Are 1x pcie slot m.2 adapters any good?

[Dramengo]

I have a Small Form factor Computer that I am wanting to put an 240 GB ssd of some sort in to speed up the operating system and some old games (Morrowind, X3, and the like).
my only options are in order of most to least preferred:
to use a m.2 adapter that will fit in a 1x pcie slot that is also low profile
remove the slim optical drive and use a power adapter from its power to power a 2.5 sdd
Replace my 500 GB HDD with a 500 GB+ SSD
Also money is tight.

[DrMacintosh]

Question is if you use the optical drive? Personally I haven't used mine in a couple months. 

 

2.5" SSDs are usually cheaper than M.2 drives as well. I think swapping out the optical drive would be the cheapest way to go. 

[LukeLinusFanFic]

Are you sure there's no other place you can stick a 2.5" drive? Even double sided tape it...

[TheKDub]

5 minutes ago, Dramengo said:

I have a Small Form factor Computer that I am wanting to put an 240 GB ssd of some sort in to speed up the operating system and some old games (Morrowind, X3, and the like).
my only options are in order of most to least preferred:
to use a m.2 adapter that will fit in a 1x pcie slot that is also low profile
remove the slim optical drive and use a power adapter from its power to power a 2.5 sdd
Replace my 500 GB HDD with a 500 GB+ SSD
Also money is tight.

Pcie 3.0 1x is capable of about 8Gb/s (approx 1GB/s), so you're good with SATA based SSD, NVMe drives might be capped a bit.

 

I'd just replace the HDD with an SSD and use the same power/data (assuming your computer uses SATA and not ATA)

[Dramengo]

The computer I am wanting to do this in is an SFF Dell Optiplex 3020, it only has one full sized sata power and one mini sata power for the slim-optical drive. It is pretty cramped in there. Also I have a 3 year old that like shoving random objects in big holes in my computers, I am not aware of a 2.5 in drive caddy that fits were the slim-odd sits in this case so I can keep her from doing that.

 

[Guest]

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[Paskiz]

Not exactly the same thing, but I myself got a Pcie x1 to 1x3.0 Sata card and it has a mount for one regular 2.5"HDD. I put a SSD drive there which worked about 80% of the speed as it would compared to directly plugging it into a sata port (Crystal disk gave about 440/390, versus normal sata 550/500).
So I would suspect the same kind of speed downgrade would happen with Pcie 1x to M.2 adapter.