Please consider supporting PC Perspective and technical content through our Patreon: http://patreon.com/pcper Subscribe for more hardware videos! null Full story link: http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Storage/Triple-M2-Samsung-950-Pro-Z170-PCIe-NVMe-RAID-Tested-Why-So-Snappy Buy Samsung 950 Pro on Amazon: http://amzn.to/1WW8wfK Buy Gigabyte Z170X-SOC Force on Amazon: http://amzn.to/1WWbgtw Most Z170 motherboards have come with one or two M.2 slots, meaning that enthusiasts wanting to employ the 3x PCIe RAID made possible by this new chipset would have to get creative with the use of interposer / adapter boards (or use a combination of PCI and U.2 connected Intel SSD 750s). With the Samsung 950 Pro available, as well as the slew of other M.2 SSDs we saw at CES 2016, it’s safe to say that U.2 is going to push back into the enterprise sector, leaving M.2 as the choice for consumer motherboards moving forward. It was therefore only a matter of time before a triple-M.2 motherboard was launched, and that just recently happened - Behold the Gigabyte Z170X-SOC Force! The Gigabyte Z170X-SOC Force uses the more common alternate (**) configuration of the above diagram, meaning that the center M.2 x4 port replaces SATA 0-3. This frees up the possible use of the first M.2 slot with an x4 SSD combined with having all six Intel SATA ports available. In the case of a triple-M.2 x4 capable system, there is just no way to rearrange things to keep any SATA ports, so those who want triple M.2 RAID of PCIe x4 SSDs must give up all Intel SATA ports. Luckily motherboard manufacturers typically add an additional controller, and Gigabyte included an ASMedia ASM1061 chip for that purpose, giving the option to connect two additional mass storage drives in addition to the triple M.2 RAID acting as the OS drive.