Does the Minisforum MS-A2 support bifurcation?

Brandon Lee · 2025-01-27T20:53:00Z

I have had a few messages after I wrote the post here comparing the MS-01 and the MS-A2: Minisforum MS-A2 vs MS-01: Best Home Lab Server in 2025?. One of the questions that has been asked with the MS-A2 is whether or not it will support bifurcation. This was not a comparison point that I had in the blog post, mainly because we don't have that information as of yet on the MS-A2. Bifurcation on the PCI-e slot will allow you to add a card that supports adding multiple NVMe drives as an example and have each one dedicated to a specific number of lanes. In other words, it allows you to carve up the available lanes you have to serve various devices, which is extremely handy in a home lab. The Minisforum MS-01 with the PCI-e slot does not support bifurcation. Just so you know, I have a question into a contact with Minisforum currently on this capability with the MS-A2 and will post the official answer from them once I hear back as soon as possible. However, in looking back and some of the official notes with the MS-01, it looks like the lack of bifurcation support on the MS-01 was directly related to limitations of the Alder Lake CPU. Here is a comment from one of the Minisforum staff: "Because of Intel’s CPU hardware limit, There is not possabile bifurcation on Alderlake-H platform CPU.(on that PCIE slot)". So according to this, it may have all related to the specific CPU. My hope is that with the AM5 generation AMD with 16 cores, we won't see this limitation on bifurcation support. Read my full post on the bifurcation support on the MS-01 here: Does the Minisforum MS-01 support bifurcation with the PCI-e slot? ***Update*** If you have been following my Minisforum BD795M build, it uses the same processor as the forthcoming Minisforum MS-A2, the AMD 7945HX processor. I am pleased to say that it indeed looks to have bifurcation as a possibility! Take a look at the screenshot below which I think will be similar to what we will see with the Minisforum MS-A2:

Page 2 / 2 Prev

Last Post

RSS

Posts: 2

Stan Jewhurst

Jun 20, 2025 5:42 am

(@stanjewhurst)

New Member

Joined: 2 weeks ago

Thanks! I'll check it out.

It is a real shame they didn't cater to this sue case. I was super excited about this platform as a replacement for my full rack dell R720.

I guess I'll just build something mini itx based, but definitely going to be be bigger 🙁

1 Reply

Dev47

(@dev47)

Joined: 4 months ago

Active Member

Posts: 9

Jun 21, 2025 4:22 am

Reply to

Stan Jewhurst

@stanjewhurst

Yeah it is disappointing from miniforum's really, clearly they take far too long to fix basic issues or avoid them all together. That prototype board appears to be their quick fix, but I re-watched it a few times since its tricky to sure due to the shaky cam nascompare's used.

You can see they have made the same mistake again, squashed 6 nvmes but not left enough clearance around the slots. This maybe fine since they are going to use a giant heatsink but it looks doubtful it can support double sided nvmes like the 7200 WD red nas or WD 8TB nvmes again.

Id suspect with 6 nvmes, its going to eat into the pci-e bandwidth again and reduce overall speeds, really wish they just done 4 nvmes and made the support for 8tb/double sided nvmes.

Hopefully cwwk can do a better job with their upcoming newer motherboards and SFF-8654 pci-e addon cards.

I would also avoid mini nas solutions such as gmkteck G9 nas (faulty by design, I have it) and also the beelink mini me nas is capped at 45 watts p/s so its not got enough power to do much, one redditor said he can't get 6 nvmes to detect so appears power capped.

A mini itx or micro or atx nas build is perhaps the cheapest and more stable route for now, its what I am more then likely going to do next.