Z170 motherboards and M.2 slot questions

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aamsel

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Considering an upgrade from Sandy Bridge, and a bit confused about Z170 motherboards and their M.2 slots.

Considering a Supermicro CZ7170-SQ board which, AFAIK has an M Key M.2 slot which does PCIe 3.0 x4 mode, not SATA mode, which is much better correct?

If the above is correct, will any new NVMe card work in this slot and be fully bootable?

I had read much saying that every M.2 drive will not work in every M.2 slot, but am guessing that since the Z170 is the latest that these latest NVMe cards should fully work?

I have read tons of articles about M.2's but it is still confusing due to being bleeding edge.

Any advice or info about which drive to use would be more than welcome.

Thanks.

Thanks!
 
I had that board for about a week before sending it back. It does work with a Samsung 950 pro. Ended up switching to an Asrock Z170 7+ which worked better for my setup. Both support PCIe connection through the M.2 slot.
 
Thanks.
Are the 950 Pro's better or just easier to use than Intel 750's, or is the main advantage the fact that they are fully bootable?

jschuricht said:
I had that board for about a week before sending it back. It does work with a Samsung 950 pro. Ended up switching to an Asrock Z170 7+ which worked better for my setup. Both support PCIe connection through the M.2 slot.
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aamsel said:
Considering an upgrade from Sandy Bridge, and a bit confused about Z170 motherboards and their M.2 slots.

Considering a Supermicro CZ7170-SQ board which, AFAIK has an M Key M.2 slot which does PCIe 3.0 x4 mode, not SATA mode, which is much better correct?

If the above is correct, will any new NVMe card work in this slot and be fully bootable?

I had read much saying that every M.2 drive will not work in every M.2 slot, but am guessing that since the Z170 is the latest that these latest NVMe cards should fully work?

I have read tons of articles about M.2's but it is still confusing due to being bleeding edge.

Any advice or info about which drive to use would be more than welcome.

Thanks.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

NVMe support and being bootable comes down to the BIOS supporting those features. Z97, and X99 can do it with the appropriate BIOS as well. All Z170 motherboards should be capable of booting to NVMe drives. PCI-Express based M.2 drives and NVMe drives are considerably faster than SATA / AHCI drives. NVMe is always PCIe based, but most PCIe M.2 drives do not support NVMe. Some M.2 implementations can handle both AHCI and PCIe M.2 drives, but some only support one or the other.

aamsel said:
Thanks.
Are the 950 Pro's better or just easier to use than Intel 750's, or is the main advantage the fact that they are fully bootable?
Click to expand...

The 950 Pro only comes in 256GB and 512GB sizes. Intel SSD 750's come in 400GB, 800GB and 1.2TB sizes. The 950 Pro's come in the M.2 2280 (80mm) form factor. The Intel SSD 750 comes in 2.5" and AIC (add in card) form factors. 2.5" drives have to be connected to the system via a U.2 (SFF-8639) connector which is either present on the motherboard directly, or through the use of an M.2 to U.2 adapter. Many motherboards come with these.

Both the Intel SSD 750 and Samsung 950 Pro drives (all versions) support NVMe. Both drives can be used as boot devices as long as the motherboard UEFI supports them.

As for which is better, that comes down to the specific workloads your using them for. For typical consumer usage scenarios such as playing games, I don't think it matters too much but the edge goes to the Samsung. For server type workloads the SSD 750 may be the better choice at times. One thing is for certain, the cost per gigabyte is relatively close, but favors the Samsung. Although the Intel drives are offered in greater capacities and more form factors. The 2.5" form factor won't be subjected to the heat generated in multi-GPU systems as such drives should have cooling dedicated to them in the chassis, and or they are far enough away from the GPUs as to avoid being directly impacted by the heat. M.2 slots tend to end up in the expansion slot area which allows them to get roasted by GPUs. This can cause controller throttling and a loss of drive performance.

The AIC versions of the Intel SSD 750 are supposedly cooler running than the 2.5" form factor drives so long as there is adequate airflow in the system. Mine gets warm to the touch, but it sits directly below a GTX TITAN X. I also have direct air flow to that spot and there has never been any indications of drive controller throttling. If you want the 2.5" form factor of the Intel SSD 750 you have to consider that the 800GB and 1.2TB models are primarily offered in AIC form factor with the 2.5" form factor being more rare and costly when you do find it. In most cases anyway.

