motherboard M.2 Drive With Z97X Fatal1ty Killer

[Volvo240]

Hey, So I am building a budget PC based on the motherboard in the title. I have figured out everything but the SSD. I know it is SATAe, or PCIe 2.0x2. This should be capable of 1,250MB/s, which is ok for cheaper SSDs. My questions are:

A: Will I get this speed provided I have a capable NVMe?

B: Is there anything in the BIOS of this board that will allow me to maybe use more PCIe lanes, (like PCIe 2. X4) or make it run faster?

C: What drives will not be bottlenecked by this interface? I was thinking like a WD Black 2017 or Toshiba XG5 (512GB).

D: Aside from those insane AsRock boards, (Extreme6 and Extreme9), is there a Z97 board that will allow an M.2 SSD run faster?

I do not want a SATA or PCIe adapter card, as I am going for a specific look with this build, and I need as many free PCIe and SATA connections as possible for future products.

Thanks in advance and stay safe!

[Electronics Wizardy]

A. Yea you can hit those 1250mB/s speeds on yoru board.

 

B. You can use a pcie to m.2 adapter, and get the full gen 3 x 4 speeds from your drive. This will drop your gpu from x16 to x8 though.

 

C. Basically all modern drives will be bottlenecked, id just get a lower end drive like a 980 or a sn550.

 

D. Not really as its a z97 limited. I don't know of a board that will use cpu lanes for m.2 on z97, but ther emight be one.

 

 

Also the speed won't matter for almost all uses, basically nothing uses the peak sequentical speeds of the drve.

[BobVonBob]

One thing to note before I answer your questions, unless you're doing very storage heavy tasks the speed of the drive doesn't matter much above SATA 3 speeds. Startup, game loading times, and app launch speeds end up being almost identical between a SATA 3 SSD and a PCIe 4.0x4 SSD.

 

A. Yes.

B. No. SATA Express only does 2 PCIe lanes.

C. Unless you find a great deal on an old drive, just get a drive without caring whether it will be bottlenecked. The sustained performance will be better and if you ever reuse it in a newer build you won't end up with the drive becoming the problem instead of the interface.

D. I don't believe so. You can take a look at Z97 boards that came out later in the life cycle, but I think most manufacturers were just repurposing SATA Express lanes.

[Volvo240]

So, I can hit the full 1.25GBps on this board? If so, I am set for a drive.

[Volvo240]

In the M.2 slot?