The only available SATA Express device?
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- Опубліковано 4 січ 2023
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Id guess that USB power header is for power when sleeping. I think most boards leave usb power on when sleeping, and that would allow this usb3 card to power devices when sleeping. This would also allow the keyboard or mouse to wake the system from sleep
Definitely the reason. The 5V from the PSU's SATA is switched off when entering the S3/S4/S5 state, but the USB 2.0 header pulls power instead from the +5VSB rail, which is always active, allowing peripherals to wake the system, and basic 500mA charging per port.
Also, you can't do a Y-splitter for USB-port power, because leeching power off for something else would screw up the correct functioning of the USB power delivery functions and overcurrent detection for whatever other USB device was plugged into the port. You have to sacrifice the USB port in order to pull power from it like this.
It seems to me that since they are going to take up the USB header anyway, it would have been nice to just have those USB ports on the thing, too.
@@Ts6451 then you have to add another DC:DC power supply and current limit the ports even lower than the 500mA x2 limit that the 2.0 header provides (since you can't multi-tap a USB power supply). And since 500mA is the base power specification for a USB 2.0 host port, that doesn't work since you'd be below the minimum.
The way it was done was 1:1 with each port getting its own 500mA of standby power from its half of the USB 2.0 header, which was the only proper way to do this.
@@slightlyevolved False. The data lines are carried over the SATA Express connection via PCIe, since it's effectively just a USB 3.0 add in card on a different form factor. If they weren't, the USB ports wouldn't function at all.
But because the SATA power IS NOT always on (that shuts off when the system enters S3/S4/S5 power states), the USB 2.0 power which is derived from +5VSB which IS always on, the devices are able to wake the system, since they have both the always on power they need and a data connection to the system over the SATA Express PCIe tunnel.
Wow I still remember vividly when this was the "next big thing" must have been at CES even back at the time but then it disappeared like you said, to the point where I thought I dreamed it or something. Thanks for the video, takes me back!
You don't see much of eSATA anymore either.
@@isthattrue1083 another connector that was barely used. Just hooked up a front panel hub with esata yesterday in fact and thought the same thing
The Thinkpad T460p and T470p actually uses it if configured with NVME SSDs. It uses a caddy in the 2.5in bay, but instead of a ribbon connector, the caddy adapts m.2 to 2 lanes of PCIe over the sata express connector
Same as X260
There's another fairly recent connector standard that simply died before getting its chance to shine, the VirtualLink interface was on certain RTX 20 series cards and even had a planned adapter for the Valve Index before getting cancelled shortly before it was supposed to launch in 2019. If you happen to have a graphics card from that generation still that's what the USB-C connector on the back was for most likely. You can still configure it as a display out with the correct cable but I was particularly burned by its abandonment since I was excited for VR gaming over a single lightweight cable back in 2019.
I know the adapter for the HP G2 headset did come to market. Almost bought one for mine at the time. :P
The AMD 7900 XT and XTX have USB-C ports on them. But I don't think they have anything to do with VirtualLink and are just for DisplayPort tunneling over USB-C.
@@PeterBrockie virtuallink requires power output and its a bit different from the common now usb c mode which probably killed it that nobody was using it. Plus on usb-c only charge laptops you'd have to support magically both at same time or somehow explain to people they can't stick it into it.
One thing that sucks about usb-c is that you can't know what you can get out of it by looking at it.. Or can put into it for that matter. Or with what cable. Or that you can charge through it but only at 30 or 60 watts(on a 300w lappy) or 100 watts but only with specific charger - and on only one of the ports.
Modern laptops are going back to days of having essentially a bunch of db9 ports that you just have to know which is for what, which is kinda dumb.
You can also use it as a standard USB-C port! My motherboard didn't have a USB-C header for my front panel, and I needed to use a USB-C port for some reason. Plugged in whatever device, and it just worked! If I recall correctly it's a whole 10Gbps port, which is honestly awesome.
@@lasskinn474 idk who looks at ports nowadays. People just google it 😂 I think only MacBooks get bricked by third party usb c chargers
I remember Sata Express being introduced with Z97 motherboards alongside M.2. On that generation, both interfaces supported just 2 lanes of pcie 2.0. As soon as the next generation was launched, M.2 got upgraded to PCIe3.0x4. Sata Express was still available in many of the newer boards for a couple generations (which thanks to the backwards compatibility with Sata 3 is not really a problem), but was basically obsolete with no clear upgrade path possible for the standard. At that point, the industry basically gave up on trying to retrofit newer revisions with higher bandwidth and went into the U.2 using the SSF connector that was previously being used for SAS already.
