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Bootable PCI-E to m.2 card?

The card is just a dumb adapter. The bootability is dependent on the SSD and the mainboard. If a board can boot an M.2 PCIe SSD in an M.2 slot, it is extremely likely that it can also boot it in the adapter.
As far as I know a XP951 does not exist (yet), there are the XP941 (which is an AHCI over PCIe drive) and the SM951 (which is a true NVMe drive). Those are two different things and will have to be handled differently by the board.
If I remember correctly, X79 boards can boot neither PCIe-AHCI nor PCIe-NVMe SSDs. It depends on ASUS providing a BIOS/UEFI update for that, but I doubt they will.
 
Also, if you're going to buy one, buy one from here: http://www.addonics.com/products/adm2px4.php

And evidently ASUS has a plan to add in the ability to boot from PCIe to *some* of their Z97 boards, but primarily all the AIB makers want you to buy X99s or wait until it's standardized with the next series of enthusiast chipsets. We can all cross our fingers that when ASUS adds in ability to the Z97s that BIOS modders find the code and see if it can't be retroactively added to the older chipsets. I'm not holding out too much hope for my Z68, though.

And if you are intending on using the XP941, I've heard they can get a tad hot: http://www.amazon.com/M2P4A-PCIe-2-0-NGFF-Adapter/dp/B00IPO7YCU

That being said, you're not going to be taking the stickers off the module as that'd void your warranty...so just make sure there's plenty of airflow over the modules.
 
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Yes, that is the main weakness of almost all M.2 slots. The drives are hard to cool. I hope the next gen of boards provide some mounting for M.2 heatsinks.
It is not a problem with most embedded/laptop designs, as those usually use heat conducting pads to press the drives against the frame.
There are some boards with the slot on the backside, where you can use such a pad to cool the drive with the board carrier.

The bootablity issue is a Windows-only problem. Most OS can easily boot of a different drive than the OS drive.
My Linux server boots from an USB flash drive, the OS is located on a software RAID on SSDs.
 
Destruya said:
Also, if you're going to buy one, buy one from here: http://www.addonics.com/products/adm2px4.php

And evidently ASUS has a plan to add in the ability to boot from PCIe to *some* of their Z97 boards, but primarily all the AIB makers want you to buy X99s or wait until it's standardized with the next series of enthusiast chipsets. We can all cross our fingers that when ASUS adds in ability to the Z97s that BIOS modders find the code and see if it can't be retroactively added to the older chipsets. I'm not holding out too much hope for my Z68, though.

And if you are intending on using the XP941, I've heard they can get a tad hot: http://www.amazon.com/M2P4A-PCIe-2-0-NGFF-Adapter/dp/B00IPO7YCU

That being said, you're not going to be taking the stickers off the module as that'd void your warranty...so just make sure there's plenty of airflow over the modules.
Click to expand...

I have a Maximus Gene VII that boots my Plextor M6e without a problem. I also agree with the Addonics adapter over the EBAY one as I have one of those powering another M6e in a machine that doens't have an M.2 slot.
 
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The bootablity issue is a Windows-only problem. Most OS can easily boot of a different drive than the OS drive.
My Linux server boots from an USB flash drive, the OS is located on a software RAID on SSDs.
Click to expand...

Hmm. Maybe a usb stick with grub chain loading windows on the m.2 drive would do the trick. That is until a BIOS/UEFI update.
 
For some reason the M6e and the XP941 exhibit very different behaviour with regards to booting.
There is a test (I think from pugetsystems) that shows that the Plextor drive can be booted from much more systems even with BIOS, while the Samsung drive was very limited.
I do not understand that completely, because both drives are AHCI over PCIe drives, but it seems that the Plextor drive comes with its own embedded UEFI driver

I'm interested in this myself, because I do not plan to upgrade from my ASUS Z77 WS anytime soon.
I hope that the Intel P3500 can be booted like the Plextor drive.
 
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