@jools thank you for that link, I was aware that it would only run with 2 PCIe lanes as opposed to 4, but that is still faster than SATA and the SSD drive was cheaper than others at the time time of purchase.
I'm going to try unplugging all other drives and seeing if I can install windows onto the M.2. If not I will update the BIOS - this didn't go well last time freezing at 18% but no damage was done and this motherboard comes with a backup BIOS, so no risk of bricking the board; the current BIOS version is from 2013/2014 and the latest is from 2016 and adds support for newer processors which I may upgrade to next.