All and all the concept wasn't bad, but the design was too focused on solving the issue of bandwidth limitations on the sort term, with no clear path forward. I doubt I would have succeeded in any other form, as is clear nowadays that U.2 is not very popular in the consumer market either, and M.2 is the more interesting form factor.
Aren't most M.2 on PCIE 4.0 still only 4 lane?
I bought a gigabyte z170x gaming 7 motherboard which also has sata express. Not one but two stacked on top of each other.
@@isthattrue1083 I mean it's 4 lanes at 4.0... which is 1000Mbps vs 64,000Mbps. (~1GB/s vs 64GB/s)
Correction, 8gb for sata express, as you are noting the numbers for m.2 in gigabits, but still 4 or 8 times faster depending on the pcie revision in question.
@@isthattrue1083 If you want x16 speed there are some cards available to plug in that you can install 4 nvme drives into the card. Pair them in raid 0 and you will get close to x16 speeds.
and the whole asrock front panel thing is explained away as: This is great news as we’ll finally be able to get front panel USB 3.1 support as the case makers are waiting for Intel to add USB 3.1 support into their chipset and for a standardized pin header to be ratified before they can add support for front panel USB 3.1. (So they used the sata express port as the pci path to the usb adapter board.)
This was also my idea: it provides a front USB 3 port, which were rare at the time and you might want an extra one. In that case you might not even care about losing a USB 2 header in the process.
Wonder why they didint just make pcie usb3.1 card with usb3.1 ports, and had normal extensions usb cables go from it front panel.
But i assume they did that too lol as there's any kind of usb card imaginable made
@@NuffMan_ It might of been marketing. Its like he said it was the only device he could find that used the port.
+5vsb != +5v. Those are separate lines from the PSU. There are technical reasons for that (as some mentioned usb doesn't shut down with the pc, that's cause it's getting power from the purple standby line). Given that the only connector with +5vsb is the ATX connector and that is plugged in the motherboard the only way to get it (and pass the usb compliance test) is through an usb header from the motherboard. Also, those front panels thingies were in high demands, I actually considered buying one myself! They were just about the only way to get a usb-c port in your pc at that time
There's one reason I could think of for the separate USB power.
Using the USB2.0 header, you get the fused and host-controlled 5V.
Otherwise, you might not be able to get the "Your USB device is drawing too much power" warning in your OS or power-cycle the device through the controller.
Power cycling the device through the controller is really useful. From experience there are devices that cannot be reset via software in some states and being able to shut them down, or fix them on a reboot is the best recovery method. This is especially bad if power isn't interrupted during a reboot as the device can be left in a powered-on state with a driver that expects to bootstrap it.
Also separate power used to comply with USB 2 spec 5v @ 0.5A if memory servers correct if you just used the 5v from the SATA power lines you get more than half amp.
@@SlyerFox666 But this is USB 3.1 and thus has very little to do with USB 2.0 specs. Especially regarding power where USB 3.x varies significantly from USB 2.0.
Overcurrent protection is handled by the USB Root Controller, which is on this device, connected over PCIe using the two PCIe lanes that Sata Express carries.
It's just a PCIe x2 USB controller, like any other but this one uses Sata Express to connect to PCIe instead of all the other cards which skip over Sata Express and just go directly in your PCIe slot.
The only reason for the USB 2.0 power would be to connect to the ATX power supply's +5VSB, which by ATX spec must deliver at least 2A at all time, even when the PC is turned off.
This would be used to (fairly slowly) charge your phone while the PC is off, or power on your pc using a button on your keyboard.
There's no real reason for the +5VSB in this card though, as nobody would buy this fairly expensive device to then plug in a keyboard...
@@someguy4915 Try reading the comment above that I was replying too before going off on a tangent about the video I'm not actually tal!!king about kiddo, an I'm not sure where you got half the speech from but USB over current protection has nothing to do with PCIe it's closed loop control measuring what's being pulled from the supply lines, not data. Probably measured from a very low resistance resistor back to a microcontroller/ processor to turn on or off the USB controller/ supply, which with the USB 2 we were discussing limits the 5v 2A from the standard ATX PSU power rail, as you correctly stated into the 5v 0.5A USB 2 Spec.
