M.2 or regular SSD?

chrismox

chrismox

chrismox

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I am replacing a failing SSD in my PC with an MSI Z170A SLI PLUS motherboard.

The motherboard manual says it supports the following:

KFEXQss.PNG


Is there any advantage to me finding a suitable M.2 drive or is it simpler to just get a regular SATA SSD?

Many thanks.
 
i am slowly replacing all my old type ssd`s with m.2. They are faster, you dont need any cables and dont need drive bays or anything.
they just go straight onto the mobo, fantastic
 
Thanks, it was the speed that interested me.

Is there anything specific I need to be looking at, or can I simply search for a “PCI’s 3 m.2 ssd” and pick whatever I find?
 
I think it's worth it for an os/program drive for the slightly faster load speeds.

For normal storage or games drives a decent SSD is plenty

Dave has a good point about neatness, you may as well populate the M2 slots you have available.
 
chrismox said:
Thanks, it was the speed that interested me.

Is there anything specific I need to be looking at, or can I simply search for a “PCI’s 3 m.2 ssd” and pick whatever I find?
Click to expand...

The nvme ones will be faster and most will have read and write speeds in the description.

In real world use there isn't much difference between the slower nvme and the newest very fast ones.
 
Holst1981 said:
The nvme ones will be faster and most will have read and write speeds in the description.

In real world use there isn't much difference between the slower nvme and the newest very fast ones.
Click to expand...

Apologies, I'm new to this, but from those specs I put in the first post, am I to understand that I can only use an NVMe drive if I buy an extra host card?

The terminology baffles me!
 
chrismox said:
There's only 1 slot and it would be the drive that was used for Windows.
Click to expand...
chrismox said:
Apologies, I'm new to this, but from those specs I put in the first post, am I to understand that I can only use an NVMe drive if I buy an extra host card?

The terminology baffles me!
Click to expand...

This was pretty confusing but my understanding is that your X4 M2 will work with nvme drives
You may lose a couple of sata ports.

I would update your BIOS before you upgrade.

Something like this should be fine
https://www.overclockers.co.uk/wd-b...-solid-state-drive-wds100t3x0c-hd-55v-wd.html
 
I was thinking though it's a bit rubbish they have have one slot maybe two if you're lucky...I think my board has six sata plus with esata if you're short use cable from outside to inside

The whole point of pcs is mass storage why on earth have just one slot?

I'd expect four at the minimum
 
hornetstinger said:
I was thinking though it's a bit rubbish they have have one slot maybe two if you're lucky...I think my board has six sata plus with esata if you're short use cable from outside to inside

The whole point of pcs is mass storage why on earth have just one slot?

I'd expect four at the minimum
Click to expand...
M.2 slot needs four times as many connections just for data as SATA.
Also it uses PCI express, for which there aren't that many free lanes available in many boards.
 
hornetstinger said:
Regardless ignoring that, it's not enough.
Click to expand...

Then buy a more expensive board - mine has 4x M.2 slots.

The bit you dismiss, though, is entirely relevant. An NVME M.2 drive can be faster than a SATA drive because it directly accesses the PCIe bus - but those PCIe lanes come at a cost, both in terms of motherboard construction and choice of CPU and/or chipset or components like a PCIe switch.

Unless you're only wanting SATA M.2 slots. But you'll run out of physical space on the board more quickly that way compared to conventional SATA ports.
 
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