How can i use nvme on my z77 ?

[Tadziunia]

Hey guys, been thinking about upgrading my storage from sata ssd to something like nvme, but i don't want to buy new platform and i don't have m2 slot in my current board. I have Asrock z77 fatality pro-m, and i have atleast two spare pcie slots. So i was wondering can i use pcie x4 adabter with nvme ssd and make it bootable device on my z77 platform. Do you know how to do it ? can you give me some manual ? 

[W-L]

Just now, Tadziunia said:

Hey guys, been thinking about upgrading my storage from sata ssd to something like nvme, but i don't want to buy new platform and i don't have m2 slot in my current board. I have Asrock z77 fatality pro-m, and i have atleast two spare pcie slots. So i was wondering can i use pcie x4 adabter with nvme ssd and make it bootable device on my z77 platform. Do you know how to do it ? can you give me some manual ? 

For the Z77 platform it not possible to boot off an M.2 SSD since what you would need for it to work in your system is a PCI-E adapter to M.2. Updated version that integrate it into the board itself which has the BIOS designed as a bootable drive. 

[scottyseng]

I know you can get PCIe to NVMe convertors quite easily, but Sandy / Ivy Bridge can't boot from NVMe. I'm pretty sure that NVMe support was only added for Skylake (Maybe haswell) and newer CPUs.

[Tadziunia]

2 minutes ago, W-L said:

For the Z77 platform it not possible to boot off an M.2 SSD since what you would need for it to work in your system is a PCI-E adapter to M.2. Updated version that integrate it into the board itself which has the BIOS designed as a bootable drive. 

What about modding bios, there are videos how to enable nvme on older boards and people were successful even with p67

[Electronics Wizardy]

5 minutes ago, Tadziunia said:

What about modding bios, there are videos how to enable nvme on older boards and people were successful even with p67

Do you need it as your boot drive?

 

What os?

 

You can do some tricks with bootloaders to get it to work often.

 

But really, for almost all uses on a desktop nvme won't be any faster, and just get a sata drive, esp with a older platfrom with a slower cpu and slower bus.

[W-L]

5 minutes ago, Tadziunia said:

What about modding bios, there are videos how to enable nvme on older boards and people were successful even with p67

It's not impossible and there are work around but as usual you have to be cautious when modifying the BIOS as it has the potential to brick the board it something is done incorrectly.

https://tinkertry.com/how-to-boot-win10-from-samsung-950-pro-nvme-on-superserver

[Tadziunia]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Do you need it as your boot drive?

 

What os?

 

You can do some tricks with bootloaders to get it to work often.

 

But really, for almost all uses on a desktop nvme won't be any faster, and just get a sata drive, esp with a older platfrom with a slower cpu and slower bus.

My i7 2600k 4.5ghz works pretty well with GTX 1080 TI on 4k screen, still i dont feel that i need better cpu, at this resolution i am still bound to GPU, waiting for ZEN 2 or intel 10th , but still thought about nvme. current sandisk 480gb sata ssd isn't bad, but still wanted to boost performance of using pc even more. Probably doesn't worth trying to mod bios and get nvme on this platform

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Tadziunia said:

My i7 2600k 4.5ghz works pretty well with GTX 1080 TI on 4k screen, still i dont feel that i need better cpu, at this resolution i am still bound to GPU, waiting for ZEN 2 or intel 10th , but still thought about nvme. current sandisk 480gb sata ssd isn't bad, but still wanted to boost performance of using pc even more. Probably doesn't worth trying to mod bios and get nvme on this platform

a faster ssd won't make the system any faster, the difference is tiny here. Just get another sata ssd. The real world differnce in performance is tiny and sata ssds often even bootup faster due to pcie init times, and game load times are about the same.

 

[Damascus]

An NVMe adapter will run you about ten bucks, I'd go for it.  M.2 is the best form factor around right now, might as well get on that train early!

[Electronics Wizardy]

On 10/6/2018 at 1:04 PM, Damascus said:

An NVMe adapter will run you about ten bucks, I'd go for it.  M.2 is the best form factor around right now, might as well get on that train early!

Just because you can plug it in doesn't mean you can boot from it. Also the speed difference with a m.2 nvme is very small for most uses.

[Pickles von Brine]

"TECHNICALLY" you can use NVMe on z77 boards to boot. I have tested it on my Z77 Sabertooth. However, it requires you finding a board similar to yours (Z97 sabertooth). Downloading a piece of software that can edit BIOS rom images, insert the 3 NMVe modules from the Z97 board into the bios rom from the z77. Save the bios to a flash drive and force a flash of the board (checksum no longer matches). 

 

It will then boot NVMe. Honestly, not worth the hassel, risk or troubles it brings. I ended up having instability in my system and had to flash my bios over with stock.