Compatability on a AsRock Z97E ITX-AC

[R0513]

Hi everyone its my first post so dont expect a lot from me just yet!

I have a recently purchased AsRock Z97E ITX-AC and i was looking to install the
Sabrent 1 or 2 TB Rocket NVMe PCIe M.2 2242 DRAM-free (SB-1342-2TB)

These are double density and i wonderd if for a start they are compatible and then if they would fit or if someone could suggest an alternative storafe option for gaming, any help appreciated

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[martin363]

A quick search says that m2 2242 and m2 2230 are the two drives that fit on this motherboard, at Gen 2 speeds only (PCIe Gen2 x2). You will not see speeds greater than perhaps 950mb/s as a result, this is still good, but will be throttling the potential of the drive as Gen 3 compatible.

I can't tell you if you will have any issues with double sided thickness though... but it will likely fit.

Note that on this board you must not use SATA 4, 5 and SATA Express if using the M2 slot;

'The M.2 Socket, SATA3_4, SATA3_5 and SATA Express share lanes. If either one of them is in use, the others will be disabled'

 

[R0513]

Thankyou for the response, in your opinion would i be better off fitting a decent 2.5 ssd or would this option still be better performance?

 

[martin363]

Thankyou for the response, in your opinion would i be better off fitting a decent 2.5 ssd or would this option still be better performance?

This is only my opinion, but I would use a normal 2.5' SATA SSD, it will be cheaper, and though slower at about 500mb/s, will likely not be noticeable to you in any use case at all. You may find that the M2 also has bios compatibility issues, I know the 97 chipset was the first to adopt the M2 format, and with some drives, using as a boot drive was challenging. You will have no such issues with a SATA SSD.