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Z390 Auros Ultra - M.2 Question

Fawkees

Hi, this is my first post here... I've been googleing around for some time now and I dont seem to find an answer to my question...

I'm just building a computer, but I've never installed a M.2 drive before. I've purchased the Z390 Auros Ultra and a Samsung 970 EVO 1TB  NVMe M.2 SSD, which I want to use as System Drive. It is obviously a PCIe drive, not a SATA drive. However, the motherboard has a M2M slot, M2A slot, and M2P slot, which are illustrated on page 20-21 of the manual:

 

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It's not clear to me which of the three slots I should install the Samsung drive in. Considering that I maybe want to install a 3rd graphics card (2 running in SLI already) to serve the 2nd monitor and to take some load of the SLI to have more power for the main gaming monitor I guess I dont want to go for the M2P slot?

Are the M2M and M2A slots slower than the M2P slot? And what kinda confuses me is that, assuming Im reading the table correctly, the use of the M2A slot has absolut no effect on the SATA3 ports nor the PCIEX4 lane... which is kinda odd.

Can somebody out there tell me if I'm going the right way installing it on the M2A slot? Thanks :)

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Install in any of the slots, although if you can I would choose one that isn't under a graphics card. All of them will be the same speed except for in the case of slot M2P while you also have something installed in the PCIe 4x slot, which you wouldn't install a graphics card in.

 

Just as an aside, installing a 3rd graphics card isn't going to give you any performance benefit. A monitor without any 3D acceleration going on makes literally no difference to performance.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

 

Desktop:

Intel Core i7-11700K | Noctua NH-D15S chromax.black | ASUS ROG Strix Z590-E Gaming WiFi  | 32 GB G.SKILL TridentZ 3200 MHz | ASUS TUF Gaming RTX 3080 | 1TB Samsung 980 Pro M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSD | 2TB WD Blue M.2 SATA SSD | Seasonic Focus GX-850 Fractal Design Meshify C Windows 10 Pro

 

Laptop:

HP Omen 15 | AMD Ryzen 7 5800H | 16 GB 3200 MHz | Nvidia RTX 3060 | 1 TB WD Black PCIe 3.0 SSD | 512 GB Micron PCIe 3.0 SSD | Windows 11

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Don't use M2M, that cuts two SATA ports of the back which you could have avoided.

 

M2A doesnt have connection sacrifices, but I'm not sure about the cooling situation.

 

M2P only has a tiny connection sacrifice (display adapters dont care if there;s PCIe x16 or PCIe x1, rendering your desktop is hardly any work) so that's a good spot if M2A is filled or cooling there sucks.

 

1 hour ago, Fawkees said:

Considering that I maybe want to install a 3rd graphics card (2 running in SLI already) to serve the 2nd monitor and to take some load of the SLI to have more power for the main gaming monitor I guess I dont want to go for the M2P slot?

3rd GPU wont help reduce load for the gaming cards at all, rendering your desktop is just too light of a task. It only makes sense when you have so many monitors that you need more ports.

 

1 hour ago, Fawkees said:

Are the M2M and M2A slots slower than the M2P slot?

Nope, everything connected to the M.2 slots, SATA ports, ethernet, the small PCIe slots, bottom PCIe slot, USB ports etc are all connected to the chipset. The chipset then has to squeeze all that through a PCIe 3.0 x4 pipeline to the CPU. As long as all M.2 slots support up to PCIe 3.0 x4 speeds, then they are effectively the same (Aside from stuff that gets disabled).

 

1 hour ago, Fawkees said:

And what kinda confuses me is that, assuming Im reading the table correctly, the use of the M2A slot has absolut no effect on the SATA3 ports nor the PCIEX4 lane... which is kinda odd.

This is pretty common for high end stuff. Only the cheap stuff make you lose ports and slots whenever you add something.

CPU: i7-2600K 4751MHz 1.44V (software) --> 1.47V at the back of the socket Motherboard: Asrock Z77 Extreme4 (BCLK: 103.3MHz) CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D15 RAM: Adata XPG 2x8GB DDR3 (XMP: 2133MHz 10-11-11-30 CR2, custom: 2203MHz 10-11-10-26 CR1 tRFC:230 tREFI:14000) GPU: Asus GTX 1070 Dual (Super Jetstream vbios, +70(2025-2088MHz)/+400(8.8Gbps)) SSD: Samsung 840 Pro 256GB (main boot drive), Transcend SSD370 128GB PSU: Seasonic X-660 80+ Gold Case: Antec P110 Silent, 5 intakes 1 exhaust Monitor: AOC G2460PF 1080p 144Hz (150Hz max w/ DP, 121Hz max w/ HDMI) TN panel Keyboard: Logitech G610 Orion (Cherry MX Blue) with SteelSeries Apex M260 keycaps Mouse: BenQ Zowie FK1

 

Model: HP Omen 17 17-an110ca CPU: i7-8750H (0.125V core & cache, 50mV SA undervolt) GPU: GTX 1060 6GB Mobile (+80/+450, 1650MHz~1750MHz 0.78V~0.85V) RAM: 8+8GB DDR4-2400 18-17-17-39 2T Storage: HP EX920 1TB PCIe x4 M.2 SSD + Crucial MX500 1TB 2.5" SATA SSD, 128GB Toshiba PCIe x2 M.2 SSD (KBG30ZMV128G) gone cooking externally, 1TB Seagate 7200RPM 2.5" HDD (ST1000LM049-2GH172) left outside Monitor: 1080p 126Hz IPS G-sync

 

Desktop benching:

Cinebench R15 Single thread:168 Multi-thread: 833 

SuperPi (v1.5 from Techpowerup, PI value output) 16K: 0.100s 1M: 8.255s 32M: 7m 45.93s

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Thanks for the replies :)

 

 

all of the slots have a cooling bracket on top so cooling shouldn't be an issue. I'll go for the M2A slot then

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