Not from onboard slots alone. The ASUS ROG Crosshair X870E Edition 20 lists five onboard M.2 slots at R54,999, and any count beyond that comes from add-in cards that borrow PCIe lanes from elsewhere on the board.
A round number like nine drives sticks in a headline far more easily than the mechanism behind it, and the mechanism is the part worth actually knowing before you shop the AMD motherboard range for that many M.2 SSDs. Running nine M.2 SSDs on an X870E gaming motherboard is possible, but not from the sockets built into the board alone.
Not from onboard slots by themselves. The ASUS ROG Crosshair X870E Edition 20, at R54,999, lists five M.2 sockets wired directly into the board, and getting past that number means slotting the included expansion cards into either of its full-length PCIe 5.0 slots, which borrows lanes a graphics card would otherwise use.
The board's own five sockets connect straight to the CPU or chipset with no shared bandwidth beyond what that connection carries on its own. Getting past that number on this specific board means using the expansion cards it ships with, fitted into one of the two available PCIe 5.0 x16 slots, each of which fans that slot's lanes out to several additional M.2 positions.
That is the honest mechanism behind any "nine slots" figure attached to this board: five for free, built in, and the rest reachable only by giving up graphics-slot bandwidth to storage instead.
A PCIe 5.0 x16 slot carries a fixed number of lanes, and populating it with a storage expansion card instead of a second graphics card, or leaving it empty, is the trade this board's design offers. Fitting the card to chase a higher drive count means that slot's lanes are now split between however many drives sit on the card, rather than reserved for a device that could use the full sixteen lanes on its own.
For a genuinely storage-heavy build, that trade is worth making. For a build using only one graphics card and never populating the second x16 slot anyway, the trade costs nothing at all, since those lanes were sitting unused regardless.
Once the decision to expand is made, the NVMe SSD range covers both the fast primary drives worth putting in the board's own sockets and the more capacity-focused options that suit an expansion card's shared-bandwidth positions. Comparing this board's slot count against others in the current X870 motherboard lineup is also worth doing before assuming every board in the tier reaches the same total, since onboard M.2 count varies meaningfully even within one chipset generation.
Five, using the sockets wired directly into the board itself, at full speed with no shared bandwidth.
PCIe lanes from a slot that would otherwise carry a second graphics card at full bandwidth, since the expansion cards fitted into that slot fan its lanes out to the extra drives.
No. Whatever drives sit on an expansion card divide up that single slot's bandwidth among themselves, unlike the onboard sockets, which each connect directly with nothing to share.
Rarely. Most gaming setups use two or three drives at most, well within the board's five onboard sockets.
No. Onboard M.2 count varies between boards even within the same chipset generation, so a shared figure across the whole tier is not something to assume.
Ready to plan a storage layout around what the board actually offers? Count your realistic drive needs first, then decide whether the built-in five are enough or the expansion route is worth the lane trade-off.
Five, using the sockets wired directly into the board itself, at full speed with no shared bandwidth.
PCIe lanes from a slot that would otherwise carry a second graphics card at full bandwidth, since the expansion cards fitted into that slot fan its lanes out to the extra drives.
No. Whatever drives sit on an expansion card divide up that single slot's bandwidth among themselves, unlike the onboard sockets, which each connect directly with nothing to share.
Rarely. Most gaming setups use two or three drives at most, well within the board's five onboard sockets.
No. Onboard M.2 count varies between boards even within the same chipset generation, so a shared figure across the whole tier is not something to assume.
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Windows title bar window shake can minimise other open windows when you shake the active window by its title bar. Inspect the Multitasking setting and switch it off if that gesture interrupts your work. The preference costs R0 and does not require new hardware.
Windows Print Screen opens Snipping Tool when its keyboard preference is enabled. Change the option under Accessibility, Keyboard to choose another workflow. Test whether you need a clipboard image or a saved file.
Windows desktop icons missing may be a visibility setting. Right-click the desktop, choose View and inspect Show desktop icons. If only system icons are absent, use Desktop icon settings. Check the Desktop folder before assuming files were deleted.
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