ASK NC

Do you know ANY motherboard that can do PCIe bifurcation (x4x4x4x4) for 2 of their x16 pcie slots?

thinking...

16 lanes of pcie (x4x4x4x4) - first card carrying m.2's
16 lanes of pcie (x4x4x4x4) - second card carrying m.2's
4 lanes of pcie - m.2 boot device
1 lane of pcie - video card
3 lanes of pcie- other motherboard things/NIC etc
===
40 lanes. haswell XEON? 2650Lv3? or similar?

so, 8x 4tb m.2 drives with 2 redundant ones.. = 6 drives worth of storage. = 24tb?

Is this a reasonable thing? and also, is it a possible thing

Creating a NAS with 8 x M.2 NVMe SSDs using PCIe bifurcation is indeed a unique and ambitious project. To achieve this, you'll need a motherboard that supports PCIe bifurcation on at least two x16 PCIe slots. Considering your budget of 2500 AUD, a Haswell Xeon processor like the 2650Lv3 could be a good fit, providing the necessary PCIe lanes for your setup. However, it's crucial to verify the specific motherboard's compatibility and bifurcation support for such a configuration. With 8 x 4TB M.2 drives and redundancy, aiming for approximately 24TB of storage is reasonable, offering a robust and high-performance storage solution.