Question on m.2 drive compatibility

[wtf]

I was looking at purchasing the new Razer Blade 2016, and notice they have upgraded to the new NVMe standard for their boot drive. Recently I bought a SanDisk 1TB m.2 SATA drive. I was wondering if out of the box I can open the Blade and a SATA m.2 drive will work inside of the PCIe nvme slot of the blade. I can't seem to find any sort of answer on google anywhere else, and the wikipedia page on NVMe has no information for me. Thanks!

[Cyracus]

pretty sure that's a sata 6GB/s  m.2 drive so I don't believe it can run nvme, but it is a B/M key so it should work, your best bet for a for sure answer would be to contact them http://www.razerzone.com/contact-us

[Zyndo]

I'm 99% sure that it would work. So long as it physically fits into the device, it should work. It wont run at NVME speeds, but it should operate just fine at its SATA speeds.

The reason for this is that NVME is not the interface, but rather the programming that allows high performance SSD's to run even faster (compared to the standard AHCI). I know on desktops you can get something like a Samsung 950 pro (NVME m.2 drive) that is INCREDIBLY fast. You can also get the Samsung 850 EVO (Sata 6GB/s) in m.2 form factor that performs exactly like the 2.5 SSD version of the 850 EVO, but does its job through the m.2 port and PCIE lanes. this port and its lanes allow for higher bandwidth when needed, but should be able to run less bandwidth with no issues.

HOWEVER, I'm by no means an expert on computers, so if you're considering sinking alot of money into a new machine, it might be worth contacting them anyway just to confirm this.

Linus has a few videos on this:

"M.2 as fast as possible"

"NVME as fast as possible"

Based on the information these videos provide, I cannot see a reason this wouldn't work (assuming your drive is physically compatible)

[wtf]

Thanks guys i will try it out when it arrives in a week then!

[wtf]

For anyone browsing this thread and curious what the outcome was, SATA m.2 drives do not work in the new razer blade. There is a sata controller on/off in the bios but there is no wiring inside that wires the m.2 slot to the sata controller.