Advice on M.2 + PCIe adapter card

Goose · 23 Apr 2019 at 10:15

My motherboard is an Asus x99 AII that has one M.2 drive that i have populated with a Samsung NVME drive. I want to add a second cheap 500gb M.2 for additional storage because i want to replace my ageing storage HDD. I also like the idea of getting rid of SATA data and power cables.

I'm looking specifically at this M.2 Drive and this adapter card. I chose purely based on the fact they're the cheapest. As it's just for storage i dont need it to be super fast.

Is there anything i need to be aware of with adapter cards, or anything else for that matter?

Thanks

Goose · 23 Apr 2019 at 10:24

bremen1874 said:
I don’t think that’ll work. You’ve got a SATA M.2 and a NVME adapter.

I dont see anything about the adapter being NVME only? The M.2 drive is a 2280 which the blurb for the adapter says is compatible.

Goose · 23 Apr 2019 at 10:32

BongoHunter said:
Right form factor - wrong protocol

The drive is SATA protocol - but the adapter is NVME

bremen1874 said:
It’s a M Key adapter. That SSD won’t even fit.

You’d need active components to plug a SATA m.2 drive into a PCIe slot.

Oh

So can a SATA M.2 not be used on PCIe at all?

Goose · 23 Apr 2019 at 10:39

@bremen1874 @BongoHunter

If i installed the SATA m.2 on my motherboard and moved my Samsung NVME to a PCIe adapter card would i still be able to boot from the Samsung drive and would the performance be stunted by the adapter?

Thanks

[Edit] Nevermind, my motherboard M.2 slot doesn't accept SATA

Goose · 23 Apr 2019 at 11:06

If I did add a PCIe adapter card would it impact on my graphics card? I don't entirely understand all this business about PCIe lanes (i'm still a noob).

My CPU is a 5820k which i believe has 28 lanes. The image below is from my motherboard manual.

Goose · 23 Apr 2019 at 11:55

bremen1874 said:
You should be able to plug in the adapter without impacting the graphics card. The manual should tell you which slots share PCIe lanes.

Even if the GPU dropped down to 8 lanes it probably wouldn’t make any difference unless you have a really high end GPU, and even then it’d be very slight.

I found this from a review of my motherboard.

My GFX card is in the top slot (left most slot in the image above).

Would the adapter go in either the 2nd or 3rd x16 slot without impacting on the gfx card?