Personally I would go with the SSD 750 400GB 2.5" if all I wanted was an OS drive in a multi-GPU system. If I was using a single GPU system, I think the 512GB Samsung Pro would be the better option. Performance is so good on both of these that I don't think you'd ever see a difference between them in real world use. In my case I wanted a drive for both the OS and games, so the 512MB capacity of the Samsung 950 Pro was too limited in my opinion. The physical location of the M.2 slot on my motherboard was ideal for either option should I have needed it. The GPUs didn't sandwich the slot and wouldn't cause heat issues. I still had an available PCIe slot so I felt that the AIC version of the 800GB Intel SSD 750 hit the sweet spot for cost, performance and capacity. If NVIDIA fixed 3-Way SLI scaling tomorrow, I could still pop in another TITAN X and retain my AIC Intel SSD 750 800GB drive. If a 1TB version of the Samsung 950 Pro had been out when I bought my drive, at the same cost per gigabyte it would have been my first choice.

I hope that helps.
 
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GPUs can actually provide good cooling for an M.2 card if their heatsink is similar to the Gigabyte 980 TI G1 and the fan is set to a reasonable speed. But it all depends on your rig. M.2 can be bad if your rick lacks good cooling.
 
SomeGuy133 said:
GPUs can actually provide good cooling for an M.2 card if their heatsink is similar to the Gigabyte 980 TI G1 and the fan is set to a reasonable speed. But it all depends on your rig. M.2 can be bad if your rick lacks good cooling.
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For non-reference cards, this might be the case. For most cards I think you'll end up adding heat more often than not. Again it depends on a lot of factors. Overall system cooling, placement of the M.2 slot, drive type, etc.
 
Dan_D said:
...If I was using a single GPU system, I think the 512GB Samsung Pro would be the better option...
I hope that helps.
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Yes, you (and the other posts here) have helped a lot, a whole lot, thank you!
I am totally a non-gamer, so single GPU would be my use, which was one reason that I was leaning toward the Supermicro board. I could even go with integrated GPU for that matter.

I felt that Supermicro might provide the quality that I used to feel in the ASUS offerings, but with them, Gigabyte, MSI, Asrock, and others in the mix, please feel free to let me know if you think I am making a mistake. Particularly, is the M.2 slot in a worse place for cooling than with any others on the Supermicro (assuming single GPU use)?
 
I wouldn't buy that board. Supermicro isn't in touch with the enthusiast community at all. They threw some red and black on a mediocre board and called it good. It has poor placement of onboard controls, no SATA Express ports. It has few SATA ports in general. MOSFET heat sinks are anemic and held in place with plastic push pins with a tension spring. The chipset cooler looks like it's right out of the 1990's. The audio implementation doesn't look all that inspired either. There are no USB 3.1 ports on the back panel besides the single Type-C port. There aren't even very many USB ports in general. Look at all the wasted space on the back panel...

I have never seen the UEFI on that but if the rest of the board is any indication it looks dreadful. Like, office cubicle kind of dreadful. It's probably well made given who's name is on it, but Supermicro doesn't have a lot of experience with motherboards for this market and it shows. There is one BIOS update for it and it looks like you need to flash from a USB flash drive rather than a built in utility in the UEFI. I'd opt for something around the same price from ASUS, ASRock, MSI or GIGABYTE.
 
aamsel said:
Yes, you (and the other posts here) have helped a lot, a whole lot, thank you!
I am totally a non-gamer, so single GPU would be my use, which was one reason that I was leaning toward the Supermicro board. I could even go with integrated GPU for that matter.

I felt that Supermicro might provide the quality that I used to feel in the ASUS offerings, but with them, Gigabyte, MSI, Asrock, and others in the mix, please feel free to let me know if you think I am making a mistake. Particularly, is the M.2 slot in a worse place for cooling than with any others on the Supermicro (assuming single GPU use)?
Click to expand...

I am personally a fan of ASRock. They are a new comer but the last 2 boards i bought have been great and I got no complaints and will be buying a Z170 or two in the near future
 
SomeGuy133 said:
I am personally a fan of ASRock. They are a new comer but the last 2 boards i bought have been great and I got no complaints and will be buying a Z170 or two in the near future
Click to expand...

That is good to know.
I had known of ASRock as a second tier product line when they were wholly owned by ASUS.
 
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The Supermicro board is decent but like has already been stated they are out of touch with the enthusiast market. I did have to update the bios for the Samsung 950 to boot and it was from USB but that's never been an issue for me. The issues I had are things most people won't be concerned with. The TPM header that was present in many reviews and even still shows in parts of the manual as well as the installation guide that came with the board was non existent on the board I received. I think it was a last minute cost savings change. A Myricom 10G-PCIE-8A-C NIC could not be seen by the system. And the overall placement of stuff was not optimal for my use.
 
