Questions about SSDS

[Divisiondoorway1]

So my friends birthday is coming up and I wanted to get him a m.2 ssd but his computer is not old but not new either, I recently just bought myself some WD Black sn750s, and when I was buying them I noticed different speeds, with gen 4 at around 7000 MB/s, I checked my motherboard and found that it supports Gen 3 so I made sure to get that.

Anyways my friends motherboard is a Asus z170-k he got it pre-built IBUYPOWER I looked up the manual and it said it supports m.2 but not much else from what I can find (as in gen 3-4), my question is how will I know what speeds it will support?

Because if it will only support around 500 MB/s then I figure it might be easier to just go with a 2.5 SSD instead, or I might look into getting a Adapter so that we can get him a NVME gen 3 drive that I just bought, I would like to get the highest speeds possible if its not to much of a hassle since he plans on upgrading within a year or two. 

 

Here is the link to the Asus site with the manual I was looking at https://www.asus.com/us/SupportOnly/Z170-K/HelpDesk_Manual/

[Lurick]

It's going to support Gen 3 speeds, PCIe gen 4 isn't supported on Intel until much later.

 

Honestly, unless you have an EXTREME need for fast speeds on an NVMe SSD and can make use of those speeds it's NOT going to make a difference over a SATA based SSD in most cases, however M.2 slots can either accept SATA or NVMe (sometimes both) and there is a difference so make sure you don't get a SATA M.2 only to find out the M.2 slot is NVMe only.

[Divisiondoorway1]

7 minutes ago, Lurick said:

It's going to support Gen 3 speeds, PCIe gen 4 isn't supported on Intel until much later.

 

Honestly, unless you have an EXTREME need for fast speeds on an NVMe SSD and can make use of those speeds it's NOT going to make a difference over a SATA based SSD in most cases, however M.2 slots can either accept SATA or NVMe (sometimes both) and there is a difference so make sure you don't get a SATA M.2 only to find out the M.2 slot is NVMe only.

For the motherboard manual it says that "it allows you to install a m.2 (ngff) Ssd modual" it also states that "it will support 2280,2260,2242 and pcie or sata devices. Does this mean that I will be able to buy SAMSUNG 980 M.2 2280 1TB PCI-Express 3.0 x4 and it will support the speeds fully?

[kokosnh]

from manual it's 32Gbps key M (socket 3), so PCI-e 3.0 x4
But samsung 980 is DRAMless SSD, think twice before buying it.

key M, only means that it is "up to" 4 PCI-e lanes, the 32Gbps speed with that chipset define it's PCI-e 3.0 x4. Just to be clear on that, the key M, or socket 3, don't define the PCIe lanes count, only max PCI-e lane count, it can be less then that. Of course key M, or socket 3 does not define the PCIe type as 2.0 / 3.0 / 4.0, it's completely separated from that, just to be clear on that. 

[Divisiondoorway1]

9 minutes ago, kokosnh said:

from manual it's 32Gbps key M (socket 3), so PCI-e 3.0 x4
But samsung 980 is DRAMless SSD, think twice before buying it.

key M, only means that it is "up to" 4 PCI-e lanes, the 32Gbps speed with that chipset define it's PCI-e 3.0 x4

I just watched a video on dram from Linus, I didn't understand it that well but from what I can see buying a drive with DRAM is better than buying one without DRAM, he is going to be using this as a boot drive so I assume it would be a better decision to buy something with DRAM?

[kokosnh]

yes, but there are also WEAK SSD with DRAM, so it's not so simple
It's better to have it, but just having it don't mean it's good.