NVME Boards

[Mad5cout]

Greetings all.  Looking to scratch together a system in the next 6-9 months.  One of my goals for the upcoming build is to have better storage setup than I have had in the past.  I am seeing that m.2 and NVMe is sorta the way to go with SSDs but noticing that the motherboards haven't really caught up completely to the new tech.  Seems like the main options for NVMe are the intel 4x PCIe cards or Samsung's m.2 NVMe option the 950/951.

 

One of the things I have noticed is that the way motherboards deal with m.2 is really inconsistent.  Some leverage the SATA lanes while others leverage the PCIe lanes.  This is sometimes really hard to figure out and takes some diving into the actual user manuals for each specific board.  In the case of NVMe, the PCIe lanes are needed to get the full potential speed as I understand it.  And while some companies, like ASUS, have claimed they released BIOS updates to make their boards NVMe compatible, many of those boards have their M.2 using the SATA lanes.

Anyway, what I am hoping is that we can come up with a running list of boards that are doing NVMe with the m.2 port using the PCIe lanes and maybe linus could do a video on this clearing things up or any errors in info I may have.

For my part, I am looking for a mATX board and the options are looking REALLY slim.  I was also hoping for something with a PCI 3.1 type C port on it... also seemingly rare at the moment.

Also, question for those who know - are the boards that are really doing this basically the z97 or x99 boards?  My original plan was to go with a z170 to save some money but maybe that just isn't the way to go.  Are there going to be a bunch of products released in the next year that start to do better with all this stuff.