I was ready to order an ASUS SABERTOOTH Z170 MARK 1 which is a HardOCP Editor's Choice, but after reading the full review, the memory clocking slowness/limitation, the non-Intel NIC's, and the little outboard Thermal Armor fan have me turned off the most.

I know that the Intel 750 AIC would work in the PCI Express 4x slot and should support NVMe, correct?

It has an M.2 slot which shares PCI bandwidth with SATA Express. Would this M.2 slot support NVMe and have enough bandwidth?

My concern is that the current crop of Z170 boards might be weak if the Sabertooth is among the best (again, I am non-gamer so will use this as single GPU).

I did not originally intend this as a motherboard thread, since my questions going in were about M.2/NVMe, but I need to choose something.
 
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aamsel said:
I was ready to order an ASUS SABERTOOTH Z170 MARK 1 which is a HardOCP Editor's Choice, but after reading the full review, the memory clocking slowness/limitation, the non-Intel NIC's, and the little outboard Thermal Armor fan have me turned off the most.
Click to expand...

In fairness I can't hear the tiny fan over the 120mm case fan I have blowing on the CPU, or the 7970's GPU fan. One of the network interfaces is an Intel i219v. The other one is a Realtek interface. So you do still have one Intel port.

aamsel said:
I know that the Intel 750 AIC would work in the PCI Express 4x slot and should support NVMe, correct?
Click to expand...

Yes it will.

aamsel said:
It has an M.2 slot which shares PCI bandwidth with SATA Express. Would this M.2 slot support NVMe and have enough bandwidth?
Click to expand...

It shares bandwidth, but it doesn't get all of it from the SATA Express port. It will disable the port, but you will get 4x PCIe lanes with the M.2 slot. There are lots of PCIe switches on the current motherboards which allow for a great deal of flexibility in how they are configured.

aamsel said:
My concern is that the current crop of Z170 boards might be weak if the Sabertooth is the best of the best (again, I am non-gamer so will use this as single GPU).
Click to expand...

The Sabertooth Z170 Mark 1 is a great motherboard. That doesn't imply that it is without limitations. All Z170 motherboards have limitations of one kind or another. I would go further by saying that you have to step up to a pretty expensive motherboard to sidestep some of these limitations.

aamsel said:
I did not originally intend this as a motherboard thread, since my questions going in were about M.2/NVMe.
Click to expand...

All of the Z170 Express based motherboards I have seen support 4x PCIe 3.0 lanes and NVMe. Your good to go on any of them. Just keep in mind you may lose out on your SATA Express ports if you use an M.2 or U.2 solution. While I doubt anyone's using SATA Express with SATA Express devices, you do lose 2 to 4 SATA 6Gb/s ports by taking it off the table.

For the price, and given the feature set, we felt as though the Sabertooth Z170 Mark 1 was worthy of an Editor's Choice award. Again, it has limitations but the damn thing worked. It took everything we threw at it and kept on chugging. The RAM clocking issue is disappointing but the TUF series was NEVER meant to be the equal of other offerings in ASUS' product lineup. Its designed for stability and durability above all else. This is something we felt the Sabertooth line does VERY well. We would probably give a Supermicro server board an award if it did was it was supposed to do and did so exceptionally well. Such a board wouldn't overclock worth a damn but that's not what it's intended to do by design. While Sabertooth / TUF Series boards can overclock, it's not the focus of the series.

People often use the TUF series motherboards as a "poor man's ROG motherboard." I suspect ASUS has artificially limited the TUF series to further segment the two product lines. This makes sense now that less expensive ROG motherboards like the Maximus VIII Hero exist.
 
Dan_D said:
In fairness I can't hear the tiny fan over the 120mm case fan I have blowing on the CPU, or the 7970's GPU fan. One of the network interfaces is an Intel i219v. The other one is a Realtek interface. So you do still have one Intel port.



Yes it will.



It shares bandwidth, but it doesn't get all of it from the SATA Express port. It will disable the port, but you will get 4x PCIe lanes with the M.2 slot. There are lots of PCIe switches on the current motherboards which allow for a great deal of flexibility in how they are configured.



The Sabertooth Z170 Mark 1 is a great motherboard. That doesn't imply that it is without limitations. All Z170 motherboards have limitations of one kind or another. I would go further by saying that you have to step up to a pretty expensive motherboard to sidestep some of these limitations.



