AMD NVMe RAID Driver For Threadripper Coming September 25th!

One of the missing features when the AMD X399 platform launched was bootable NVMe RAID. AMD knew this was an issue and has managed to enable bootable NVMe RAID arrays in a driver update that is coming on September 25th. Most AMD X399 boards have three M.2 slots, so this is great news for power users that are looking for ultimate RAID setup on their Threadripper build.

Keep in mind that Threadripper boards have a native 7 PCIe device limitation. If you use M.2 devices each of the devices would count against the 7 device limit. If you were to put those same devices onto a PCIe riser card of some sort they would count as just one device. So, if you are doing multiple RAID arrays or are having concerns with the 7 device limit that is something good to know. Running the boards native slots will have each of the devices counting whereas in PCIe riser cards the entire RAID array would count as just one device.

The upcoming AMD NVMe RAID driver for the Threadripper X399 Platform is free and coming out on September 25th, 2017. It will support RAID 0, 1, and 10 arrays for up to ten devices and we can’t wait for it to be released! With AMD planning on giving away this NVMe RAID driver for free it will be interesting to see what Intel does with VROC on their X299 platform. The new X299 platform for the new Intel Core i9 series processors supports up to 20 devices in a bootable RAID partition. The feature is called Virtual RAID On CPU (VROC) and Intel hasn’t said much about it.

It was rumored that Intel was going to charge customers $99 for a physical RAID key that needs to be put onto the X299 motherboard to enable VROC. The other kicker is that you must use Intel branded SSDs. So, Intel supports more drives, but they must be Intel branded and they are possibly going to make you pay. AMD is letting you run up to 10 drives and isn’t charging you anything and has no brand limitations.

Good job AMD!