@@SlyerFox666 Not sure why you're so hostile, I seem to have hit a sensitive subject for you?...
I never said anything about PCIe related to over current protection, so not sure where you read that but it sure wasn't here so perhaps that's just in your mind bud.
Using a microcontroller and power resistor would work, but wastes a lot of power, takes up a large PCB footprint and costs a lot. What you would usually do is a ~0Ω shunt resistor and then measure the voltage drop over it but this too takes up way too much space for most USB applications.
What most USB root controllers and (powered) hubs do is use a specialized IC for this such as the 'SY6280AAC'.
Then the USB root or hub IC has test pins that measure whether the power switch is active or not, thus detecting an over current situation.
Most USB root controller ICs and USB hub ICs these days (and for the last 15 or so years) include these power switches internally.
You mention separate power is to comply with USB 2.0 spec, but this is a USB 3.1 (or currently USB 3.2 Gen 2) spec card so USB 2.0 has nothing to do with it.
But even ignoring that, whether you get the power from the +5VSB or +5VDC line of the PSU doesn't matter for current limiting as that function is the same regardless.
Not sure why you're being so hostile, it's okay to make mistakes, that's why I corrected yours so you can learn bud.
Never heard of Sata Express but used to use ESATA back in the day before the new USB standards got fast enough for bulk storage but this is neat
6:30 The 5v power connector is supposed to come from a floppy disk power connector. The usb adapter was in case you don't have floppy power on your psu loom
you may have an issue of feeding back power if both are connected
It's not a floppy connector, looks more like the analog audio connector used on CD-ROM drives. The consensus from another comment here seems to be that the SATA power connector is used to deliver full current for USB 3.1, but that the USB2 power connector is used to provide power to the ports when the computer is in S3/S4/S5 sleep, as the PSU/Sata power are turned off. In order for devices plugged in to the USB 3 ports to be able to wake the computer from sleep, the adapter needs power from an always on source.
@@johngaltline9933 oh, right, floppy didn't have a latch! thanks John
That Asrock thing is quite something. I've got two boards that have sata express connectors, they both have two ports, one is an Asus sabertooth z97 and the other is a Gigabyte z170, so it seems it wasn't quite one generation.
Yep. After no one made drives for it and M.2 took off, the need for it died off completely. I mean, at least you can use the port for a 5 Gbps USB-C port... Yay? haha
@@PeterBrockie Annoyingly, the sabertooth board doesn't have M.2, probably because of the sata express, an Asus ROG z97 board I have has m.2 but no sataE (I got the sabertooth for basically free last year with a 4790k) it does have 8 sata ports though, which is somewhat of a consolation.
@@PeterBrockie And now they added NMVe hdd's as well, effectively being sata express anyway. Well datacenter but I think it may come to desktop, as such stuff often does.
Simpler design, just route lanes, no need for extra chips to convert anything.
@@PeterBrockie The Oculus Quest 2 uses a Type C connector to connect to your PC, and cases with a Type C on the front are either expensive, or seem to cost you front USB Type A as a result.
Adding that port, albeit only a single one, could well be a very cool addition for a VR Headset user.
The issue with SATA express on desktop is that in order to use the PCIE lanes, you need a refclk, but the cables are too long to support a stable refclk. The original way to solve this problem was something called SRIS, which would allow the use of a separate refclk on the device side, but a lot of motherboard/device manufactures never added support for SRIS, so there really aren’t any devices that can use the PCIE lanes. The notebooks got around this problem by just supplying the optional refclk signals directly to the drive (since they were mounted directly to the board this was ok). Note that the SATA express connectors on motherboards actually don’t even have pins for the optional refclk, which is why a lot of prototype devices for the standard had extra pins and wires for the clock.
Yeah. I have an x79 sabertooth with that connector. I tried to find some use for it but there was never any devices to take advantage of it. I set my daughter up with that system. Lol. As I recall the 4930k and asus mobo was very expensive when we got it for the nightclub. It ran 12 projectors in resolume quite well with two titan black gpu. What a beast she was new.
