Asrock Z87 Extreme4 NVME Upgrade Questions

Hulk

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So with the new bios upgrade this motherboard now supports NVME installation.



I want to buy these two items:

QNINE NVME Adapter PCIe x16 with Heat Sink, M.2 SSD Key M to PCI Express Expansion Card, Support PCIe x4 x8 x16


https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07F9RBP5...olid=1SYDWH66RTUXX&psc=0&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it


Inland Professional 1TB 3D NAND M.2 2280 PCIe NVMe 3.0 x4 Internal Solid State Drive


https://www.microcenter.com/product...80-pcie-nvme-30-x4-internal-solid-state-drive






I have some questions:


1) Is the above SSD "M-key"? The adapter I listed above only works with M-key SSDs.


2) Here is the link to my motherboard:

https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z87 Extreme4/#BIOS


The description states it has: 3 PCIe 3.0 x 16, 2 PCIe 2.0 x 1


So my question is just how many of the above adapters and NVME SSDs can I install?

I have a XFX R9-FURY-4QFA RADEON R9 FURY X 4GB HBM GPU installed which I believe takes up only 1 PCI slot.

It would be really neat if I could install 2 or maybe even 3 NVMEs with the adapter since they are so much faster than SATA SSDs.


 
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M-key is PCI express (NVMe) SSDs, so yes, that adapter will work with that SSD.

I've used similar adapters on a bunch of newer boards (Z170 and later) without any issues - they are all over ebay for about $10. But those boards have some PCIe 3.0 lanes dedicated to the bottom slot, so I haven't tried a setup that would actually split the PCIe lanes from the CPU to see how well it works.

When all three of the x16 slots on your board are populated they will run at x8 (1st slot, where your graphics card should be), and the other two at x4. The best case scenario is that you could install two drives (in the second and third x16 slots). You could maybe do three if you got rid of the video card and just used onboard video, but that may not be an option for you.

Given the price of those SSDs I don't think it would be too expensive an experiment to try adding two drives to your system. At worst you can just flip them as "gently used" on the trading forum and recoup all your costs.

You will probably need to fiddle around with BIOS/UEFI settings to get the drives recognized as boot devices if that was something you wanted to do.
 
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