M.2 Questions and My Config

[Nfams]

So I was really liking the looks (performance wise) of the Samsung 950 Pro 256GB drive for the motherboard I have (Gigabyte Z97MX-Gaming 5) but recently read a comment on a M.2 post stating that a drive like this would be wasted on a 10Gb/s slot and it made me ponder. So there are two types of M.2 slots and for a high performance drive like this I'd be looking for a 32Gb/s slot right? The only way I could get that with this motherboard would be with a PCI-E riser card of x4 type right? I am not looking to get this drive till it drops in price by a bit as in mid next year. Any advice on this would help greatly. Cheers Tom

 

[Kilbane]

Z97 Boards support PCIe M.2 @ PCie 2.0 x2. Realistic speeds from the bandwidth available would be around 750-800MB/s maximum. Yes it is a waste in comparison to what the new NVME based storage is capable of, however is still a considerable jump from SATA speeds. As you said, you can use a PCIe riser card in a PCIe 3.0 4x (or greater) slot to get full bandwidth available to the storage medium. Just remember to check which slots you would be able to use on your motherboard without dropping the speed available to your GPU or other slots.

 

[WYP]

With a z97 motherboard you will be limited to PCIe 2.0 speeds, which while plenty faster than SATA will not get the best out of the Samsung 950 Pro.

Right now I would advise to get a SAMsung 850 Pro or evo as that is the best GB/$ ATM and there will be plenty more M.2 drives coming in 2016.

 

[JR23]

I should be able to let you know before the middle of next year! I just finished a build with a HyperX Predator M.2 and an X99 XPOWER. As it has quad SLI I have to run the drive at PCIe 2.0 x2 from the chipset leaving all CPU PCIe lanes to keep the cards at maximum bandwidth but the BIOS allows once card to be disabled so I can test it out. I am very curious about it too.

For me the super clean lack of cables in using an M.2 is the main advantage, if it performs a little better than SATA III that's just a bonus, it's not like games or W8/10 is slow on any SSD.

JR

 

[Nfams]

For me the super clean lack of cables in using an M.2 is the main advantage. JR

I agree with this 100% as I'm going to be using it in a Silverstone FT03 which could easily support a normal sata drive but having it all inbuilt is just soo slick. I'll be looking out in my local etailers for an adapter nearer the time but that isn't looking too promising at the moment. Cheers guys