I got my 4570 build in 2018, quite a bit late to the h97 game. 'Twas cheap though, cost me a mere $60 for a board, RAM, and power supply. All brand new in box off some guy who bought the stuff back in the day but never got around to assembling it.
I put a period correct GTX 960 into the rig, and ran games on it for a little while until getting my Ryzen system in 2020.
@@mikehall3976 still a bit of a beast now
Wow. Bringing back memories. I actually was waiting and waiting months and months for that to actually get released and finally just gave up and forgot about it. I wanted to add a front mounted USB-C on my build at the time and I found that they were the only ones that made one. Sad I never got it but I’ve moved on lol
Great video! I had already seen motherboards with this connection in photos and videos, but I never had the opportunity to have physical contact with one that had this SATA Express connection. Definitely this board from ASRock is also different from any other type of board that allows you to add USB 3.1 ports that I have seen. Greetings from Brazil
I have this exact Front USB 3.1 Panel still unopened in the static bag. It came with the ASRock Z170 Extreme7+ motherboard.
In the description of the asrock device it states it can supply up to 1a when in sleep hence the 4 pin to usb header, as others have said most mobos support 5v output via usb when in sleep (without d+/d- usb 2 supports 500ma per port=1a)
As for the separate 12v, it’s because the device supports adaptive charging as in the device description, this could mean anywhere between quick charge 2.0/3.0 to usb power delivery 3.0. The board looks like it has power circuitry, it would be good for you to check the usb outputs with a quick charge/power delivery trigger to test? Pd can be 5,9,12,15,20v and the product description states it can output 3a to the usb c port and 5v 3a to the usb on power on state
Also cables are original as per the manual for the device
Asus also made a device that uses SATA Express called USB 3.1 UPD Panel with two USB-C ports. It is also a front panel device but iside it is an PCI-E card that can be extracted and used in an PCI-E slot , came with a bracket. Selling point was dual 10Gb/s and ip to 100W of power from the port. Advertised on the box are Asus Z170 series motherboarda.
SATA Express was also on Z170 boards as well.
Thanks for the video!
It really shows to go how poorly supported this connector was that I always thought the little port alone was the SATA express. But it turns out the three ports together are SATA express?? I've never seen that cable before!
Actually a PCIe breakout board would be sick! I still use that Z97 machine as a media server now and I would totally trade 2 SATA ports for an extra PCIe card. Maybe I could move some cards around and find the extra I/O for a SAS controller or something!
I saw the title and was like omg yes but was sadly let down
I think that describes the entire SATA Express experience. haha
You can buy the Lenovo m.2 to SATA Express adapters. They are used in laptops.
My NAS is a Z97-WS. It will do 1 M.2 and 2xSATA Express. I have 3 Intel 660p 2TB in it. Then a x8 to dual m.2 with opatane for cache, pair of 1650s for nvec, and a 40g controller.
I have a Lenovo T460 laptop with an M.2 NVMe drive using one of those adapters. Gets about 2x SATA speeds.
I had a Asus x99 board with SATA Express and eSATA ports and I could never find a drive that used them. Thanks for solving a mystery
My friend had one of those and I never knew what to tell him. Glad I finally found out, thanks
Yeah the break out board from sata-e to pci-e was a prototype shown a CES that never made it to market. I remember seeing it and remembering how cool it would be to use.
The AsRock USB-Hub is NOT the only product!
Asus had a USB 5.25 Bay hub too, it had 2 USB-A 3.1 ports instead!
Asus also has their "Hyper Express" as a RAID controller for something.
What a throwback. I had this connector on my first computer build with i7-7700k on an it’s gigabyte board. For an IT export that would’ve been super useful to add connectors, or an extra PCI express device.
For some reason Gigabyte released 2 x370 boards in 2017 (Gaming 5 and Gaming K7) which both had 2 SATA Express ports. As far as I can tell, they are the only boards (that I could find) with SATA Express, M.2, and U.2. I wouldn't be surprised if these are the last 2 boards with SATA Express, but I haven't been able to find anything conclusive either way.
Unlike a lot of the other higher-end x370 boards, these did not have a front panel USB-C connector, so there's probably some person out there who used this device to get front panel USB C on one of these boards.
Asus ROG Maximus extreme Viii also had the same connectors. I have that board lol
my main system is sorta old, GIGABYTE H97-D3H-CF Mainboard with H97 Chipset and has this connector on board. I'm using the default 4x sata and also 2x sata from this SATAe connector for my drives.
works perfect!
