M.2 newbie

[Alukis]

I have a msi raider motherboard that supports m.2 turbo as they market it. I am new to the storage market and need to expand my SSD for faster game loads. I have watched Linus videos on m.2 and I'm still lost. How do I know what to buy for my motherboards m.2 slot. The owners manual States

 

• 1 x M.2 port, supports up to 32Gb/s speed**

- M.2 port supports 4.2cm/ 6cm/ 8cm length module

- M.2 PCIe interface does not support RAID 0, RAID1, RAID 5 and RAID 10.

* The SATA Express port or SATA5~6 ports will be unavailable when installing the M.2 (Gen2 x2 mode) module in the M.2 port.

** Intel RST does not support PCIe M.2 SSD with Legacy ROM.

 

can someone point me in the right direction here?

[JohnnyCorporalTech]

looking at the website, the m.2 slot on your motherboard supports both SATA and PCIe SSD's. The only requirement is that are no longer than 80mm. 

 

 

 

[xyameax]

Just now, JohnnyCorporalTech said:

looking at the website, the m.2 slot on your motherboard supports both SATA and PCIe SSD's. The only requirement is that are no longer than 80mm. 

 

 

 

The next thing to look at is what kind of pin setup does it look like. By what Newegg shows, it is an M Pin Card, shown here: 

 

The next thing to note is if you are wanting to install Windows on it as well. If that is the case, get an M.2 that says nVME. This allows for an OS to me installed onto an M.2

[Alukis]

So I was currently looking at WD Black PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe-based SSD 512GB. Seems to be good value? 

[JohnnyCorporalTech]

1 minute ago, xyameax said:

The next thing to look at is what kind of pin setup does it look like. By what Newegg shows, it is an M Pin Card, shown here: 

 

The next thing to note is if you are wanting to install Windows on it as well. If that is the case, get an M.2 that says nVME. This allows for an OS to me installed onto an M.2

The MSI website specifies M, So you can only install M and B+M ssds in the slot, you will not be able to install B ssd's.

 

also X99 does support booting from NVMe ssd's, so you are all right there. 

[xyameax]

3 minutes ago, Alukis said:

So I was currently looking at WD Black PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe-based SSD 512GB. Seems to be good value? 

Not bad of a price considering the performance of the drive. It will be faster than what you currently have as a SATA SSD.

[Ryujin2003]

3 minutes ago, Alukis said:

So I was currently looking at WD Black PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe-based SSD 512GB. Seems to be good value? 

I too was a newbie. Definitely go with NVMe over straight m.2 SAD, non NVMe.

 

I looked at the WD Black, but went with Samsung 960 Evo 500 TH. I don't think the Black had the rrad/write performance, and from some reviews I read, it seemed to be a bit of a disappointment. I can look those up later if you're interested.

 

From my experience in 2.5 SSD, I've learned to go with higher volume. 128gb is definitely not enough, and 240gb still runs out too quickly. I like the 500gb range.

[Alukis]

512GB would be min. I currently have a 250GB SSD, and it's quickly ran out of room when I purchased oculus. Which currently does not give options to install on drive of choice. So I had to move some games off of my main SSD. And the load times of said games seems to have tripled on my normal hd. The m.2 drive would be super convient because I wouldn't have to worry about rearranging any wiring.