U.2 & SATA Express?

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

How important are these connectors to look for in a motherboard? I believe SATA Express is less important now that M.2 and U.2 are here.

But what about U.2? I thought this was supposed to be the future for plug-in drives, but it seems ASRock, ASUS and MSI don't have U.2 ports on their Z270 boards. I guess we are betting on M.2. being the future instead as it seems every motherboard out there offers 2 or more M.2 slots now.

 

[Bouowmx]

The only U.2 SSDs I can recall are from Intel, ex. SSD 750. So, U.2 probably has limited use for consumers.

 

[13Gigatons]

U.2 is dead.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

So it's basically M.2 or the future Optane?

I guess either way this stuff is very early-stage. Optane could very well fizz out just like SATA Express and U.2. too and we could be left with a brand new protocol in 2 years.

 

[arandomguy]

SATA express is dead for consumers basically.

Optane isn't a protocol.

I'm wondering about U.2 in light of Optane given what products have been currently been revealed (http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/in...mer-optane-ssd-with-high-volume-capacity.html). At least in my case a U.2 product is more appealing than a PCIe add-in card as I wouldn't use the latter. It may be that full Optane products won't be suitable for m.2 due to TDP reasons.