Z170 also had these, I've got one (don't use it but do have it)
My Z170 ASRock board came with that USB front panel thing and it's really useful for me. I have a portable USB-C SSD and want a 10gbps USB link. Since there wasn't an internal/front panel USB-C standard back then, my case just had 2.0 and 3.0 that point up into the bottom of my desk. And it's a pain to try to reach the rear Type C on the motherboard.
My Asrock Z170 came with it as well, and it seemed to be one of the primary selling points of the Extreme 7+. The "plus" in this case was the addition of this SataExpress to USB/C board. For those who didnt need 6 sata hard drives and 2 optical drives, you could sacrifice a bunch of sata lanes for it.
I installed one of those in a PC build. At the time, USB 3.1 wasn't on most motherboards yet, so it wasn't worthless if you wanted to test USB 3.1 device performance. I was doing this for a writer who had been covering the personal computer field since the early 80s but but wasn't inclined to do as much of the build work as he got older. This was enjoyable as I got to play with a lot of stuff without footing the bill.
The only object that looks alike Sata Express, can be found on external mechanical sata case drives. But, the only thing i can think off, they dropped Sata Express and replaced it with usb 3.0. From Usb 3.0 you have a converter to Sata Express, it draws the power from Usb 3.0 and data transfer also goes over Usb 3.0. So it's a win-win situation. There is a picture on Aliexpress, but i can't show the link.
This standard has the vibe of that one person in college that just copies a bunch of stuff from other people and smashes it together into their own project
I have one of those bays, it was included with my Asrock Z170 Extreme 7+. Never installed it, but I might actually use it when I'll leave my current PC to my mom to get more front ports.
Me too, except mine is from a Z170 Extreme4+.
There also exists the Asus Hyper Express. It is an enclosure which lets you put two M.2 SATA or mSATA drives in RAID.
Sort of related but I have an ESI ESP1010e PCIe X1 soundcard that appears to send some sort of PCI Express over a HDMI cable, I believe it used a somewhat special HDMI lead (shield separate to ground?).
Had a very lightly populated PCIe X1 card that linked to a 19" rack that had all the hardware inside it, there was a previous version with a PCI card and 25 way d-sub link cable where it looks like the sound chip was on the PCI card and there were other manufacturers that had similar products, but this definitely had all the hardware in the rack.
The ESI website shows both models and you can see the huge difference between the 1010's PCI card and the 1010e's PCIe card.
I recall having this connector on my Z97 Sabertooth mark1 board and wondering what it was for. Now I know :) Thanks!
yep me too
I have a old Asrock Fatal1ty Z97X Killer board that used to be my gaming rig that has Sata Express on it. never seen anything back then I could use for it.. have never seen the connector on a board since. good info in this video :)
Had a couple kaby lake Gigabyte boards that had those things and was always confused as hell. Thanks for clarifying.
Really wish adapters were made for this to use PCIe or M.2 devices with these ports. Would be incredibly useful on mini ITX boards.
There are, Lenovo part 01HY319
@@milescarter7803 well damn, this is going directly in my server machine!
When I was looking for something that used the sata express, I did find a few hard drives. They were ungodly expensive from companies that only sold enterprise level parts.
I got one of these on my x99 board, sweet tech, but m.2 is a huge upgrade and I'm glad we are going away from the cabels for boot drives. Definitely causes issues for expandabled storage. But most boards still have plenty of sata
I was just about to buy a cheap U.2 drive and one of those cables from eBay for my Z170 system, so this video came out just in time!
I have two of these on my ASRock Z270 Taichi board. I always thought they were used for U.2 but I guess I was wrong. The manual says "Support TBA" and it seems the SATA lanes are shared with the M.2 ports, so you can use either one or the other.
Thank you for this video. I think the motherboard manufacturers custom made some of the boards for a specific device. But when the boards were replaced they have reached the general consumer, where we dont know what it is for!
When I was 13 I had a Z87 motherboard that had this connector, I didn’t knew what was it before years after!
Scsi to sata express adapters do exist as well as SAS serial attached scsi adapters as well. So sata express ports could be used from scsi or SAS drives.
If memory serves me right, that asrock expansion was the first frontpanel usb C device, as cases didn't have it yet and the standard for the connector also didn't exist.
