Switching PCIe ports with NVMe SSD

[ThreePeenSoup]

Can I take my 970 evo out of its current slot and put it into the slot that is under the heat sink on my motherboard without losing data or reinstalling windows?  I plan on putting a second 970 evo 1tb in the exposed m.2 slot used as just a steam library/downloads drive and I want my OS ssd under the heat sink.

Thanks in advance

[Fasauceome]

you can move any SSD's location without losing data, but in the case you outlined, it would be pointless, as you're populating both slots with a 970 evo and M.2 heat sinks are aesthetic only.

[Jurrunio]

That heatsink does nothing functional to the SSD. Blocking it in there reduces airflow in the first place so it wont run meaningfully cooler. It's more of a heat trap than a heat sink.

 

As for performance, if you're on Ryzen then the SSD in the heatsink will run slower because it has to share bandwidth with other devices connected to the chipset. Unless you're on X570 with Zen 2 Ryzen, since the chipset runs PCIe 4.0 instead.

[ThreePeenSoup]

Okay thank you.