Gigabyte GA-Z170X-SOC and M.2 / SATA bandwith?

[robned]

Hi,

I'm up for a new maxed up rig and found the Gigabyte GA-Z170X-SOC to have triple M.2.

I'd like to run a Samsung 950 512GB as OS and use two Samsung 950 512GB in a raid 0.
But then what happens to my SATA ports? How many do I have left working? I still have a bunch of HDDs and extra SDDs. Will I not be able to hook up anything on these SATA ports as the Triple M.2 will disable my other SATA connectors?

Alternative solution to run directly one of the Samsung 950 on the PCI slot (X4?) - can this be done on the OS? So I can free up SATA? How many will I have then?

Or should I buy a cheapo SATA PCI card and put it in a SATA internal card so I can connect that way?

Very confused on this M.2 technology...

Many thanks for any help.

[dmdilks]

Look in the book pages 32 to 34. It is always the 1st or top slot you will lose the most. It is like that on all mother boards. But on this board it looks like the middle slot. You could try adapter card but will that do the same thing. 

Plus the book doesn't really tell you to much. You are going to by the drives. So what I would do is setup what you want to do. Then start plugging in drives to see what works and what doesn't.

[joevt]

According to the manual page 33 or 34, if you install 3 NVMe PCIe x4 SSD's (SATA SSD's or x2 SSD's have different behaviors) then
M2C_32G will disable SATA port 4 and 5.
M2D_32G will disable SATA port 0, 1, 2, 3.
M2A_32G will not disable any SATA ports.

So you will only have SATA port 6 and 7 remaining.

None of the M2 slots affect the PCIe slots.