There is an Lenovo adapter used in some 7gen notebooks (T470p) that converts SATA Express to NVMe. The model number is 01HY319. So there must be some chipset that supports SATA Express for 7gen CPUs.
This! T460p also has SATA Express, i own several with the adapter + M.2 NVMe combo installed. There is also a very small list of native SATA Express SSDs, all were Toshiba I think...
I have a Lenovo X260 with said caddy for an M.2 drive. At least a little better than regular SATA. But good luck finding the caddy nowadays…
@@wochenweise I have an X260 too. But sadly I don't have that caddy. Do you maybe have the part number of it?
@@drcyb3r With the part number from above (01HY319) you can find it. If you have a regular SATA-Drive as of now, you will need the SATA-Express-cable to replace the internal SATA-cable. The part number for that is 01AW445. One downside is, that this only gives you a x2-PCI-Express Interface, as SATA Express was only specified for two lanes. So don't bother to get an extra fancy and fast SSD. Average SSDs are more than capable to use 100% of the bandwidth. The installation of that cable requires the laptop to be opened as shown here: ua-cam.com/video/Qbh5jOhNjyU/v-deo.html
Do that, install an NVME-M.2-SSD in the caddy, swap with the fatory caddy and confige the BIOS for AHCI, if not done already. You will likely have to install the OS from scratch anyway. Would be a good time to enable TPM and Secure Boot while at it. With little modification you can then run even Win11 on that somewhat older machine.
Ive seen the board asrock usb used i a console conversion kit. But minus the connectors using the pads as pick up points. So the board is still being used.
Looks like that ASRock USB 3.1 thing actually have power pins from the SATA power connected as well when looking at the traces on the PCB. With that I'd guess it could take power from either one. It's u to you to choose which one to power it with.
or the usb power is for standby and if you charge your phonw from it it draws from the sata port
@@Rainbow__cookie There's a thread on it here but seems the consensus is, the SATA power is used for normal operation and power delivery for the USB 3.1 ports, but the 2.0 power is used to allow devices plugged in to the 3.1 ports to have power to wake the computer from sleep. The sata has no power when the computer is sleeping but the USB 2 does, with limited current available.
MSI has a couple of C236 Socket 1151 boards that also come with this connector. At the very least the C236A and C236M workstation boards also have this connector.
I have an ASUS Z170i Mini-ITX board from 2015 with one of these connectors on - taking up valuable PCB real-estate! It's definitely from that cross-over point in tech, as it also has an NVME M.2 slot which is much more useful.
Admitedly, my ears did prick up when I heard PCI express - a breakout board or a riser for even PCIe 2.0 x 2 offers extra expansion for a SFF board. But no.
Thanks for the research and I'm just here to enjoy your laughter 😃
@6:00 it probably pulls +5V Stand-By from the USB header; if you recall, SATA doesn't actually provide power with the PC switched off, but +5VSB does.
Theres an external dual M.2 mSATA enclosure with SATA Express from Asus called Hyper Express.
One shop still sells it on ebay.
There is even one with dual m.2 and dual m-sata
The MSI PC Mate Z170 also has one data express port and is a few generations newer than the mentioned ones
When I saw this video I was hopping to find something else that used that connector. I have one of the "ASRock front USB 3.1 Panel" new in the box and the cables you have are what came in the box. Their was also a manual and Driver CD. The manual is a small single piece of paper folded up. It didn't have info on why both power cables are needed. I got it for a build because I wanted the USB 3.1 A and C port on the front and cases at the time didn't have options for that. Ended up swapping the case I planned to use with a friend and what I ended up building in didn't have room for it. I kept it thinking I could find something to put it in but never saw another board with that connector.
U.2 uses different pins for NVMe vs SAS/SATA
U.3 uses the same pins for both and there are some sense pins that signal NVMe.
Both used fairly heavily in the Server world for the last few generations, even more so in latest Xeon/Epyc v4
But also taking hold in that space is now EDSFF.
what year is that usb expansion board from ? USB-C ?
i have two SSDs with sata-express or what its called ports on the drives. Ie, its a SATA port with PCIe extension.
I never found a way to connect them directly to my computer, so they are on two PCIe risers right now.
