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Who makes a NvMe PCIe 16 X 3.0 bootable SSD?

Harry_Wild

Harry_Wild

Senior member
I guess I want to buy a NvMe PCI e 16 x 3.0 Express Card and want it to be a bootable SSD with out the motherboard having NvME support in the BIOS itself. I thought I read sometime ago that Intel had such a SSD Card but it was very expensive. Have other manufactures along with Intel release such a SSD PCIe card?
 
What motherboard are you using?

If your board is old, it you might be better off just buying a fast SATA SSD.

Plextor makes some SSDs on add-in cards that might work for that. Otherwise, you can buy just about any NVMe drive and a separate PCIe add-in card, but depending on the motherboard, this might not work.

Here's a thread where someone with an X58 motherboard bought a 950 PRO and an add-in card, and it worked fine for them.

https://www.overclockers.com/forums...m-2-NVMe-drives-with-legacy-PCIe-boot-support
 
If such a thing exist, it wouldn't be for us mere consumers.😱 Instead something HPC and Data Centers, and the like will have uses for something like this.
 
UsandThem said:
What motherboard are you using?

If your board is old, it you might be better off just buying a fast SATA SSD.

Plextor makes some SSDs on add-in cards that might work for that. Otherwise, you can buy just about any NVMe drive and a separate PCIe add-in card, but depending on the motherboard, this might not work.

Here's a thread where someone with an X58 motherboard bought a 950 PRO and an add-in card, and it worked fine for them.

https://www.overclockers.com/forums...m-2-NVMe-drives-with-legacy-PCIe-boot-support
Click to expand...

My motherboard is a proprietary Lenovo ThinkStation P300 SFF model. Running an i7 4790 CPU. Current already have a Samsung 860 1TB EVO SSD as the boot drive. Love to use a M.2 NvMe SSD as my boot drive. I read that the NvMe is a around 6-7 X faster then the SATA III throughput limit of 600MB/second.
 
Harry_Wild said:
My motherboard is a proprietary Lenovo ThinkStation P300 SFF model. Running an i7 4790 CPU. Current already have a Samsung 860 1TB EVO SSD as the boot drive. Love to use a M.2 NvMe SSD as my boot drive. I read that the NvMe is a around 6-7 X faster then the SATA III throughput limit of 600MB/second.
Click to expand...
In the vast majority of use cases you will not likely see any difference.
 
whm1974 said:
In the vast majority of use cases you will not likely see any difference.
Click to expand...

Exactly. The 1TB 860 EVO is a fast, if not the fastest SATA SSD out there.

Now if you are constantly writing huge files, or moving large files on a regular basis, that's one thing. But if you use your PC to play games and do normal desktop stuff, you aren't going to see all that extra speed. If anything, if you need the PCIe drive to be bootable outside of your BIOS, your boot time will likely be longer than the SSD you already have.
 
UsandThem said:
Exactly. The 1TB 860 EVO is a fast, if not the fastest SATA SSD out there.

Now if you are constantly writing huge files, or moving large files on a regular basis, that's one thing. But if you use your PC to play games and do normal desktop stuff, you aren't going to see all that extra speed. If anything, if you need the PCIe drive to be bootable outside of your BIOS, your boot time will likely be longer than the SSD you already have.
Click to expand...
I wonder what the rest of specs of the OP's system are?
 
I am currently using the Intel HD4600 on board graphic chip. But I am going to be upgrading this it a NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1050 Ti GDDR5 4GB graphic card to future proof it for 4K-8K streaming videos. Plus, I think it will make the web browsing a little faster too.
 
You can leverage VROC (on motherboards that support 4x4x4x4 bifurcation) and do something like this but it is crazy expensive and the $/GB ratio is kind of terrible.

That said, the 4KQ1T1 is far better than any NVMe NAND based SSD and the sequential speed is insane.

https://imgur.com/sAleNqw

Another option is to use something like 4 970 EVO SSDs to build a far larger drive but RAID 0 on NVMe makes for some pretty crappy 4KQ1T1 speed although the sequential speed will be unmatched.
 
Heard rumors that they NvMe community is working on a self bootable M.2 independent of the lazy OEM motherboard manufacturers like Lenovo who say it is too much work to add M.2 support to their bios of existing users PCs that did not have M.2 slot.
 
Harry_Wild said:
Heard rumors that they NvMe community is working on a self bootable M.2 independent of the lazy OEM motherboard manufacturers like Lenovo who say it is too much work to add M.2 support to their bios of existing users PCs that did not have M.2 slot.
Click to expand...

That's an interesting idea. I guess they are using something like option ROMs in RAID cards.
 
nosirrahx said:
That's an interesting idea. I guess they are using something like option ROMs in RAID cards.
Click to expand...
Samsung one of their first NvMe SSD had this capability to do that without BIOS support. I believe it was a 950 Pro. It is in the Lenovo Community Support where a user of the same P300 as mine got it and just found out it worked. Lenovo associate initiationally there were no solutions to this problem other then get a new Lenovo P310!
 
For you that also have Motherboard with legacy BIOS, eventhough the mobo doesnt have nvme slot, by using NVME m.2 with PCIE adapter we can still use nvme m.2 drive.

If you guys think there wont be any speed improvement, by using NVME compared to SSD in old mobo, I think you are wrong, even in old mobo which still have PCIE 2.0, using NVME is still 400% faster than using fastest SSD.

Here is comparison I took by my self with my system comparing WD Black, Samsung 860 EVO and ADATA SX8200.
System used :
ASUS P6X56D Premium
Intel Xeon X5680 @4,4Ghz
4x8GB DDR3 @triple Channel
Marvel Controller SATA 3 --> 2 drive --> SAMSUNG 860 EVO 500GB (Boot Drive) & HD WD Black 1TB
ADATA SX8200 PRO 512GB connected in 2n PCIE slot with PCIE adapter

Collage 2020-02-21 13_37_22.jpg

NVME definitely faster in X58 compared to SSD, NVME is faster 400% from SSD, and 1600% faster from HD, that is why it should worth to try to use NVME even on old mobo

However, booting from NVME drive in old mobo is another issue 🙂.
 
I own a Dell R720. It has an EFI BIOS but does not support booting from NVMe cards natively. However, you can go get Clover: https://sourceforge.net/projects/cloverefiboot/
www.win-raid.com

[Guide] NVMe-boot without modding your UEFI/BIOS (Clover-EFI bootloader method)

EDIT by Fernando: @all visitors of this thread: Since the thread opener Nyctophilia hasn’t been online for a very long time and his guide may not be up-to-date anymore, I recommend to read >this< additional statement written by our Forum member sibliss. Users, who have any problems or questions...
www.win-raid.com www.win-raid.com

Boot to something locally like a USB drive or SD card that has Clover, load the NVMe driver, map the drives, and bingo! I have a system that now boots and runs from a small Optane drive.
 
i am wondering if its possible to do it though a SAS 12G /w boot ROM card connected to a U.2 nvme.
Well the SAS 12G card will break your wallet, and the U.2 nVME will leave you almost homeless to try tho. 😱
 
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