GA-Z170X-Gaming 7 Questions

[Askeptic]

Hello,

I have a Z170X Gaming-7 motherboard and have two questions surrounding its capabilities.

1) It looks like I can create a raid on SATA ports 0-5 and then run another HDD via AHCI on SATA ports 6-7. Is there a disadvantage to using the ASMedia ASM1061 chip? Should I avoid using ports 6-7 if possible?

2) Is this board able to detect and install Windows 7 on to one of the M.2 Sata Express ports? (NVME) I have seen some have issues with Windows installation on to these and not sure if this motherboard can help with this.

Thanks.

[Askeptic]

Haven't looked at the exact set up on your board, but can offer the following advice. 

1. RAID can be created on ports 0-5, keep in mind that one or more of these ports will likely become un-useable if you install m.2 SSD.  There is nothing bad with using the secondary ASmedia controller in AHCI mode for single disks.  Just keep the following in mind.  If the controller is only allocated one PCIe lane, then two disks will share this bandwidth, if only one disk is connected, performance is not "split".

2. You can absolutely use the m.2 sata as a boot drive.  In general, configuring and installing as UEFI is recommended for best performance and boot times.  If you have more specific questions, please reply     

Great, thank you for your response.

I was considering doing an SSD raid on ports 0-5 for the boot drive, and then running another SSD/CDrom on 6-7 in ACHI, but it sounds like my best bet would be to use an M.2 drive and whatever ports 0-5 are still available to me for my other SSD... and possibly my CDrom back on Sata6.

I did not know about the BW limitations on the ASMedia ports, thank you for that information.

[shadowsports]

Deleted my post...  sorry.

Haven't looked at the exact set up on your board, but can offer the following advice. 

1. RAID can be created on ports 0-5, keep in mind that one or more of these ports will likely become un-useable if you install m.2 SSD.  There is nothing bad with using the secondary ASmedia controller in AHCI mode for single disks.  Just keep the following in mind.  If the controller is only allocated one PCIe lane, then two disks will share this bandwidth, if only one disk is connected, performance is not "split".

2. You can absolutely use the m.2 sata as a boot drive.  In general, configuring and installing as UEFI is recommended for best performance and boot times.  If you have more specific questions, please reply     

[shadowsports]

Haven't looked at the exact set up on your board, but can offer the following advice. 

1. RAID can be created on ports 0-5, keep in mind that one or more of these ports will likely become un-useable if you install m.2 SSD.  There is nothing bad with using the secondary ASmedia controller in AHCI mode for single disks.  Just keep the following in mind.  If the controller is only allocated one PCIe lane, then two disks will share this bandwidth, if only one disk is connected, performance is not "split".

2. You can absolutely use the m.2 sata as a boot drive.  In general, configuring and installing as UEFI is recommended for best performance and boot times.  If you have more specific questions, please reply     

Great, thank you for your response.

I was considering doing an SSD raid on ports 0-5 for the boot drive, and then running another SSD/CDrom on 6-7 in ACHI, but it sounds like my best bet would be to use an M.2 drive and whatever ports 0-5 are still available to me for my other SSD... and possibly my CDrom back on Sata6.

I did not know about the BW limitations on the ASMedia ports, thank you for that information.

The BW limitation is not specific to ASmedia. This is something that all MB manufacturers purposely omit.  I'm looking at your manual now.  There isn't a diagram showing the architecture.     Going to look at intel ARK