SilverStone has launched another unique product relating to the M.2 form factor.
The ECM28 is an adapter/riser card that allows users to connect one NVMe (M key) and one SATA M.2 (B key) SSD via a free PCIe slot. PCIe Gen 4 and SATA 6 Gbps speeds are supported, and while both drives can be used concurrently, the SATA drive requires a SATA cable to be connected between the rear of the card and a SATA slot on the motherboard.
Users will also find blue and red LED status indicators on the ECM28 for power and data access of the NVMe and SATA SSD drives, respectively. M.2 SSDs of various lengths are supported, including M.2 2230, 2242, 2260, and 2280.
SilverStone on the ECM28’s SATA and NVMe support, including AHCI:
Legacy SATA (B key)
Used for SATA SSDs, and interfaced through the AHCI driver and legacy SATA 3.0 (6 Gbit/s) port exposed through the M.2 connector.PCI Express using AHCI (M key)
Used for PCI Express SSDs and interfaced through the AHCI driver and provided PCI Express lanes, providing backward compatibility with widespread SATA support in operating systems at the cost of not delivering optimal performance by using AHCI for accessing PCI Express SSDs.PCI Express using NVMe (M key)
Used for PCI Express SSDs and interfaced through the NVMe driver and provided PCI Express lanes, as a high-performance and scalable host controller interface designed and optimized especially for interfacing with PCI Express SSDs. NVMe has been designed from the ground up, capitalizing on the low latency and parallelism of PCI Express SSDs, and complementing the parallelism of contemporary CPUs, platforms and applications.
SilverStone has also published a list of SSDs that are confirmed to work with the ECM28.
- Adata XPG GAMMIX S50 Series
- Corsair Force Series MP600
- Gigabyte AORUS NVMe Gen4 M.2
- Inte NVMe SSD 660p series
- Intel NVMe SSD 760p Series
- Pioneer APS-SE20G series
- Samsung NVMe SSD 970 EVO M.2
- Samsung NVMe SSD 970 PRO M.2
- Samsung NVMe SSD SM951/961 M.2
- Samsung NVMe SSD 960 EVO M.2
- Samsung NVMe SSD 960 PRO M.2
- Samsung 980 PRO PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD
- Samsung 980 PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD
- WD_BLACK SN850 NVMe SSD
- WD_BLACK SN750 NVMe SSD
Note that the ECM28 lacks a retention bracket, which could pose a problem, as pointed out in TechPowerUp’s coverage.
The downside is that there’s no retention bracket and it appears that the only way to hold the SST-ECM28 is by fitting it into a physical x16 slot that has a locking mechanism for graphics cards, as the PCB has a retention hook, just as you get on most x16 cards.
SilverStone recently launched the ECS07, a new storage expansion card that turns a single M.2 PCIe NVMe slot into five SATA Gen3 6 Gbps ports.
Source: SilverStone (via TechPowerUp)