Question PCIe to M.2 SSD adapter

[HarveySS]

Hi all,

I'll try to keep as brief as possible!

Currently I have an old set-up(just got back into computing) Intel i5-2400 with a Gigabyte H67 motherboard. I will be upgrading in the not too distant future, but for now it has enough performance for what I'm doing (kinda waiting for AM5/DDR5 to mature and drop in price)

So the only thing in the more immediate future I wouldn't mind doing is ditching the old slow 5400rpm 2.5" drive I'm using to store the steam game files in favour of a 1TB SSD. Now it would kind of be a waste to go and buy a 2.5" ssd now when in 6-12 months time I have a motherboard with 2x M.2 slots and so would rather buy a gen 3 1TB M.2 now with a pcie slot adapter, then I can just drop the m.2 into the newer motherboard later on.

Now finally onto the question, will these adapters work in an old system like mine? I've seen a few bits of conflicting information, but a lot of them seem to all say the same ominous thing:

Important Note

This model is for use with NVMe SSD only, SATA M.2 SSD is Not supported.
It supports physical PCIe x4 x8 x16 slot only, PCIe x1 slot is Not supported.
It supports logical/throughput interface up to PCIe x4.
NVMe M.2 SSD requires the use of Intel 9 series (Z97 H97 Z170 X99) or higher version chipset based motherboard with Windows 8 or higher operating system.
If there is a yellow exclamation mark under the Device Manager after installation, you may need to check if additional driver required from SSD manufacturer.
Older motherboard without built-in NVMe M.2 slot can’t support booting operating system from PCI Express.

The first bits make sense, I know there are sata m.2 drives so obvious they won't fit, and needing at least a 4 lane pci slot etc. Its the bit about requiring intel 9 series chipset or newer to work? I have windows 10, but obviously only a H67 chipset. I'm not fussed about it being bootable, its purely going to be a storage drive for game files!

Thanks,

Harvey

 

[HarveySS]

Follow up, Silverstone say this about their adapter:

PCI Express using AHCI (M key) only support to install this type
Used for PCI Express SSDs and interfaced through the AHCI driver and provided PCI Express lanes, providing backward compatibility with widespread SATA support in operating systems at the cost of not delivering optimal performance by using AHCI for accessing PCI Express SSDs.

PCI Express using NVMe (M key) only support to install this type
Used for PCI Express SSDs and interfaced through the NVMe driver and provided PCI Express lanes, as a high-performance and scalable host controller interface designed and optimized especially for interfacing with PCI Express SSDs. NVMe has been designed from the ground up, capitalizing on the low latency and parallelism of PCI Express SSDs, and complementing the parallelism of contemporary CPUs, platforms and applications.


This suggests that the card would run in slower AHCI in older systems like mine, faster NVMe mode in newer ones. Or do they mean there are specific AHCI m.2 drives out there, and that a normal NVMe M.2 card would not function in my older system?

 

[Tech Junky]

NVMe (M key)

This is your key target for the drive type. Use a dumb pcie slot adapter that just passes the signals to the board. It should be cheap.

Looks like it's more dependent on the os starting with w7 and up. Avoid ahci as it's slower. If you're going to buy a drive though you might as well go Gen 4 to reap the speed benefits when you upgrade the whole system later.