M.2 for motherboard

[rkunati]

I have a prebuilt system from microcenter, which I am looking to upgrade the storage. According to msinfo32; I have a Z590-A Pro motherboard. My existing drive is WDBA3V0010BNC-WRSN. If my existing drive is a NVME M.2 does that mean the other 2 M.2 slots are also NVME and not M.2 SATA? Also, because it is a prebuilt, I do not have any stand offs or screws. According to Microcenter, the difference between a Samsung M.2 NVME and a Samsung 2.4 SATA SSD is about $10; I am planning to use this new 1 TB drive to store games I download from Steam, would it matter which one I get? 

 

 

[Dedayog]

Is this your motherboard?   Did you even bother looking it up?  Microcenter builds come with spec sheets for all the parts, as far as I recall. 

 

https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/Z590-A-PRO/Specification

 

[rkunati]

1 hour ago, Dedayog said:

Is this your motherboard?   Did you even bother looking it up?  Microcenter builds come with spec sheets for all the parts, as far as I recall. 

 

https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/Z590-A-PRO/Specification

 

I looked it up and saw that page, for the second and third slots; it says PCIe and SATA. I am not sure what it means. Also, do you have any thoughts on the rest of the stuff I am asking?

[Dedayog]

11 minutes ago, rkunati said:

I looked it up and saw that page, for the second and third slots; it says PCIe and SATA. I am not sure what it means. Also, do you have any thoughts on the rest of the stuff I am asking?

It simply means the slots can handle PCIe AND SATA.  "Supports up to" means it'll work.

 

So any NVMe drive, or SATA M.2 will work.  Any SATA 2.5" drive will work too, as the motherboard has ample SATA ports.

 

For gaming, SATA or NVMe is up to you, no real benefit.  It's why I still run SATA M.2 drives, not worth upgrading. 

 

You can get standoffs and screws on Amazon or at Microcenter (assuming you live near one and bought the PC in the store).