Booting from PCIE/M.2 SSD Drives?

TheMorningStar · 19 Jun 2015 at 13:45

Are all motherboards able to do that these days? If so do they need some form of bootloader similar to a raid array? Will OSs detect the drive natively or are drivers needed upon instal?

faceman123 · 19 Jun 2015 at 14:14

drivers intel rapid storage technology

FredFlint · 19 Jun 2015 at 18:03

Think most Z97/X99 boards will boot from PCIe/M.2 drives. Nvme drives require Win8.1 to boot. Some drives will also have drivers, the Intel 750 SSD works without but is much faster after installing the Intel Nvme driver.

TheMorningStar · 19 Jun 2015 at 18:38

FredFlint said:
Think most Z97/X99 boards will boot from PCIe/M.2 drives. Nvme drives require Win8.1 to boot. Some drives will also have drivers, the Intel 750 SSD works without but is much faster after installing the Intel Nvme driver.

Cheers, I'm on win7 will be on 10 before I get one of these. the z97s only have around 20 PCI-E lanes don't they? Not sure what the x99 has.

Any idea on the number of lanes AMD has on it's "high end" these days?

FredFlint · 19 Jun 2015 at 20:14

I don’t know how AMD chipsets work? Z97 has 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes and X99 has between 28 and 40 depending on the CPU (5820K has 28 and the rest have 40).

TheMorningStar · 20 Jun 2015 at 01:11

FredFlint said:
I don’t know how AMD chipsets work? Z97 has 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes and X99 has between 28 and 40 depending on the CPU (5820K has 28 and the rest have 40).

Neither do I these days, but they generally offer at least 32 full lanes, not sure with newest 3.0 tech. Zen has about 64 according to the rumour mill. not sure if they are all external lanes. I'm guessing skylake is pretty low also?

FredFlint · 20 Jun 2015 at 02:19

Think Skylake is getting 20 PCIe 3.0 lanes. If you need lots of PCIe lanes then X99 is the best option at this time.