NVMe Expansion? Yes Please!

IcyDock MB204MP-B: https://amzn.to/4ieW7Tp IcyDock MB842MP-B2: https://amzn.to/3F8zUbe Today we’re taking a look at some nifty IcyDock NVMe expansion cards thanks to IcyDock. If you're building a high performance workstation or maybe a homelab setup, you probably spent some time trying to think of how you want your storage setup or storage array to be laid out. Lots of consumer boards do offer a few NVMe slots but usually you won’t have more than 3 maybe 4 on a higher end board. Depending on how your motherboard is laid out, some M.2 ports will be CPU or PCH connected and they may not always be the same generation or max capable speed. Workstation boards might have more M.2 ports but depending on your needs, a PCIe breakout card might help increase your total M.2 drive count and maybe get you some faster capability. The MB842MP-B2 card here supports up to x2 PCIe 4.0 NVMe drives and the MB204MP-B card supports up to x4 PCIe 5.0 drives. These will let you really expand out your storage if you have the PCI express slots available to dedicate to storage. It’s important to note that these cards do require that your motherboard supports PCIe bifurcation, either x8 by x8 or x4 by x4 by x4 by x4 for the MB204MP-B. IcyDock maintains a small NVMe SSD compatibility list which is nice, be sure to check that because some SSDs don’t play nice. If you are going to be expanding out your NVME storage on any platform, you’re always going to want to check compatibility from all angles but this is definitely a cool solution to chuck a bunch of NVMe SSDs into a system. As far as my testing, I had to fiddle a little bit on my AM5 motherboard’s to get everything working so I wanted to make note of that that your motherboard will really be an important piece of the puzzle for getting this working. I ended up needing to remove the main SSD in that top slot in order for the MB204 card to show all 4 drives for example. Once I figured out my motherboard with some help from IcyDock, I found that the performance was basically identical to all drives being installed in a standard PCIe 4.0 motherboard M.2 bay which is awesome. I was curious if my Ryzen 9700x with 32GB of memory could keep up with all drives in use at once and as it turns out, it was able to. I ran CrystalDiskMark8 on each of the drives simultaneously and the system wasn't overrun so that's awesome. Both of these NVMe cards came with thermal pads in different sizes which was nice. Each of these cards has a mechanism for installing the SSD, the MB204 has these smaller enclosures you can install the SSD into with a thermal pad and a heat sink and the MB842 has larger metal enclosures that you can move the heat into through the use of the thermal pads. Gaming PC Builds: AMD Ryzen 7000 Gaming Rig: AMD Ryzen 9700X: https://amzn.to/4h5LfpQ Gigabyte X870E Aorus Elite: https://amzn.to/43bx7Iv G.Skill DDR5 6000 CL32 EXPO: https://amzn.to/3IoQD8M be quiet Dark Rock 5 Pro: https://amzn.to/48AXVS2 RTX 4070: https://amzn.to/4ayiv6F be quiet! Light Base 900 DX (white): https://amzn.to/49nkQBH be quiet! Straight Power 12 - 1000w PSU: https://amzn.to/3vgygzs Samsung 990 Pro 2TB SSD: https://amzn.to/49cKkRk Fanxiang S690Q 1TB: https://amzn.to/4912CWr Everest MAX Mechanical Gaming Keyboard: https://amzn.to/3YM9J29 Intel Build: 14700k: https://amzn.to/3I2gG5f be quiet! Pure Loop 2 FX 280mm AIO: https://amzn.to/43XCc5B MSI Z790-A WiFi: https://amzn.to/3OCLaOY 64GB G.Skill DDR5-6400CL32: https://amzn.to/3JlQRxU RTX 4070: https://amzn.to/4ayiv6F be quiet! Light Base 900 DX (white): https://amzn.to/49nkQBH be quiet! Straight Power 12 1000watt: https://amzn.to/3HX4Iu0 Samsung 990 Pro 2TB SSD: https://amzn.to/49cKkRk Phixero P500 SSD: https://amzn.to/3NHtQaY Everest MAX Mechanical Gaming Keyboard: https://amzn.to/3YM9J29 More Cool Tech Stuff: http://bit.ly/SamsTechStuff PC Builds: http://bit.ly/PC-Builds-STS Homelab / Mini Data Center: http://bit.ly/HomeLab-STS Component Reviews: http://bit.ly/Reviews-STS Good Stuff on Amazon 👍👍 Don't Have Amazon Prime Yet? Try It FREE for 30 Days! https://amzn.to/38uBmSo Try Audible Plus: https://amzn.to/38xeW2y Give The Gift Of Audible: https://amzn.to/3bAU2Sd Try Audible Premium Plus and Get Up to TWO FREE Audiobooks: https://amzn.to/3exCecr Don't Have That Kindle Membership Yet? Learn More Here: https://amzn.to/2OsCyyB Check Out Amazon Prime Music Here: https://amzn.to/3l7v8wA Social: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SamsTechStuff Facebook: https://facebook.com/SamsTechStuff Website: http://samstechstuff.com Amazon links in this description and in the comments section may be Affiliate links. These links help support the channel and are free for you to use. When you buy something on Amazon, a small percentage is paid to the channel. This helps me reinvest in new hardware and equipment to keep making more higher quality videos. .