New to NVME - what should I know?

darael · 23 Sep 2018 at 12:06

I am waiting for the delivery of a Samsung 970 EVO M.2 drive. This is going to be my first experience with M.2 drives, so I'm looking out for pointers or gotchas to look out for.

The drive will be installed into an Asus ROG STRIX H270F Gaming motherboard which has an Intel i5 7500 installed at stock, with 16GB of RAM. I have a PCI-E graphic and sound cards installed too. Will these interfere with the PCI-E lanes in any way?

My main worry is setting up the BIOS correctly for the drive so it can boot from it. After that, drivers will be installed from Samsung's site to allow the drive to perform to it's full potential. Is it this simple, or am I missing anything else out?

Smffy · 23 Sep 2018 at 19:20

You will most likely just be able to use it with modern windows. Update BIOS to latest before but that’s it, Samsung Magician will update the drive firmware easily.

darael · 23 Sep 2018 at 20:24

I keep my BIOS as up to date as possible - but I've checked again and I'm still on the latest version (2205). It sounds as though installing the drive should be a breeze. I'm just a little worried about BIOS settings as I've never used M.2 drives before.

Snapshot · 24 Sep 2018 at 07:42

Read my thread a couple below this one. You may find the M.2 drive isn't seen by the BIOS but W10 has its own NVMe drivers so will install and boot from it without problems.

MartinPrince · 27 Sep 2018 at 11:59

Samsung has it's own nVMe driver which some people prefer so you might want to give that a try.