Question M2 x4 slot on B360

[noob25002]

Hello,

I have an Asus TUF B360-PLUS GAMING and would like to add an PCIe x4 nvme ssd drive. The manual states that the board only supports up to x2 PCIe(https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/TUF-B360-PLUS-GAMING/specifications/). Seeing how the B360 has 12 (additional) PCIe lanes (https://ark.intel.com/products/133332/Intel-B360-Chipset) if I use only one ssd will it not route all the possible lanes to this slot? Or is it hardwired?

Thank you.

 

[UsandThem]

if I use only one ssd will it not route all the possible lanes to this slot? Or is it hardwired?

No it won't. That M.2 slot will only run at PCIe 3.0 x2. It's intentionally gimped on certain chipset to get people to move up to a higher-end board.

https://techreport.com/review/33420/exploring-intel-h370-b360-and-h310-chipsets

Compared to H370, the B360 chipset can only offer as many as 12 USB ports, and only six of those can be USB 3.0. Like H370, B360 boards can offer as many as four USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports from their chipsets as H370 boards. B360 only gives mobo manufacturers 24 high-speed I/O lanes to route, of which only 12 can be used as chipset PCIe 3.0 lanes. B360 boards will also lose the ability to RAID SATA devices in any form without an add-on controller of some kind, but they'll still support Intel's Optane Memory devices for hard-drive caching.

 

[noob25002]

No it won't. That M.2 slot will only run at PCIe 3.0 x2. It's intentionally gimped on certain chipset to get people to move up to a higher-end board.

https://techreport.com/review/33420/exploring-intel-h370-b360-and-h310-chipsets

Ironically the board I'm looking at is Gigabyte B360M HD3, which is cheaper than this one.

 

[piasabird]

Helps to read the specifications first. M.2 slots can be confusing at best. Some are Md and some are 3d and some NVME slots do not support the cheaper SATA versions that run at SATA 3.0 speed. It will probably run as fast as a 2.5 SSD. Maybe do not buy an expensive NVME, but purchase the SATA version that is cheaper.