PCIe SSD compatibility with a motherboard

PaulW · 26 Sep 2016 at 10:10

Hi All,

A friend of mine wants to install an SSD to his system. i suggested he should probably look into getting a PCIe drive as they are a bit quicker. we were looking at a getting the 950 Pro 512GB M.2 PCI-e 3.0 x 4 NVMe Solid State Drive as its has some good write ups and benchmarks.

However is his motherboard compatible, just want to be sure before is say yeah go buy it.says its needs this
M.2 PCI-E 3.0 (x4) interface on an NVMe Compatible Motherboard

his motherboard is this one:
http://ark.intel.com/products/50086/Intel-Desktop-Board-DP67BA

Thanks in advance

P

darael · 26 Sep 2016 at 10:33

I don't see any sign of M.2 support on that motherboard, so you will need something like this to convert the M.2 PCIe card to standard PCIe format: M.2 SSD to PCIe Adapter Card

PaulW · 26 Sep 2016 at 10:52

wondering about booting from this with his MB should it be able to do that if we bought the adapter and the 950. not familiar with PCIe SSDs much, never installed one before.

darael · 26 Sep 2016 at 10:55

I don't have any experience with them, it's better to wait for somebody who used them to let you know.

PaulW · 26 Sep 2016 at 10:57

ok thanks for your help darael

Kurgen · 26 Sep 2016 at 13:24

I would just get a standard SATA SSD, the speed increase will be amazing compared to HDD, and you can get a 1tb for the same price as that m.2

HoneyBadger · 27 Sep 2016 at 11:27

Kurgen said:
I would just get a standard SATA SSD, the speed increase will be amazing compared to HDD, and you can get a 1tb for the same price as that m.2

This.

You've got to consider a few things here.

For example, it looks like the CPU in use would be x16, which is he's running graphics would be consumed by that, so if you plug in another PCI-E device, it's potentially going to reduce the speed of the graphics card to x8, realistically you wouldn't notice the difference between x8 and x16 unless you're benching, but it would add more complications especially as no one is clear if the mobo can boot from it.

Stick with a fast, large SSD and enjoy the massive performance boost.

mattmos · 27 Sep 2016 at 14:57

Kurgen said:
I would just get a standard SATA SSD, the speed increase will be amazing compared to HDD, and you can get a 1tb for the same price as that m.2

+1. I have a regular 1Tb ssd and its great to have the extra space. But I'm not sure I'd notice if it was even faster, does everything I need right now.

PaulW · 27 Sep 2016 at 19:22

Yeah we have gone with the 512 Evo 850 was a good price and should be a good. thanks all