PCIe Bifurcation and M.2 Expansion Cards: Getting More NVMe Slots Out of a Consumer Motherboard
The CPU and motherboard article on this site already covers how PCIe lane budgets get tight on a consumer platform once a GPU, an HBA, and a NIC are all fighting for slots. This piece is about the thing people reach for once that budget is spent: PCIe expansion cards that turn a single slot into multiple M.2 NVMe slots. Some of these cards work in any PCIe slot on any board. Others need a specific motherboard feature called bifurcation, and buying the wrong card for your board is a common, entirely avoidable way to end up with an expensive piece of plastic that Windows or Linux only sees one drive on. ...