x8x on the ASRock TRX50 WS BIOS setting. So I am effectively wasting 4x on the 8x MCIO slot that the CM7 is connected to.

Annoyingly, the ASRock does not have an 8x4x4x setting, so I wouldn’t be able to add a second drive in this arrangement (unless I used 4x4x4x4x and downgraded the 5090 to 4x).

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The Asrock W790 which I have allows for 8x4x4 and it works. But you have enough PCIe slots so why not use the available slot for the GPU?

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I also have 2 RTX 3090’s, an Arc A310 and 4x Gen4 NVMe connected.

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Can you post a link to the cable and card you purchased?

And what bifurcation options do you have in the bios?

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Card: MCIO PCIe gen5 Host Adapter x16 -RETIMER- – c-payne.com

Cable: MCIO SFF-TA-1016 8i to 2x SFF-8639 U.2/U.3 cable - PCIe gen4 – c-payne.com

In the BIOS, I have 16x, 8x8x, 4x4x4x4x only.

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you sure that the TRX 50 doesn’t have the 8x4x4 option? Perhaps under IOU/IIO or nested under the CPU config?

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Sorry I only just saw your message. I searched pretty exhaustively at the time. No dice. It would be great to have the option. Perhaps worth asking support.

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Do you have Auto? Try 8x8 or 16x and force the split on the payne card to 4x4x4x4 or 8x8. I think if you give 8 slots per drive and only need two it’ll enumerate it and post. I don’t have that motherboard so I can’t test it. What’s the exact model number?