Author: parsec
Subject: Fatal1ty Z170 Professional Gaming i7 SATA Question
Posted: 03 Mar 2016 at 11:39pm
The ASMedia SATA ports are the four ports labeled 19 and 20 in the picture below. They are labeled SATA3_A1, SATA3_A2, SATA3_A3, and SATA3_A4 on the board and in the manual:
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jnmanocchio, I saw you other post where you explained you were using the Windows RAID capability, which explains a few things to me about your build. The warning I wrote about the Intel RAID 0 situation does NOT apply to the Windows RAID implementation, so don't worry about that.
The new Intel 100 series chipsets like the Z170 are unique in their use of PCIe 3.0 lanes in the chipset itself. With that is the M.2 interface provided by the chipset instead of the CPU's PCIe 3.0 lanes. That gave the CPU's PCIe 3.0 lanes back to the video cards (or PCIe SSDs that use PCIe slots). But nothing is perfect, and we loose two Intel SATA ports for each of the M.2 slots we use.
Subject: Fatal1ty Z170 Professional Gaming i7 SATA Question
Posted: 03 Mar 2016 at 11:39pm
The ASMedia SATA ports are the four ports labeled 19 and 20 in the picture below. They are labeled SATA3_A1, SATA3_A2, SATA3_A3, and SATA3_A4 on the board and in the manual:

jnmanocchio, I saw you other post where you explained you were using the Windows RAID capability, which explains a few things to me about your build. The warning I wrote about the Intel RAID 0 situation does NOT apply to the Windows RAID implementation, so don't worry about that.
The new Intel 100 series chipsets like the Z170 are unique in their use of PCIe 3.0 lanes in the chipset itself. With that is the M.2 interface provided by the chipset instead of the CPU's PCIe 3.0 lanes. That gave the CPU's PCIe 3.0 lanes back to the video cards (or PCIe SSDs that use PCIe slots). But nothing is perfect, and we loose two Intel SATA ports for each of the M.2 slots we use.