I am confused. Does my board fully support NVMe m.2?

[DrewSG3]

Right now I have this motherboard https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/Z97A/

and this as my operating system SSD https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148442

I was looking at something like this to buy

https://www.samsung.com/us/computin...rives/ssd-970-evo-nvme-m-2-250gb-mz-v7e250bw/

I've read conflicting things whether or not it will be fully supported. I plan to upgrade my CPU/mobo in the coming months, but I need to upgrade to Windows 10 as soon as possible, so I was looking at a new SSD to go with it.

 

[UsandThem]

Yes, that motherboard has two M.2 slots, however they are PCIe 2.0, and not PCIe 3.0 slots, so your speed will limited:
(10 Gb/s vs 32 Gb/s).

Factor in the 250 GB version of the 970 EVO is slower than the larger capacities (500 GB and up), it might be wiser to buy a 500GB SATA SSD, and move to a NVMe drive when you upgrade your motherboard.

Here is a post where a user shows the speed differences between the different PCIe gen 2 and PCIe gen 3:

http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r31882576-SSD-speeds-nvme-on-PCIE-Gen3-x4-vs-Gen2-x2-vs-SATA3

The NVMe drive will still be faster than the SATA SSD, but by a much closer margin than if your board supported gen 3.

 

[mnewsham]

Hard to find any hard evidence, but I THINK the Asus Z97-A only provides PCIe 2.0 lanes to the M.2 slot. It's hard to confirm this though as none of their specifications I can find actually outright say.

If that's the case you will be limited in speed, it will be faster than SATA but limited compared to modern M.2 slots.

 

[UsandThem]

Hard to find any hard evidence, but I THINK the Asus Z97-A only provides PCIe 2.0 lanes to the M.2 slot. It's hard to confirm this though as none of their specifications I can find actually outright say.

If that's the case you will be limited in speed, it will be faster than SATA but limited compared to modern M.2 slots.

For whatever reason, Asus doesn't list it under their specifications tab.

But if you scroll down on the overview page, it says:

With two native PCI Express 2.0 bandwidth, M.2 supports up to 10Gbit/s data-transfer speeds. It is the perfect choice for an operating system drive, making your whole PC work that much faster. It supports Intel® Rapid Storage Technology to ensure even faster access to data, refresh applications automatically and awake from sleep in just seconds!*

 

[mnewsham]

For whatever reason, Asus doesn't list it under their specifications tab.

But if you scroll down on the overview page, it says:

That's pretty lame, but fair enough i guess.

OP if you aren't using too many PCIe devices i'd look into using a PCIe m.2 adapter.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01FU9JS94

That would give full speed to the M.2 drive, but would potentially force your GPU to run at x8 instead of x16, which wont really affect much, but can cause some GPU slowdown in the realm of under 2-3% generally.

 

[DrewSG3]

Thanks for the help guys. I ended up going with the 500GB EVO and with a BIOS update I was able to get it up and running.