PowerSpec G431 2 m.2 drives possible?

santonis

I have a G431 which came with a smaller SSD drive and a larger SATA drive. I added an M.2 drive and made it my boot drive. This has worked fine for years. I wanted to add more storage- when I put in the SECOND M.2 drive, the system comes up but only sees the 1st and 2nd M.2 drives (doesn't see the SSD or SATA drives).

Is this just a technical issue or design of the motherboard or is there a way to use both M.2 drives as well as the SSD/SATA connected drives?

I can't find any support info online for the G431 model.

Steve

santonis

Actually it looks like this normal/expected for this board as it uses the M.2 channels and shuts off the PCI that the SSD's are on.

thread here- Dual m.2 slots on an intel Z370 board : buildapc (reddit.com)

santonis

Also this - EVGA Z370 FTW Question Regarding M.2 Key-M Slots - EVGA Forums

JS_MC

Hello @santonis

Based on the documentation I'm reading this should only disable two of the SATA ports, so you should still have connectivity with the rest of the SATA connections on the board. If you're using all of the SATA connections, then yes, due to the way the chipset handles CPU lanes, it would change the pathing and effectively disable the lanes that are dedicated to these ports.

Let us know if this helps! 😁

PowerSpec_MikeW

@santonis

If M.2_1 is occupied, SATA3_0 and _1 are disabled.

If M.2_2 is occupied, SATA3_4 and _5 are disabled. Make sure the drive is in SATA3_2 or _3 and you should be fine.

You can also use the ASMedia controller ports, labeled SATA3_A1 and _A2. This is an add on controller. I'd stick to the ports as I listed them above unless you need to use the ASMedia controller.