M.2 and Z97 Booting Questions

[facesmacker2]

Hi,

 

I was watching one of linus's video and he mentioned that a z97 motherboard could boot from m.2, but the question here is if a haswell chip (ex i7 4770k) in a z97 motherboard (ex Z97 gaming 5 by msi) could still boot from m.2.

 

Thanks

[Skiiwee29]

Yes. The m.2 on most Z97 chipsets are only Sata so it will only work like a normal SSD in terms of speeds. You can get a PCIe riser card to let it work at the NVMe speeds. 

[M.A.P]

13 minutes ago, facesmacker2 said:

Hi,

 

I was watching one of linus's video and he mentioned that a z97 motherboard could boot from m.2, but the question here is if a haswell chip (ex i7 4770k) in a z97 motherboard (ex Z97 gaming 5 by msi) could still boot from m.2.

 

Thanks

for that msi board it works. It is mentioned that the M.2 slot supports PCIE Gen2 X2 and Sata Mode. So it runs as a regular sata ssd(in terms of speed). But that slot only works in UEFI mode not Legacy Mode.

[Droidbot]

After some searching, yes - an NVMe SSD will work in that board fine. 

BUT keep in mind that it will only run at x2, so get something cheaper - I recommend 950PRO (used or clearance) or OCZ RD400