M.2 pcie card for MSI z270 Mortar

m.2 is a standard. It's a surprisingly good standard, even: if you can plug it in, it'll work. That simple. This is not USB C.
 
So basically any m.2 drive should work on that motherboard then. It seems strange that the list has specific sata SSD's that work with the board. That seemed overboard.
 
Ryland said:
So basically any m.2 drive should work on that motherboard then. It seems strange that the list has specific sata SSD's that work with the board. That seemed overboard.
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You'd be surprised how many people won't buy ram that is not on a "compatibility list". When RAM has a standard that all manufacturers follow. If it's the right voltage and supported speed and size, it will work regardless of if it is on a list.

Same with PCIE/Nvme drives and SATA m2 drives.

Obviously I'd choose the fastest PCIE m2 I could afford if performance was a priority. Or a larger SATA m2 drive if performance was not paramount.
 
Great, thanks all. Well I ended up buying a motherboard that was on the memory's QVC list and Im throwing the m.2 in for him because I think it would be better as the OS drive.
 
Ryland said:
Great, thanks all. Well I ended up buying a motherboard that was on the memory's QVC list and Im throwing the m.2 in for him because I think it would be better as the OS drive.
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There is no performance benefit to using m.2 SATA III over a 2.5" SATA III. But if you go pcie/Nvme you can see some results.
 
jmilcher said:
There is no performance benefit to using m.2 SATA III over a 2.5" SATA III. But if you go pcie/Nvme you can see some results.
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Thats good to know and I had been looking at pcie's since they wont take one of the sata ports connections.
 
Ryland said:
Thats good to know and I had been looking at pcie's since they wont take one of the sata ports connections.
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The only exception would be if you populated all of the m.2 slots with PCIE/Nvme x4 (4 lane) drives, you may lose functionality of a PCIE slot or in some cases some SATA ports. Depends on the board, but there are only so many PCIE lanes that can be shared.
 
At this point the computer is speced as follows:

Intel i5-7500
16GB DDR4 2400 memory
ATI 7470 (I think)
~256GB ssd
~1tb 7400rpm disk

The video card is the next piece to get upgraded but Im wondering whether putting a Nvme boot drive would really help that much. His goal is to use this machine for VR (like and old Oculus Rift headset).
 
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Ryland said:
At this point the computer is speced as follows:

Intel i5-7500
16GB DDR4 2400 memory
ATI 7470 (I think)
~256GB ssd
~1tb 7400rpm disk

The video card is the next piece to get upgraded but Im wondering whether putting a Nvme boot drive would really help that much. His goal is to use this machine for VR (like and old Oculus Rift headset).
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Youre going to need a whole lot more GPU for VR. Also I'd probably get a large SATA m2 drive and spend the difference on a 3 or 4 TB HDD for storage.
 
The only thing I'd change for VR is probably the video card. You can get by in the short term with the 256GB SSD and the 1TB HDD. NVMe is nice but if your'e not going to get one of those drives, it doesn't make much sense to laterally move from a SATA 2.5" to a SATA m.2.
 
kirbyrj said:
The only thing I'd change for VR is probably the video card. You can get by in the short term with the 256GB SSD and the 1TB HDD. NVMe is nice but if your'e not going to get one of those drives, it doesn't make much sense to laterally move from a SATA 2.5" to a SATA m.2.
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I could get him an 128-256GB Nvme drive as a boot device but I cant see spending ~$500 on a 2TB Nvme drive. That would be more than everything else he has put into it and I would rather just throw that money at a much better video card.
 
I don't see the point in paying for an NVME drive at all unless you're running very specific applications that can take advantage of their performance over SATA3.*

*Or benchmarking.
 
Ryland said:
I could get him an 128-256GB Nvme drive as a boot device but I cant see spending ~$500 on a 2TB Nvme drive. That would be more than everything else he has put into it and I would rather just throw that money at a much better video card.
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I think I misread your post. You're going to buy a 128-256GB drive. For some reason I thought you already had one. I'd definitely get a bigger drive. 128GB is kind of small after you install Windows and a game or two. I have a 480GB drive and with Windows and 3 games installed I'm already around 40% of my drive full.
 
kirbyrj said:
I think I misread your post. You're going to buy a 128-256GB drive. For some reason I thought you already had one. I'd definitely get a bigger drive. 128GB is kind of small after you install Windows and a game or two. I have a 480GB drive and with Windows and 3 games installed I'm already around 40% of my drive full.
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I typically use SSD's for OS/boot drives and then fast standard disks, ie WD Black, for storing games on.
 
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