B450 Tomahawk max. Which M.2 drives will fit?

namaan · 8 Nov 2020 at 11:38

Hey guys.

As above, this Motherboard has an m.2 slot which i'd like to put my O/S on. i'm still getting my head around the m.2 drive thing.

which ones can i actually use?

Cheers

N

alexakasloth · 8 Nov 2020 at 11:43

"Supports 2242/ 2260 /2280/ 22110 storage devices"

https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/B450-TOMAHAWK-MAX/Specification

Many NVMe m.2 SSDs are 2280 (22mm wide, 80mm long) as it will say in the product page/ specification. Just check that the one you are buying is one of the four that are supported.

NVMe being PCI express. The alternative is a SATA (which is slower than NVMe) m.2 SSD.

namaan · 8 Nov 2020 at 12:00

Cheers for that.

N

alexakasloth · 8 Nov 2020 at 12:05

namaan said:
Cheers for that.

N

Also, I should have pointed out it's gen 3, as some gen 4 drives have come out. I'm not sure if a gen 4 would work in a gen 3 slot, would have to check.

Shaolin Chicken · 8 Nov 2020 at 13:15

alexakasloth said:
Also, I should have pointed out it's gen 3, as some gen 4 drives have come out. I'm not sure if a gen 4 would work in a gen 3 slot, would have to check.

Pretty sure they do, but like you say best to check.

MaryD · 5 Jul 2022 at 00:20

I have a similar question. I have a MSI B450 Tomahawk Max, initially with Windows 10 on a HDD. I migrated the OS to a WD Black SN750 500 GB SSD (Gen 3 NVMe) and that worked. I have now replaced the SSD with a WD Black SN850 1 TB SSD (Gen 4 NVMe). I installed Windows 10 from a USB flash drive. The installation appeared to work but it won't boot. If I boot from the HDD it can see the partitions on the new SSD. Would the installer have done something really dumb like putting the boot manager on the flash drive?

Dg834man · 5 Jul 2022 at 12:01

MaryD said:
I installed Windows 10 from a USB flash drive. The installation appeared to work but it won't boot. If I boot from the HDD it can see the partitions on the new SSD. Would the installer have done something really dumb like putting the boot manager on the flash drive?

Not the flash drive but one of the other os drives you left connected, disconnect the hdd then follow the instruction here https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us...ng-drive/7362c5c0-aebc-42b7-a7d0-dc1904f531ed

MaryD · 5 Jul 2022 at 14:17

Sorry, I didn't include that detail. I do know about that problem, so the new SSD was the only drive connected.

Dg834man · 5 Jul 2022 at 14:50

Strange one, make sure the nvme is set to the first boot drive, you could also try toogling the csm/uefi bios option.

MaryD · 29 Jul 2022 at 22:13

Thank you Dg834man - I have a solution. If the BIOS is set to CSM it will boot from the HDD, and if to UEFI it will boot from the SSD. I wasn't able to "restore" the HDD system onto the SSD so it's a fresh install and I'll be spending a couple of days getting everything working.

I'll go and read up on the differences between the two formats ...

mickyflinn · 29 Jul 2022 at 22:27

MaryD said:
Thank you Dg834man - I have a solution. If the BIOS is set to CSM it will boot from the HDD, and if to UEFI it will boot from the SSD. I wasn't able to "restore" the HDD system onto the SSD so it's a fresh install and I'll be spending a couple of days getting everything working.

I'll go and read up on the differences between the two formats ...

Redirect Notice