Can you run a pcie 3.0 m.2 Nvme and pcie 4.0 m.2 Nvme at the same time?

[Daniel1]

Can you run a pcie 3.0 m.2 Nvme and pcie 4.0 m.2 Nvme at the same time?  I am thinking of getting the Samsung 980 Pro pci 4.0 m.2 Nvme 1 TB as my secondary storage drive (mainly for games).  I am going to still be using my Samsung 970 1 TB pci 3.0 m.2 for my operating system because I do not want to deal with the hassle of installing my host operating system on the pcie 4.0 m.2 nvme drive.  

[RadiatingLight]

Yes, totally possible and will work without issues.

However, keep in mind that on many motherboards, only the first M.2 slot is actually PCIe Gen 4 (not that it really matters too much anyway)

[Master Disaster]

Yep, I'm doing it right now on my Asus X570-F Gaming.

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

Yup. What are your system specs? Depending on the platform, a PCIe 4.0 drive may run at 3.0 speeds, or you might have to be careful about which drive you put in which slot.

[Daniel1]

Just now, HairlessMonkeyBoy said:

Yup. What are your system specs? Depending on the platform, a PCIe 4.0 drive may run at 3.0 speeds, or you might have to be careful about which drive you put in which slot.

Ryzen 9 3900x

Gigabyte x570 Aorus Pro Wifi

32 GB 3200 Corsair LPX Vengeance DDR4

Samsung 970 Evo 1 TB 

[Daniel1]

3 minutes ago, RadiatingLight said:

Yes, totally possible and will work without issues.

However, keep in mind that on many motherboards, only the first M.2 slot is actually PCIe Gen 4 (not that it really matters too much anyway)

What happens if I put the pcie 4.0 drive in a pcie 3.0 slot?  Would the read and write speeds be half? 

[Daniel1]

4 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Yep, I'm doing it right now on my Asus X570-F Gaming.

Are you using the pcie 3.0 drive for the host operating system and the pcie 4.0 drive as the secondary drive?

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

4 minutes ago, Daniel1 said:

Gigabyte x570 Aorus Pro Wifi

In that case you can install them any way you like. Both M.2 slots are 4.0. But if it were me, I'd put the 4.0 drive in the top slot since that one is connected directly to the CPU, and the other is connected to the chipset. Although in practice it should make no difference.

[Daniel1]

3 minutes ago, HairlessMonkeyBoy said:

In that case you can install them any way you like. Both M.2 slots are 4.0. But if it were me, I'd put the 4.0 drive in the top slot since that one is connected directly to the CPU, and the other is connected to the chipset. Although in practice it should make no difference.

If there was a difference (when the pci 4.0 drive is connected to the chipset), would there be a slight performance lost with pcie 4.0 drive?

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

Just now, Daniel1 said:

If there was a difference (when the pci 4.0 drive is connected to the chipset), would there be slight performance lost with pcie 4.0 drive?

I haven't seen any testing done. But I would expect that any difference would be extremely slight, if measurable at all.