Port looks like a hybrid between sata and SAS interface, with additional pins on the middle of the SATA port.
thats a pretty cool connector
heh, I was right in the situation you have described, having used the only M2 slot on my old Z270 MB I wanted to add another SSD, and while checking specs I have found that that sata express port. However no compatible devices existed.
There are plenty of slots and cables that arent used or had really few products made.
Something that comes to mind are:
AMR slot for modem/audio cards on boards around 2000-2005
3.5"NVME ssd's with their weird cables that plug into m.2 slot (still used in servers but went out quickly on consumer stuff)
AGP PRO agpx4 slot with more power connectors.
There are also plenty of propietary stuff like Asus smartcard header or creative front panel header.
I have Asus A7V333 board with AMR, AGP pro, Smartcard and creative frontpanel capabilities.. like half of the boards functions cannot be used as there isnt anything to plug into ;D
I could never find u.2 drives in the consumer space despite highend c onsumer boards having that said does u.2 support sas?
If I remember correctly the PCIe Lanes in S-ATA Express don't have the clock generator that would be needed to be a compliant PCIe device...
You could in theory give it a standalone RTC chip (which that ASUS prototype probably would have needed) in order to make it PCIe sort of.
Clock != Time
Its a crucial signal for pcie (and "most" digital logic)
I actually have that exact motherboard in the beginning of your video. I wondered what the heck that "extra tiny SATA" port thing was.
On a slightly unrelated note, is there a way to get that motherboard to boot quickly??? I've messed with the BIOS on that thing and enabled "fast boot" but it still hangs for about 50 seconds on the ASUS logo every time before booting to Windows. I also noticed the diagnostics code LED on the motherboard going through a bunch of codes during this ("A0" to "A5", then "B0" to "B5", etc.) but I can't find hardly any info or solutions on this. On the off-chance you or someone familiar with it reads this, let me know.
Whooaaa, that would've been much cooler of a standard to take off, imo.
in 6.06 well that is the thunderbolt setup so if you conect a device witout thunderbolt support it will route the signal to the usb port if does it will go to pci-e connector
I had this front Expansion bay - when I built my PC using it years ago it was awesome having front type-c USB. I flexed on all my friends, and stole all their women once they saw my serial elliptical superiority. Man those were the days...Also I literally just threw this thing in the trash two days ago finally when cleaning out an old parts box. The women left long ago, but the useless SATA Express Expansion Bay was always waiting for me like a silent sentinel...good times. RIP SATA Express, gone before we ever wanted you.
It clearly shows on how SATA Express was a blind alley. On the other hand I've never expected m.2 to evolve in such a useful thing.
I was so excited to have this future connector on my z97 mobo. Tbh, I always thought PCIe should have a standard that goes through a cable rather than devices only mounted directly on the mobo.
I am still rocking the x99 platform while typing this comment. All i can say is this chipset was way ahead of its time. I can confirm that the additional power is to charge stuff after you have shut your PC down. it comes in handy when using wireless headsets, mouse, keyboard, etc.
Yeah, I do like X99 and X299. The X99 board in the video is a sweet Asus workstation board with IPMI.
This is one of many weird things that manufacturers make so decades later, groups of IT persons can play the Equipment Charades game.
you made me remember e-sata. Remember those?
I had a sony vaio lap top back in 2011 that had a sata express port combo, that could be use as a USB as well. :)
i had one of these, it came with an Asrock Motherboard, the ASRock Fatal1ty Gaming Z170 Gaming K6+, i wound up using my old CPU and that motherboard for my dads internet browsing computer for paying bills after a few years gaming on it, and i can say that if you didn't plug in both power cables the USB ports had trouble powering even my Galaxy s5, i got it on new egg and i liked it quite a bit but then i moved onto Ryzen in 2018 and haven't looked back.
Seems like it would be a perfect form factor to include power on for 2.5 inch drives.
"this is what the cable looks like"
wait what? I thought it will be only the tiny short portion... no wonder it DIED.
There was an SSD for this: ASUS Hyper Express SSD. One of our tech magazines tested it in development in mid 2014, and it used 2 128 GB mini mSata modules for a 256 GB drive. It was advertised as a 2 lane PCIe 3.0 interface that used 4% more power for 160% more throughput. In Theory. In reality, since it was connected to the PCH controller instead of directly accessing the CPU PCIe HUB it was limited to PCIe 2.0 lanes, and that directly halved it's throughput to 1 GB/s. The big bonus was the NVMe support on the drives. To make matters worse the cable used a standard SATA power cable too, as it was the only connector on the drive. So it was an Y shape. During testing it was found, that it was only on par with the SATA 6 GB/s drives in terms of read and write speeds.
