The SATA Express connector looks like garbage, is it backwards compatible?

The SATA Express connector looks like garbage, is it backwards compatible?

First off, that connector and it's attendant cable are not the final design, it is likely to change a bit before retail availability hits us, possibly they will move the connectors closer together or streamline the cable connector somewhat. Still, the basic layout will probably not change. I have to agree that the SATAe connector quite isn't as elegant as it could have been, but there's a good reason for that. The layout is what it is precesely becasue it was designed to be compatible with the previous generation of SATA connectors. SATAe essentially combines two SATA III connectors and a PCIe connector into one "block" for lack of a better term. If you want to use those two SATA III connectors for two separate drives then that should be easy enough for any vendor to support. To support this backwards compatibility the designers had to retain the existing SATA motherboard connectors and because of that they could not place all the pins as close together as they otherwise would have been able to. When SATAe was designed, the designers knew they had two choices for how to design the connector on the PCB. They could either make a whole new pinout that integrated two SATA III lanes with the PCIe lane(s) feeding a new connector that would be incompatible with existing SATA connectors, or they could build backwards compatibility for existing SATA connectors into the design. They chose the latter. I think the main reason they did this is that HDDs will not be needing anything faster than the conventional SATA bus for the foreseeable future while at the same time HDDs will be needed for large-volume data storage until SSDs can get at least into the terabyte range. To try to force the industry to adopt a whole new interface to replace SATA would have been sheer folly. This new SATAe connector could have been designed to just be able to service high-speed SSDs but there are already interfaces that serve that segment of the market quite well; mSATA and M.2 are purpose-built to host SSDs, not to mention all the delicious flavors of SSD-carrying PCIe cards that slot directly into a PCIe 1x, 4x or 8x slot. Is a full-length x16 card in our future or will SATAe make PCIe SSds obsolete? Time will tell. By the way, SATAe is fed by two SATA III lanes and two PCIe lanes. From what I've read, the existing SATAe demo mobos are only using PCIe 2.0, not PCIe 3.0. This appears to be just a matter of chipset and CPU support which should be resolved when the new Broadwell CPUs and their attendent 9 Series (x9x) chipsets launch. Whether or not Haswell-E will be able to support PCIe 3.0 in SATAe is unknown. So yes: You should be able to set up your BIOS options to make a SATAe connector go support two SATA hard drives instead of a single SATAe device. Of course I have yet to have the chance to be hands-on with this new interface but everything I've read tells me that this should be the case.

Sounds great, but then i still on SataII and im limited to 250mb read/write give or take which by all rights is only 150% faster then my HDD. I see huge diffrence in OS snappyness and boot times on the SSD 830 I have but for most anything else not so much. Either way I like those numbers. and if is true, Then my next build will be from Asus MB, but then i only ever used Asus or Evga for MB. My next build is looking super in comparison to my current build

So it's only 50% faster than sata 6 but needs two sata 6 connectors and a pci-e? Or is that just the limit of what they were using to test it. I'd rather have a new cable though than that huge IDE-esque thing.

decent article found on the subject: http://www.legitreviews.com/what-is-sata-express-and-why-it-matters_140093

decent article found on the subject: http://www.legitreviews.com/what-is-sata-express-and-why-it-matters_140093

that was a really good read, hope X99 get this

So it's only 50% faster than sata 6 but needs two sata 6 connectors and a pci-e? Or is that just the limit of what they were using to test it. I'd rather have a new cable though than that huge IDE-esque thing.

The reason why this board's SATAe only saw a 50% gain over SATA 6Gb/s is that the current Intel chipsets and CPUs don't fully support SATAe. When SATAe gets the needed support from Broadwell, they we'll see what it can really do. Since Intel is staying tight-liped on when exactly Boradwell will launch, all we can do is wait. Right now ASUS and the other OEMs are just getting their SATAe tech ready for the Broadwell launch so they'll be ready to fully support SATAe on SATA II chips when Broadwell hits. This press relase was just the hype machine tuning itself up for launch.

Theoretical max is 2gb/s, but in reality its only half that usually 800mb/s.. http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/asus-first-in-the-world-to-unleash-full-sata-express-performance.200153/#post-3097848 I think I won't miss this feature, 500-600mb/s looks plenty 🤓

Theoretical max is 2gb/s, but in reality its only half that usually 800mb/s.. http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/asus-first-in-the-world-to-unleash-full-sata-express-performance.200153/#post-3097848 I think I won't miss this feature, 500-600mb/s looks plenty 🤓

i wish i have 500-600read. i still stuck with sata II still cause i still on and 5+ year build