Socket 1150 MB - Choices, choices

[Daiyus]

I'm having a debate in my mind as to what motherboard I should pair with my Xeon E3-1231 v3. The two runners are as follows:

Gigabyte GA-H97N-WIFI
ASUS H97I-PLUS

The Gigabyte is cheaper by around £40. It also comes with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. While I'm planning on running an ethernet cable I'll probably need Bluetooth and Wi-Fi is handy just in case. BUT. The ASUS has an M.2 Socket 3 2280 slot on it which means I could install one of Samsung's new nVME drives directly onto the board with full read/write speeds for the OS. That would save space in an already restricted build (Silverstone FTZ01), speed up the system compared to my current 840 Pro, and would just be downright cool. The lack of Wi-Fi/Bluetooth on-board is easily rectified with USB adapters these days. The layout seems to be better on the ASUS board too.

I guess what I'm asking is, are the nVME M.2 drives any good? Is it worth spending around £40 extra plus the Bluetooth dongle? Right now I'm super excited at the thought of having an M.2 drive as it just seems "right" for the build, but I have a tendency to impulse buy and just want to make sure it isn't a complete waste of money.

 

[tinytomlogan]

Id look into the PCIE lanes on the Asus to make sure if its PCIE3 or PCIE2

If its PCIE3 it will share lanes with the GPU

If its PCIE2 Im uncertain youll get the full drive speed.

 

[Daiyus]

Thanks Tom.

From the specs that I can find ASUS state that the Expansion Slots on this board are "1 x PCIe 3.0/2.0 x16 (x16 mode), 1 x mini-PCIe". The storage specification is "1 x M.2 Socket 3, with M Key, type 2260/2280 storage devices support (both SATA & PCIE mode), 4 x SATA 6Gb/s port(s)".

Also looking into M.2 on Wikipedia it states that "M.2 sockets keyed for SATA or two PCI Express lanes (PCIe ×2) are referred to as "socket 2 configuration" or "socket 2", while the sockets keyed for four PCI Express lanes (PCIe ×4) are referred to as "socket 3 configuration" or "socket 3".

I'm completely new to the whole M.2 thing and PCIe lanes always confused me as to how they're shared and whether it dramatically effects GPU performance. I'm honestly not entirely sure how to interpret those specs. On the face of it it looks like it should support 16 lanes on the PCIe and then 4 more on the mini-PCIe, but I'm just a rookie. Sorry if I seem ignorant.

Links to sources:
Specifications - https://www.asus.com/uk/Motherboards/H97IPLUS/specifications/
Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M.2

[EDIT] Another consideration; as the M.2 slots are on the back of mITX boards would the drives have temperature issues? I doubt there'd be much airflow back there, especially in such a cramped case.