NVMe M.2 and the Gigabyte Z77X-D3H

Yanayaya

Yanayaya

Yanayaya

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I recently asked for some advice on my pc build in the relative part of the forum and the consensus was that I should consider keeping my current system and beefing up my CPU. This lead me on a path to seek out performance upgrades for my hard drives as well and whilst shopping for SATA SSD drives from the likes of Samsung I found the NVMe drives.

This is virgin territory for me so I started some investigation into them but I'm still a little fuzzy on what I can actually achieve and I think that my motherboard might be a little too old to deal with this sort of thing. I run a Gigabye Z77X-D3H which I bought from Overclockers in 2012 I think it was, it would be nice to have one of these rather quick NVMe drives in my machine. I don't believe the board has an m.2 slot but I've seen some PCI-E adapter cards that can be purchased.

A quick google on the internet has revealed some people running into issues especially when attempting to boot from an NVMe drive on older hardware and the suggestion has been to modify your bios or upgrade your hardware. I wanted to put the question out there and see what I could find out from people who know a lot more about it than I do.

Would this NVMe PCI-E Adapter setup work for me?
 
Unless someone posts here and says that they've done it with your motherboard, it's anyone's guess.

It will work in terms of showing up as long as you have a PCIE lane available and PCIE Lanes, but the gamble is if it will boot from it.

I have two m.2 drives on my board (3 slots!) and whilst they are fast, you can't really notice it over a standard, good SATA3 SSD.

If I were you, get a good, fast normal SSD or if you have one, save your money.
 
Yanayaya said:
I recently asked for some advice on my pc build in the relative part of the forum and the consensus was that I should consider keeping my current system and beefing up my CPU. This lead me on a path to seek out performance upgrades for my hard drives as well and whilst shopping for SATA SSD drives from the likes of Samsung I found the NVMe drives.

This is virgin territory for me so I started some investigation into them but I'm still a little fuzzy on what I can actually achieve and I think that my motherboard might be a little too old to deal with this sort of thing. I run a Gigabye Z77X-D3H which I bought from Overclockers in 2012 I think it was, it would be nice to have one of these rather quick NVMe drives in my machine. I don't believe the board has an m.2 slot but I've seen some PCI-E adapter cards that can be purchased.

A quick google on the internet has revealed some people running into issues especially when attempting to boot from an NVMe drive on older hardware and the suggestion has been to modify your bios or upgrade your hardware. I wanted to put the question out there and see what I could find out from people who know a lot more about it than I do.

Would this NVMe PCI-E Adapter setup work for me?
Click to expand...

Have just seen your post - I have just posted with a similar question (I have the same Z77X-D3H), what SSD did you go for - was it simple to install ? and are you happy with it ?

Thanks
 
I dont think going down that road will work. I bought a SCSI hard drive many moons ago & bought a SCSI card for the task to plug into the board for my system to improve boot times. OK it was fast at the time but a pain to get it to boot into Windows. Windows was also a pain to install as SCSI drivers were not included IIRC.

As @HoneyBadger stated, the main problem will be getting the motherboard to recognize the NVME drive as a boot drive & on a board that almost 8 years old, you'll only know that once you go into the Bios & you can select it as a bootable drive. Gigabyte wont answer your question as they would prefer for you to upgrade.

Sata 3 SSD = plug & play, job done.
 
Wouldn't bother. NVMe works well when you have a board it's designed for but the "real world" advantages are nowhere near as noticeable as going from HDD to SSD. It won't knock your socks off and it especially won't feel worth it after you've messed about with adaptors and BIOS changes.
 
I would stick with SATA if you want an easy life. I've got the GA-Z77-D3H and managed to get a NVMe drive working on it. I followed a guide to edit the BIOS to remove some modules (network boot) and add others (NVMe module from a newer Gigabyte BIOS). The NVMe adapter sits in the 2nd graphic card slot and runs at 4 lanes of PCI-E v2 (2GB/sec in total) and it's bootable. I was doing some server infrastructure testing and working with large files so it was worth it for me. Also, I blagged a free NVMe drive from a client.
 
Toughnoodle said:
I would stick with SATA if you want an easy life. I've got the GA-Z77-D3H and managed to get a NVMe drive working on it. I followed a guide to edit the BIOS to remove some modules (network boot) and add others (NVMe module from a newer Gigabyte BIOS). The NVMe adapter sits in the 2nd graphic card slot and runs at 4 lanes of PCI-E v2 (2GB/sec in total) and it's bootable. I was doing some server infrastructure testing and working with large files so it was worth it for me. Also, I blagged a free NVMe drive from a client.
Click to expand...

Good work indeed !, and you clearly know what you are doing.

Am certainly going to follow advice and stick to SATA.

Can anyone suggest a well priced 2TB SSD ? (I assume I am going to have to pay over £200? - would rather not). Starting to see some good Black Friday deals around - is a Samsung 2TB T5 a good deal @ £243 ?

Thanks again.
 
Just buy one and don't boot from it, I ran an NVMe in my Z77 for ages I just booted from a different small SATA SSD drive but benefited from the extra speed of NVME on my other storage.
 
Using the same board and I just grabbed a couple of 4TB SATA SSD's. Samsung QVO 4TB was £260+VAT and the WD BLUE 3D NAND 4TB was £280+VAT. Just keep an eye on Black Friday sales.
 
for an extra 20quid you could have had 2x2Tb NVMe from Adata and ran them in RAID for PCIe 4.0 speed 4Tb drive as I do assuming you have spare lanes.
 
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