PCIe x16 Add-On Card with Four M.2 NVMe Slots

There have been many PCIe x16 add-on cards that offer four M.2 NVMe slots, but none quite like the Icy Dock ExpressSlot MB204MP-B. This card allows you to easily swap in and out four M.2 NVMe drives, which can even be hot-swapped if your host platform and software support it. The card's technology is straightforward - it does not use a bridge chip, instead relying on the host's PCIe lane bifurcation to convert a x16 slot into four M.2 slots with x4 wiring each. Each of the four drives has its own link/activity LED, and a 50 mm lateral blower fan helps ventilate them.

One of the key innovations of this card is the way the drives can be installed, swapped, or hot-swapped. It is compatible with Intel VROC or AMD RAID technologies on platforms like Xeon W "Sapphire Rapids" and Ryzen Threadripper 7000-series, offering RAID features.

Each M.2 slot on the card comes with a caddy made of aluminum. This caddy allows you to insert an M.2 Gen 5 (or older) SSD, with sizes up to M.2-2280. The bare drive is placed on the caddy, and a thermal pad transfers heat from the drive to the caddy's body, which acts as a heatsink under the airflow of the dock's lateral fan. The dock comes with four caddies, but additional ones can be purchased separately from the company.

Icy Dock has introduced a mechanism where the caddy easily slots into the dock and is secured with a spring-loaded lever. The dock requires a 6-pin PCIe power connection, providing a power budget of 150 W for the four Gen 5 SSDs. Pricing information has not been disclosed by the company.