Will My Motherboard support a M.2 SSD?

Diablo2K

Diablo2K

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My motherboard says it has a "M.2 Socket 3(NVMe) PCIe x4 mode (Gen 2.0) " slot. Is this a normal NVME M.2 SSD? This is an older motherboard and I am worried about compatibility but I am wanting to upgrade to an SSD and would like to go with an NVME drive as apposed to a SATA drive.
 
Yes, it will work. It will be limited to PCIe 2.0, so you'll be capped at 2GB/s, though you're unlikely to notice as that's still ~4x the top speed of SATA.
 
Yes, a NVMe drive will work (there are some rare older boards that only support AHCI over PCIe), at the rated speed of x4 PCIe 2.0 unless you are utilizing a x2 NVMe drive. Some older NVMe drives (and even newer ones like the SN500) only use two lanes which would be limited to x2 PCIe 2.0. x4 PCIe 2.0 is 4x5Gbps * 8b/10b encoding * .9 overhead = ~1.8 GB/s. A 1TB budget NVMe drive, like the P1 or SN550, would match this socket well as they're lmited to ~2 GB/s anyway, although sequential performance is not a huge deal.
 
Thanks for the replies. I am looking at the Gigabyte NVMe 1.3/M.2/PCIe 3.0x4/ 1TB SSD ($120) . It's about the cheapest NVMe Drive I can find with good reviews. The SN550 use to be under $100 for the 1tb version but went out of stock on Amazon and third party sellers have really marked up there prices.
 
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The SN550 can be gotten for less when it's in stock on WD's site (you can get 10% or 15% off promo, plus cashback) but it's roughly the same category as the drive you linked. Budget NVMe, refer to my guides (see my signature).
 
Nevermind, I been doing some research and it seems there's a lot of people with my motherboard that can't boot from the M.2 drive. I haven't seen any posts from people that could boot from it, so I have decided to just go with the Crucial BX500 2tb drive for $200. I could use the extra space as well.
 
Be aware the 2TB BX500 is DRAM-less and QLC-based. Not ideal for a boot drive.

It's possible sometimes to mod a BIOS to boot NVMe or use a loader (Clover EFI) to do so, but you'd be fine with a SATA SSD anyway. Although perhaps a better one...
 
Thanks Maxx, could you suggest a good 2tb SATA Drive? I know I need a TLC drive but don't know which to get. Please stay as close to $200 as possible. Did a quick search on Amazon and the Kingston 1.92TB A400 is $194 and TLC or theres the SanDisk SSD PLUS 2TB at $219 and the Crucial MX500 at $227. Any of these any good?
 
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Kingston apparently does a bait and switch where they "update" the drive with cheaper internals while keeping the same model name, so I would avoid them. That may or may not apply to the A400. Can't go wrong with Crucial, and I think SanDisk is pretty reputable.
 
A400 and SSD Plus are usually DRAM-less, too, although I think the newer 2TB SSD Plus has some DRAM these days. A good 2TB SATA SSD would be something like the WD Blue 3D which has been $209.99 recently.
 
Thanks Guys, WD Blue 3D it is. It's $224 on Amazon, I got $15 off of purchase $30 or more.
 
if its kingston for Sata if its 1 letter part numbers (like A400) its dramless if it has 2 letters then its has ram on it (like UV400) never had a kingston fail on me (yes they may change the controller, Dram and nand type but it will always come with them 3 they wont swap it out for a Dramless version, unless it was dramless to begin with)

m.2 ssds from kingston i haven't looked into much (but does not seem to follow the same way as the SATA SSDs do, as the A2000 has dram)
 
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