B85-G43 Sc with NVMe M.2 via PCI Adapter

[DawidXT]

Hi,

I am planning to add ADATA XPG Spectrix S40G 512GB SSD to my old motherboard B85-G43 Sc ( https://pl.msi.com/Motherboard/B85-G43/Specification ) 

Specification says I have 2 PCI-e x16 one is gen 3.0 (where I have my GPU installed) the second is gen 2.0. But at the same time the manual says the PCI 2.0 supports up to x4 PCI... which confuses me.

 

- Could You please tell me, if I will be having some speeds downgrades with this SSD and my PCI? What kind of adapter will be best choice for this motherboard?

- I know my motherboard does not support NVMe, so I will be having troubles to set this disk as bootable disk, but I read it can be done using Clover Bootloader, which I am used to anyway. 

 

I read that on some PCI Adapters the NVMe speeds are the same as on new motherboards. In my case this is possible? if not, what speeds I will be getting?

 

Sorry for my English,

Dave

 

[homeap5]

Gen is generation, x4 or x1 is multiplier. So you have pcie gen 2 which means speed will be limited a lot compared to pcie gen 4.

 

Gen 2 x1 has 500MB/s, gen 4 x1 - 2TB/s. For higher speed you'll need pcie x4 gen 3 or gen 4.

 

But you also have pcie x4 gen 2 which means speed will be about 2TB/s (4 x 500). Not enough to operate at full speed of your drive, but still fast enough. If card is x4 of course.

[DawidXT]

Thank You for detail explanation. This SSD drive at normal conditions has 3.2GB/s read speed and 2.2GB/s write speed (tested on my nephew pc he owns this SSD). 

I am still confused , because it says I have two PCI-E X16, so is it X16 or X4?

I don't understand which part of the manual or specification says true...

[homeap5]

As I wrote - you have 2.0 x4. And as I wrote, this give you 2TB/s which is slower than your ssd can operate. But that doesn't mean it's slow! It's still 4 times faster than normal SSD. And you'll not notice any difference anyway except when you start working with big files like video editing. If it's just for system and games, you may even consider save your money and buy good normal SSD.

 

One small advantage when you're using slower pcie - your m.2 will be (maybe) cooler.

[DawidXT]

Yeah, but as You say it will still be faster than normal SSD, and I will keep this NVMe for new PC with me, that's why I want to buy more future drive.

Thank You for explanation and Your help.

 

edit: one more thing I read just now. In some of the adapters I've read the note info by seller "if the motherboard's chipset is older than 9th gen, ssd shouldn't be used in PCI X4". My chipset is Intel B85, so I believe it's 8th gen... Is the info true? why it shouldn't be used in this case? what would happen?

[homeap5]

Sound like some crap. Don't worry about it. Imo of course.