All of the Z170 Express based motherboards I have seen support 4x PCIe 3.0 lanes and NVMe. Your good to go on any of them. Just keep in mind you may lose out on your SATA Express ports if you use an M.2 or U.2 solution. While I doubt anyone's using SATA Express with SATA Express devices, you do lose 2 to 4 SATA 6Gb/s ports by taking it off the table.

For the price, and given the feature set, we felt as though the Sabertooth Z170 Mark 1 was worthy of an Editor's Choice award. Again, it has limitations but the damn thing worked. It took everything we threw at it and kept on chugging. The RAM clocking issue is disappointing but the TUF series was NEVER meant to be the equal of other offerings in ASUS' product lineup. Its designed for stability and durability above all else. This is something we felt the Sabertooth line does VERY well. We would probably give a Supermicro server board an award if it did was it was supposed to do and did so exceptionally well. Such a board wouldn't overclock worth a damn but that's not what it's intended to do by design. While Sabertooth / TUF Series boards can overclock, it's not the focus of the series.

People often use the TUF series motherboards as a "poor man's ROG motherboard." I suspect ASUS has artificially limited the TUF series to further segment the two product lines. This makes sense now that less expensive ROG motherboards like the Maximus VIII Hero exist.
Click to expand...


That is all great information, thanks so much Dan!

I know after this much time around here that you guys do not give out Editor's Choice awards for grins and giggles, so there had to be good reason.

Out of nothing but curiosity - what would be the "pretty expensive" motherboard that one would have to get as a step up from the Sabertooth?

And, finally ;) since the memory will not clock blazingly fast on the Sabertooth, is there a memory series that you would recommend as being best in quality, knowing that your review stated 2666 speed as being sweet spot?
 
aamsel said:
That is all great information, thanks so much Dan!

I know after this much time around here that you guys do not give out Editor's Choice awards for grins and giggles, so there had to be good reason.

Out of nothing but curiosity - what would be the "pretty expensive" motherboard that one would have to get as a step up from the Sabertooth?

And, finally ;) since the memory will not clock blazingly fast on the Sabertooth, is there a memory series that you would recommend as being best in quality, knowing that your review stated 2666 speed as being sweet spot?
Click to expand...

The ASUS Maximus VIII Extreme and GIGABYTE Z170X Gaming G1 are what I'd consider a step up from the Sabertooth Z170 Mark 1. They cost about $475. :eek: As for RAM, the Corsair Vengeance LPX 2666MHz RAM is about as solid as it gets. I've got pre-production and retail versions of that in my own systems and it's worked well for me.
 
Dan_D said:
The ASUS Maximus VIII Extreme and GIGABYTE Z170X Gaming G1 are what I'd consider a step up from the Sabertooth Z170 Mark 1. They cost about $475. :eek: As for RAM, the Corsair Vengeance LPX 2666MHz RAM is about as solid as it gets. I've got pre-production and retail versions of that in my own systems and it's worked well for me.
Click to expand...

this is good RAM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...-na-_-na&cm_sp=&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID=

save some money by getting a good affordable board.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...-na-_-na&cm_sp=&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID=

BTW the people that couldn't get it to post are probably stupid and didn't trouble shoot right. Or at least a bunch of them. Out of my 2 boards there has been some posting issues but Dr. Debug has always pointed me to the issue...usually some weird glitchy SATA or bad/ miss matching DIMMs. The MB didn't auto select same settings and I was being lazy so I didn't feel like messing with XMP settings so I just got rid of spare sticks. I tend to get this weird SATA issue that requires pulling them out and resetting them for whatever reason after I thinker with hardware but it'll pop up a code and I just check manual and see what it tells me to tinker with. It takes the guess work out of troubleshooting.
 
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I am just putting together a rig with a Z170-A and a NVME drive. I am confused about the M.2 and SATA EXpress mode config in the Asus BIOS. Am I right in assuming that I should use M.2 and if I use SATA EXpress I will get slower performance?
 
zaphodbeeb said:
I am just putting together a rig with a Z170-A and a NVME drive. I am confused about the M.2 and SATA EXpress mode config in the Asus BIOS. Am I right in assuming that I should use M.2 and if I use SATA EXpress I will get slower performance?
Click to expand...

The setting should toggle the PCIe lanes between SATA Express and the M.2 slot.
 
When you setup a 950 Pro M.2, should you over-allocate when creating partitions?
Or is that not necessary with its collection system?
 
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