If you want to expand the amount of PCIe 5.0 storage devices on a system, ASRock's new add-in card might be what you're looking for. With the Blazing Quad M.2 card, you can add an extra four SSDs using a PCIe slot.

Using a PCIe 5.0 x16 interface to connect to a motherboard, the ASRock Blazing Quad M.2 card features four PCIe 5.0 (x4) M.2 slots (2242/2260/2280/2580/22110/25110), each with a maximum bandwidth of 16GB/s (128Gb/s). To fit four SSDs, ASRock designed the slots rotated 45º to the right. To indicate which slots are occupied, there's an M.2 SSD status indicator for each slot on the side of the holding bracket.

To cool the SSDs installed on the add-in card, there's a one-slot heatsink cooled by two small fans, in addition to a thermal pad for each M.2 slot. The card packs a 6-pin power connector on the top right, suggesting the 75W delivered through the interface may not be enough to power the card when four SSDs are connected.

For mainstream platforms, the ASRock Blazing Quad storage expansion card would hog most of the PCIe 5.0 lanes the boards offer. However, HEDT platforms like the recently announced Intel W790, which have 112x PCIe 5.0 lanes, can easily handle a few of these (theoretically up to seven).

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KitGuru says: Would you consider getting one of these storage expansion cards if your motherboard could handle it?

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