SOLVED The SATAEXPRESS connector supports one SATA Express device or two SATA devices

c627627 · Sep 16, 2016

My Skylake Asus Z-170A manual states that:
The SATAEXPRESS connector can support one SATA Express device or two SATA devices.

What is a SATAEXPRESS drive? Links?
Does that mean that two can be connected but would both function at SATA speeds?
Or does it mean if you connect one then the other connector slot would not be functioning?

What is the real life difference in speeds?

I sure don't want either me or my system to get left behind!

By the way what is that third connector ↑ for, next to the SATAEXPRESS connectors?

caddi daddi · Sep 16, 2016

you can hook up one of these>>>> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA24G3RH5483

or two regular sata drives.
I think sata express uses 2 pcie lanes.
I also think the only time you would nocice an advantage over a sata ssd would be on boot.

Culbrelai · Sep 16, 2016

Ya my Maximus 8 Hero has a SATAe connector too, don't seem to see any SATAe devices on the market yet though...

c627627 · Sep 16, 2016

Okay so this does not exist yet but motherboards have connectors ready for them when they do come out?

Poster above linked to a mechanical drive, is this supposed to make mechanical drives faster?
How does it affect SSDs?

caddi daddi · Sep 16, 2016

it uses the faster pcie lanes instead of the sata lanes so the data moves around the board faster so I assume you can use a faster device (ssd or hdd) with that connector.

from wiki something or other.

The choice of PCI Express also enables scaling up the performance of SATA Express interface by using multiple lanes and different versions of PCI Express. In more detail, using two PCI Express 2.0 lanes provides a total bandwidth of 1 GB/s (2 × 5 GT/s raw data rate and 8b/10b encoding, equating to effective 1000 MB/s), while using two PCI Express 3.0 lanes provides close to 2 GB/s (2 × 8 GT/s raw data rate and 128b/130b encoding, equating to effective 1969 MB/s).[3][7] In comparison, the 6 Gbit/s raw bandwidth of SATA 3.0 equates effectively to 0.6 GB/s due to the overhead introduced by 8b/10b encoding.

here is some at anandtech, if you understand this stuff would you be so kind as to explain it to me, all I get from it is it makes the data transfers go from zoom to ZOOOOOOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7843/testing-sata-express-with-asus/4

c627627 · Sep 16, 2016

So where does SATAEXPRESS fit in the age of M.2 drives?

Robert17 · Sep 16, 2016

It's simply another interface that uses some PCI bandwidth. So is M.2 and U.2.

c627627 · Sep 16, 2016

Anyone have a good link they know of about a primer on this topic?
It's clearly the same interface as a SATA connector.

LutaWicasa · Sep 17, 2016

c627627 said:
Anyone have a good link they know of about a primer on this topic?
It's clearly the same interface as a SATA connector.

Very basic nudge in the right direction

c627627 · Sep 17, 2016

Thank you kindly Lutawicasa.

Here's a two picture answer on why only one SATAEXPRESS (instead of two SATA) can be used:

HankB · Sep 17, 2016

c627627 said:
Okay so this does not exist yet but motherboards have connectors ready for them when they do come out?

Chicken and egg? A new drive interface does no good if there are no devices or motherboard support. In this case motherboard makers provided support but I can find no drives that use it. It looks like NVMe is the direction that drive manufacturers are going and I'd be very surprised if any SATAe devices came out now.

It looks like the connector was designed to support two regular SATA devices so it's not a total waste if true.

c627627 · Sep 17, 2016

I am using it currently to connect two SATA devices.
The main source of confusion was not knowing that SATAEXPRESS is simple to explain: it just physically uses two SATA-compatible ports, (on boards that have SATAEXPRESS) - that's all.

EarthDog · Sep 17, 2016

It also doubles the bandwidth of a single SATA port. Which is mainly it's point (luta's link does say that) prior to m.2/nvme/pcie based drives. It just never really seemed to take off.

Culbrelai · Sep 17, 2016

so SATAe = SATA IV or is that still coming down the pipeline

c627627 · Sep 17, 2016

M2 vs sataexpress numbers?
My motherboard has m2 and it is a quantum leap over sata.

EarthDog · Sep 17, 2016

SATAe = 1,969MB/s (in the link)
PCIE 3.0 x4 M.2 = 32Gbps = 4,000 MB/s

c627627 · Sep 18, 2016

So m2 is twice as fast...
Thanks for that, EarthDog!

petteyg359 · Sep 18, 2016

SATA Express is just the connector. The actual protocol of the connected drive can be either SATA or NVMe. It is 2 SATA lanes plus 2 PCIe lanes, so with SATA 3 (2x 600 MBps) and PCIe 3 (2x 1 GBps), theoretically around 3.2 GBps if it were able to use both interfaces at once. Kind of a misnomer, though. With three connections like that, I wouldn't call it serial

SOLVED The SATAEXPRESS connector supports one SATA Express device or two SATA devices

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