Hi All,
Just putting this out here for anyone who may be thinking of installing a PCI-E NVMe SSD to be used thru an AMD X370 chipset w\ the AMD AM4 CPU socket (as tested on my Gigabyte GA-AX370 Gaming K5 mobo):
I found that my Samsung 950 Pro SSD will work (installed it in 3rd PCI-E x16 slot (x4 service) using my Wings x1 adapter which is routed thru the X370 chipset) and will boot up thru it but it WILL NOT reach rated NVMe sequential read\write speeds....it WILL be cut to 10G (link speed @ 4 Gbps, link width @ x2, link bandwidth @ 8 Gbps) due to the potential limitations built into the X370 chipset itself and the PCI-E 3.0 x 4 lane link between the X370 chipset\CPU socket. If you plan to use a PCI-E AHCI SSD instead of a PCI-E NVMe version then you can mount it anywhere you like thru either the CPU socket or the X370 chipset.
The only 2 slots that can give full rated PCI-E NVMe link speeds are the provided M.2 slot and the unused PCI-E 3.0 x16 Crossfire\SLI slot that are routed direct thru the CPU socket. Now if you choose to use the spare Crossfire\SLI slot to mount a NVMe SSD, the PCI-E lane count will be cut on both PCI-E 3.0 x16 slots to 8x thus cutting 8 lanes away from the graphics card.....not usually an issue but do be aware of this.
I found all this out thru actually testing for it as there is no documentation that I could find, either thru Gigabyte's web site or in the manual, that spells this out. I wasn't having any issues beforehand......was just curious & decided to test for it cause I wanted to know.
Been known to do such things...............
So you might check w\ the particular mobo manufacturer's AMD AM4 CPU socket using X370 chipsets to find out if this is something that may concern you.............