Link to the article in HUNGARIAN. Please use Google translator to get an idea about the contents:
ipon.hu/magazin/cikk/kiprobaltuk-az-asus-sata-express-alapu-ssd-jet
the USB 2.0 power for the USB adapter thing there may have been in case it was used without a free sata power connector?
Had this on a z170 board..still have the sata express to 2x usb 3.0 or 3.1 usb. *Edit* the one i have from asus could also be taken out of the 5.25 case and be used as a card on the back of the pc.
I have a z170 MSI gaming Krait board with this connector and wondered what this interface was. Interesting how a whole port can just DOA. They clearly planned to put it on boards and make devices around it but it just never came to fruition.
I remember helping a friend assemble a board with this connector, the only thing I could plug into it was the cable that came with the motherboard.
I have a z97 board with two of these connectors & i always thought these sre are for u.2 drives but i never used them. I had sata hdd & ssd back then couldn't see the need for anything faster
I remember upgrading my pc, trying to make the best pc I could.
As you said I used my m.2 slot. I tried my best to find a sata express cable and drive, when it was new and "supported" and couldn't find anything. I do think my motherboard did come with the cable, think it was the useless kind though.
I just ran into this trying to use my old Asrock Taichi X470 board for TrueNas. The connector doesn’t look exactly like this, but I discovered that 6 of my 8 SATA ports wouldn’t detect any drives in TrueNas Core. I quickly found with dmesg that truenas was seeing two different controllers, and then I found that the Asrock BIOS has a bunch of SataExpress settings. Appears that only 2 of my 8 SATA ports were regular SATA, the rest are some variant of SataExpress.
RIP to my NAS project
I still have a Gigabyte GA-Z97X Wifi Gaming Black and 4790K. It has this port (advertised as “SATA Express support for 10 Gb/s data transfer”) but I had no idea it died and never happened 😂 thanks for the tip!
yep me too wondering what it was for now I know
i still have a GA-Z97N wifi board still working got a 4670 I5 cpu, i think its the last year for this build cant keep up with games.. starting to top out the CPU much less cant find CPUs that fit the board any more e-bay here i come for replacement cpu's i guess...
oh i used mine for software defined radio
You can find an SATA express enclosure for that.. Inside its possible to put 1 or 2 M.2 Sata drives
Laptops used this feature even more than you'd think.
I'm currently looking at a WiFi data card. Similar to how nvme x4 pci-e works.
I have a Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming G1 with 3 on board SATA Express ports and it includes a 5.25 inch USB 3.1 panel in the box that's similar to the ASRock one you found, part number GC-USB3.1 BAY
My motherboard has that connector, I always wanted to use it!
🙂 thanks for the information, im building with a Z97 board and I saw this on the board and was wondering wth is it?
I had a Z97 motherboard and only ever used it as normal SATA-3. I do remember that smaller plug on the end but I never even knew what it was for. Also it was a Gaming motherboard with a NVMe capable M.2 slot so why put SATA Express on it?
Hey! i use this device all the time !! it's my main desktop, it's an accessory that came with the motherboard, Fatal1ty Z170 Gaming K6+ . I'ts still kicking around with a modded bios to support 8th Gen cpu. 8600k + 1080ti still is a decent setup right ? the extra power from the usb2.0 header is for keeping it alive to charge devices while the pc is off. USB 3.1 Gen2 10Gb/s was not everywhere back in that day and this mobo had 4, 2 in the back and 2 on the front using this panel. also the usb2 header ports on the motherboard is not really needed, it has a front usb3 gen1 connector so those usb2.0 headers aren't really needed. it actually has 2 sata express connections, one for this usb3.1gen2 and the other so you can either put ,a sata express drive or , 2 sata disks or, not use it and connect an m.2 nvme that will work in gen3x4. Sorry for the long post but i was super excited seeing this card !!
I had this when I upgraded to the i7 6700K at the dawn of USB-C. Good times and memories
You know what's wild? I had an Z170 that had three SATA Express headers
I had a Gigabyte GA-Z270-HD3 with SATA Express. Long after X99 and Z97.