Recently, with the launch of the Xeon Sapphire Rapids aSRock announced its W790 WS. But in addition to the latter, we found the Blazing Quad M.2 Card, an extension for M.2 connectors. Nevertheless, its particularity is to give access to four PCIe 5.0 x4 ports!
Blazing Quad M.2 Card: four more M.2 ports in PCIe 5.0 x4!
The recipe is already known since it is not the first time that ASRock proposes this type of solution. We already remember the Ultra Quad M.2 with a similar principle… But for PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSDs.
This time, we have the right to a slightly larger card with a larger heatsink. Indeed, this time it has two fans to properly cool the four PCIe 5.0 SSDs installed just below. Moreover, we notice that the fan is connected to the card via a four-pin PWM cable.
Under the heatsink we find our four M.2 slots with PCIe 5.0 x4 interface. The connectors are compatible with SSDs in M.2 2242/2260/2280/22110 and 25110 format. Thermal pads are present on the PCB as well as on the aluminum heatsink.
Finally, an auxiliary power supply is required. This one goes through a 6-pin PCIe connector. Finally, on the single slot bracket, we find four activity LEDs, one per SSD.
Well, the only problem in all this is that we still lack SSDs in PCIe 5.0 available for purchase…