Setting up a boot Nvm ssd on older motherboard

[HardwareNoob]

Hi, so as the title says I have a MSI H97 PC mate Motherboard (i have the latest BIOS btw ) and I wanted to use a Samsung 970 EVO plus nvme m.2 SSD as a boot drive to avoid getting a new copy of windows 10 or buying a sata ssd.
I bought a Sabrent NVMe m.2  to pcie adapter and the BIOS detects the sdd and i can select as boot option but it can actually boot from it (in this nvme to pcie adapter).
I happen to get a nvme m.2 to USB adpater and i can boot from there fine but the adatper is a lowner and i have to give it back.

I was wondering if any of you had a similar situation with an older motherboard and if you managed to fix it somehow by custom BIOS, changing the UEFI or running a NVME to sata and run the m.2 ssd at sata speed (some sort of magic maybe).

Is there anything i can do?

Motherboard link (no, it doesn't have any m.2 slots):
https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/support/h97-pc-mate

Thanks for your time
 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Do you mean it can't boot from it?

 

That board might of never gotten the bios update for nvme. IN that case, id just get a sata ssd, it will work fine in this system and new systems aswell.

[WhitetailAni]

There is no way to boot a PCIe storage device on H97. The only chipset on LGA1150 to support NVMe booting is Z97, but it's more expensive.

[TetraSky]

1 hour ago, HardwareNoob said:

I wanted to use a Samsung 970 EVO plus nvme m.2 SSD as a boot drive to avoid getting a new copy of windows 10 or buying a sata ssd.

If you're implanting this drive from another PC, you will still need to reactivate it.
Activation is tied to the motherboard, not the drive.

[HardwareNoob]

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

That board might of never gotten the bios update for nvme. IN that case, id just get a sata ssd, it will work fine in this system and new systems aswell.

Yes, it probably never got support to begin with.
 

1 hour ago, FakeKGB said:

There is no way to boot a PCIe storage device on H97. The only chipset on LGA1150 to support NVMe booting is Z97, but it's more expensive.

Yeah, i don't think it is worth it to buy a Z97 board to put my 4790k on it
 

24 minutes ago, TetraSky said:

If you're implanting this drive from another PC, you will still need to reactivate it.
Activation is tied to the motherboard, not the drive.

Oh, my bad, I thought that, since it was activated with my microsoft acount i thought i chould just move the drive.
I mean I can boot from it via USB fine and it says that it is activated but then again it might come and bite me in the future

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 minutes ago, HardwareNoob said:

Oh, my bad, I thought that, since it was activated with my microsoft acount i thought i chould just move the drive.
I mean I can boot from it via USB fine and it says that it is activated but then again it might come and bite me in the future

You can normally move the activiation to a new system by putting the key or the microsoft account in the new rig, no same ssd is needed

[Zodiark1593]

1 hour ago, FakeKGB said:

There is no way to boot a PCIe storage device on H97. The only chipset on LGA1150 to support NVMe booting is Z97, but it's more expensive.

Not true, though this is purely dependent on mobo manufacturers. Asus, for example, released a firmware update to allow booting from an NVME drive. Though Haswell CPUs don’t exactly have a ton of PCI-e 3.0 lanes, so depending on mobo configuration, even if you can boot from nvme, you may not be able to utilize the drive’s full performance. 
 

 

Source: My own system with an Asus H97-Plus is using an nvme drive for boot. 

[WhitetailAni]

1 hour ago, Zodiark1593 said:

Not true, though this is purely dependent on mobo manufacturers. Asus, for example, released a firmware update to allow booting from an NVME drive. Though Haswell CPUs don’t exactly have a ton of PCI-e 3.0 lanes, so depending on mobo configuration, even if you can boot from nvme, you may not be able to utilize the drive’s full performance. 
 

 

Source: My own system with an Asus H97-Plus is using an nvme drive for boot. 

Ah, thanks for that!
I'll have to edit that then (I'm compiling a list of all known chipsets since Slot 1/Slot A to present) and I had it listed as H97 doesn't support NVMe, but Z97 does.

[shamus20]

On 4/19/2021 at 2:27 PM, FakeKGB said:

Ah, thanks for that!
I'll have to edit that then (I'm compiling a list of all known chipsets since Slot 1/Slot A to present) and I had it listed as H97 doesn't support NVMe, but Z97 does.

sorry about updating this thread when it is old, i just wanted to confirm for anyone looking. Asus H97E-M (bios ver 2702) does support NVME this should help with your 2 year old list