💨 Enhance NVMe SSD Performance with GIGABYTE GC-4XM2G4: AORUS Gen4 AIC Adapter with Full PCIe 4.0 and Advanced Thermal Solution Review

Two HP EX950 2TB are installed on this adapter. At first I didn't know how to set up raid-0 and raid-1; later I download and install Aorus Storage Manager. Then I was able to use Disk Management to create raid-0 and raid-1 and test the setup. EX950 speed is rated raid-0. Using CrystalDiskMark7, RAID-0 read/write speeds are 6.91 GB/s and 5.67 GB/s, respectively. Raid 1 speed/write performance is 5.6 GB/s and 3.1 GB/s respectively. I give this adapter 4½ stars.

Works great. The Gigabyte AORUS RAID card is well built and much better designed than other similar competing offerings from MSI and ASUS. The fan is very quiet, almost inaudible. There are also drive activity LEDs on the back of the PCI bracket, which is very useful. In addition, thermal pads are factory-installed on the top and bottom of the M.2 connectors. Be sure to remove the plastic protective layer. I am using it with two (2) NVME M.2 Gen3 SSDs in a 16x PCIe Gen3 slot on my motherboard…

I installed this on an Aorus X570 Ultra with a 5950X processor. Installed 4 x 2GB NVME drives in X16 slot and GPU in second X8 slot. I also have 2x 2GB NVMe in M2 A and B. In this configuration the board doesn't recognize more than two drives on the card. I pulled out the GPU and plugged it onto the 1x adapter (because there isn't enough room in the case to put a double wide GPU in slot 3) and plugged it into one of the 1x slots (goes through the chipset) and the Onboard detected all four NVMEs

Finally someone released a PCIe 4.0 compatible NVMe M.2 hard drive expansion card. I had to deduct 1 star because it's heavy. It weighs more than 2 PCIe 3.0 adapter cards together. I also bought another 4.0 brand adapter card and it weighs half as much as this one. PCIe 4.0 is AMAZING. Now all I have to do is update the other 9 of the 14 M.2 drives.

The fan could be stronger and better designed, and the rear vents could be more open. An RGB would be nice, so it goes with the rest of the junk in my PC these days. The price is ok because it was the cheapest 1. I've seen RGB but it was $100 more expensive and it has stupid autofocus. Plugged it in and it worked right away.