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Advice on M.2 drives

H3ndo08
By H3ndo08
in Storage Devices
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Go to solution Solved by kokosnh,

 direct storage - can't tell, till its out, buying Gen 4 now will cost more, then when direct storage is out  

For the M.2.  
Only the First M.2 (M2_1) is Gen 4 x4 (and only with supported CPU, with not supported it's gen 3)
Second M.2 (M2_2) is Gen 3 x4 (and is only full x4 speed when there's nothing in PCI_E2 (PCH)  and PCI_E3 (PCH)). 
SATA are not affected by installing M.2 NVMe from what I read.

Posted

Hi there,

 

I currently have a MSI MPG B550 Edge Wifi mobo which has two M.2 slots on it. I believe they are both gen 4 as long as there is no other device installed in any of the PCIE slots (except primary one for GPU). I currently have a gen 3 M.2 as my boot drive in the first slot and I'm looking to buy another M.2 as a drive for games. Is it worth purchasing a gen4 drive with a view to direct storage becoming a thing in the next couple of years? And also would it be best to keep the gen3 as a boot drive and use the gen4 as the game storage (with direct storage in mind), or is it always best to have the fastest drive as your boot?

 

The second part to my query would be: if I install another M.2 will it have any affect on GPU performance or on capacity for SATA ports etc? I've read through the manual and can't see anything that would suggest that the number of available SATA ports decreases with an extra M.2 - however I am doubting myself as I'm sure on an old mobo I had this was a thing. I just don't want to splash out on a shiny new drive if it is just going to cause issues or it won't work as I think it will.

 

Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks very much in advance.

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  • Solution

 direct storage - can't tell, till its out, buying Gen 4 now will cost more, then when direct storage is out  

For the M.2.  
Only the First M.2 (M2_1) is Gen 4 x4 (and only with supported CPU, with not supported it's gen 3)
Second M.2 (M2_2) is Gen 3 x4 (and is only full x4 speed when there's nothing in PCI_E2 (PCH)  and PCI_E3 (PCH)). 
SATA are not affected by installing M.2 NVMe from what I read.

   
 
 
 
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