M.2 Compatible with my Motherboard?

Porthos · Jan 3, 2023

JMedlock83 said:
Can someone find me a dang good M.2 Drive

If you are good with a Gen 3 drive, I have installed 12 of these already with no issues. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07L6DKM8...olid=2C62N8Q8N0AKG&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

JAM83 · Jan 3, 2023

Porthos said:
If you are good with a Gen 3 drive, I have installed 12 of these already with no issues. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07L6DKM8...olid=2C62N8Q8N0AKG&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

View attachment 49077

Compatible with my MB (Asus Crosshair VI Hero) with AMD Ryzen 7 1800X CPU ?

hsehestedt · Jan 3, 2023

I'll second that. I have about five Silicon Power NVMe SSDs. In my case, I am using them all in external USB enclosures, but I have never had a single glitch on any one of them.

Porthos · Jan 3, 2023

JMedlock83 said:
Compatible with my MB (Asus Crosshair VI Hero) with AMD Ryzen 7 1800X CPU ?

I do not see why not.

Ghot · Jan 3, 2023

JMedlock83 said:
Compatible with my MB (Asus Crosshair VI Hero) with AMD Ryzen 7 1800X CPU ?

It's compatible.

JAM83 · Jan 3, 2023

Ok. . I'm going to purchase the Silicon M.2 Drive. . If i have problems, I can always return it. . . .

JAM83 · Jan 4, 2023

Alrighty! Order placed (last night). . I won't get it til Monday or Tuesday of next week though. . . I need to take apart my entire computer and dust it out anyway, so that'll be the perfect time to do all of that. . . . Will I have to do anything special in the BIOS or anything like that, or will just be like put it in the slot and it should read and I can do a fresh install of Windows?

hsehestedt · Jan 4, 2023

The NVMe slot should most likely be enabled by default in the BIOS, so, not really anything special you should need to do.

My suggestion:

Install it, power up the system, go into disk management. It should see the SSD and offer to initialize it. At that point you can partition and format it. If not seen by Disk Management, then you may need to check the BIOS.

Out of curiosity, are you planning to use this as an additional drive or do you plan to move the OS to it?

JAM83 · Jan 4, 2023

hsehestedt said:
The NVMe slot should most likely be enabled by default in the BIOS, so, not really anything special you should need to do.

My suggestion:

Install it, power up the system, go into disk management. It should see the SSD and offer to initialize it. At that point you can partition and format it. If not seen by Disk Management, then you may need to check the BIOS.

Out of curiosity, are you planning to use this as an additional drive or do you plan to move the OS to it?

I'm going to perform a fresh install of Windows 11 on it and just use it for my OS. I'll use my current SSD for storage

hsehestedt · Jan 4, 2023

Nice. Enjoy it!

JAM83 · Jan 4, 2023

hsehestedt said:
Nice. Enjoy it!

I'm sure I will. Some will say that I will see a different between the M.2 and a regular SSD, some says I won't. . . Guess we'll see. . . lol

hsehestedt · Jan 4, 2023

There was a Linus Tech Tips video on this topic. They tested to see if people could tell the difference between a standard SATA SSD, a 3rd gen NVMe SSD, and a 4th gen NVMe SSD. People really could not tell a difference in real world usage.

In my experience, you really only notice the difference when you copy large files where both source and destination are fast NVMe drives. Then you can noticeably tell a difference.

JAM83 · Jan 10, 2023

Just got my M.2 Drive in. . This thing is absolutely SMALL> . lol I was not expecting it to be this small. . lol

SIW2 · Jan 10, 2023

hsehestedt said:
There was a Linus Tech Tips video on this topic. They tested to see if people could tell the difference between a standard SATA SSD, a 3rd gen NVMe SSD, and a 4th gen NVMe SSD. People really could not tell a difference in real world usage.

In my experience, you really only notice the difference when you copy large files where both source and destination are fast NVMe drives. Then you can noticeably tell a difference.

is it this one ?

JAM83 · Jan 10, 2023

I don't have a screw for the M.2 Drive. I can't install it

hsehestedt · Jan 10, 2023

SIW2 said:
is it this one ?

Yes, that's the one! Thanks for posting the link.

hsehestedt · Jan 10, 2023

JMedlock83 said:
I don't have a screw for the M.2 Drive. I can't install it

Wow, that stinks big time. Did you check all the original hardware that came with your MB? Usually the manufacturer will include those screw(s) somewhere in the package. Some motherboards have the screw already in place on the MB. Still others require no screw, using a latching mechanism instead.

Worst case scenario, you can order a small M.2 screw kit from Amazon. I ordered one recently after dropping an M.2 screw and spending 30 minutes looking for it. I realized then that it might be a good idea to have a few on hand.

NOTE: Not every system uses the same size screw. There at least 2 different screw sizes in use that I am aware of. Check any kit you purchase to make sure it has at least 2 screw types.

Dru2 · Jan 10, 2023

JMedlock83 said:
I don't have a screw for the M.2 Drive. I can't install it

They don't come with screws (at least none of my Samsungs did). The screw should come with/be part of the motherboard (at least on all my Gigabyte boards supporting m.2 drives).

pparks1 · Jan 10, 2023

hsehestedt said:
There was a Linus Tech Tips video on this topic. They tested to see if people could tell the difference between a standard SATA SSD, a 3rd gen NVMe SSD, and a 4th gen NVMe SSD. People really could not tell a difference in real world usage.

In my experience, you really only notice the difference when you copy large files where both source and destination are fast NVMe drives. Then you can noticeably tell a difference.

Awhile back, I moved some of my games off my 2TB WD SN850 PCIe Gen 4 drive (super fast (7,000/5,300)and expensive ($450) when I bought it over to a 2TB Sandisk Ultra Sata SSD, which was only about $160 and much slower (560/530). Instead of loading into a level in 9 seconds, it now takes 10.1 seconds. I had to prove the difference with a stopwatch.

While I considered just adding another NVMe drive to my machine, the cost was 2x+ for a 2TB model when I got that 2TB SATA SSD and for such a tiny change with my games, i deemed it wasn't worth it.

Moving my games over to my SATA SSD made extra space on my NVMe drive for running VM's and the extra speed and # of iop's helps significantly in this area.

JAM83 · Jan 10, 2023

Dru2 said:
They don't come with screws (at least none of my Samsungs did). The screw should come with/be part of the motherboard (at least on all my Gigabyte boards supporting m.2 drives).

Idk what I did with it then. Mine is an Asus board. might just tape it down with electrical tape for the time being and order M.2 screws