- Jun 30, 2004
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NVME drives became viable options just before I built my Z170 system. I can only guess about recent boards, but it seems they offer you about two M.2 slots.
The motherboard manual notes that one of the slots shares bandwidth with SATA devices on your mobo SATA controller. The remaining slot, as also explained by the manual, shares bandwidth with "U.2" or PCI-Express. When I installed my first NVMEs, I just used PCIE slots of x4 or greater, with $20 expansion cards.
I'm still not entirely clear about this. If I use the slot sharing bandwidth with SATA, is that slot primarily for M.2 drives called "SATA"? Or can either slot take an NVME?
The motherboard manual notes that one of the slots shares bandwidth with SATA devices on your mobo SATA controller. The remaining slot, as also explained by the manual, shares bandwidth with "U.2" or PCI-Express. When I installed my first NVMEs, I just used PCIE slots of x4 or greater, with $20 expansion cards.
I'm still not entirely clear about this. If I use the slot sharing bandwidth with SATA, is that slot primarily for M.2 drives called "SATA"? Or can either slot take an NVME?