m.2 help mb

[daveheath999]

hi need some advice , doing my first pc build and thinking about connecting 3x m.2 to my motherboard which will be MSI b850 edge ti, in the specs it says :

 

M.2_1 Source (From CPU) supports up to PCIe 5.0 x4 , supports 22110/2280 devices

M.2_2 Source (From CPU) supports up to PCIe 5.0 x4 , supports 2280/2260 devices

M.2_3 Source (From Chipset) supports up to PCIe 4.0 x2 , supports 2280/2260 devices

M.2_4 Source (From Chipset) supports up to PCIe 4.0 x4 , supports 2280/2260 devices

 

so the first 2 slots seem fine but the 4th slot seems faster than the 3rd slot so do i put my 3rd drive in slot 4 and if so what are the speeds going to be like "from the chipset" compared to the "from cpu".thanks.

[RONOTHAN##]

What drives are you using, and what's the use case or them? That can have an impact on it. 

 

22 minutes ago, daveheath999 said:

do i put my 3rd drive in slot 4

That's probably what I'd do. Whether it would matter would depend on what you're trying to do though. 

 

22 minutes ago, daveheath999 said:

what are the speeds going to be like "from the chipset" compared to the "from cpu".thanks.

There is a latency benefit on the CPU slots, not really raw bandwidth. That said, even in synthetic benchmarks it's hard to measure, so in practice it doesn't really matter, it's just theoretical that the OS drive is better to be on one of the CPU slots. 

[daveheath999]

ok thanks for the response, not bought the drives yet, my thoughts are windows 11 and linux on 1 drive each dual booting and then a drive to use for files to share between operating systems.

[YoungBlade]

Assuming all of the drives are x4, then yes, the optimal placement would be in slots 1, 2, and 4.

 

There are some x2 drives on the market, though. So if you happen to buy one of those, then putting it in slot 3 would make sense, as it wouldn't benefit from the additional lanes of slot 4.