M.2 bottlenecking?

[asiannoodles1]

Planning on perhaps getting an M.2 Samsung 950 Pro, but I've read a few articles where motherboards "bottleneck" the SSDs to only run on SATA 3 speeds.

Are there no Z170 motherboards that support the full speed of the SSDs? Should I just go with an X99? 

And how do I tell if the SSD will be fully compatible with the motherboard in terms of speed so that it doesn't get held back?

[Aytex]

Download crystal disc and run a speedcheck, check google benchmarks and if the speeds are the same then your good

 

Though i doubt the m,2 will be bottleneck

[asiannoodles1]

1 minute ago, Aytex said:

Download crystal disc and run a speedcheck, check google benchmarks and if the speeds are the same then your good

Isn't there a way to check BEFORE I buy the parts?

[Aytex]

1 minute ago, daeheeahn said:

Isn't there a way to check BEFORE I buy the parts?

I don't see anything about m,2 having bottleneck on z170 motherboards...

Mind linking me where you saw this?

 

[Groundedbeef]

I have a z170 and im running full speed on my m.2

[zMeul]

your understanding of m.2 is flawed - m.2 is just a form factor

m.2 SSDs come in two variants:

• SATA
• PCIe

Z170 mobos and X99 (with a BIOS update) , both support booting from m.2 PCIe SSDs

[VincentiusIV]

Not sure where you got that bottleneck idea from, but I think you are confused with the fact that some motherboards can't boot from NVMe drives. 

 

And besides, it's not like you will notice the speed above 500mb/s since the drive is very likely to be bottlenecked by another component.

[Guest]

M.2 is a connector.

Whether that connector is attached to a PCIe lanes or a SATA controller depends on your motherboard. See your motherboard spec sheet for the answer.

[asiannoodles1]

Alright, thanks guys. M.2 is pretty new to me so I misunderstood a lot of stuff about it. Thanks for clearing it up.