Question Asrock B450 Steel Legend - Adding Second M2 drive question.

[simtcr]

Hello,

My mother board is Asrock B450 Steel Legend.
Currently M2_1 is utilized by Samsung 970 EVO Plus 250GB PCIe NVMe M.2
Graphics Card on PCIE1

I would like to add another M2 (Crucial P1 1TB 3D NAND NVMe PCIe M.2) to M2_2.

Mother board manual says,
M2_2 supports M Key type 2230/2242/2260/2280/22110 M.2 SATA3 6.0 Gb/s module and M.2 PCI Express module up to Gen3 x2 (16 Gb/s)
M2_2, SATA3_3 and SATA3_4 share lanes. If either one of them is in use, the others will be disabled.

Will I have any issues adding Crucial P1 1TB 3D NAND NVMe PCIe M.2) to M2_2?

 

[helpstar]

if you install the 2nd SSD, sata3_3 and sata3_4 will not be available. You will have to connect SATA storage devices to other SATA ports.

 

[simtcr]

if you install the 2nd SSD, sata3_3 and sata3_4 will not be available. You will have to connect SATA storage devices to other SATA ports.

I don’t have any SATA drives connected and I don’t plan to.

 

[helpstar]

then there is no downside for you

just an additional info:
"If M2_1 is occupied, PCIE4 will be disabled. "

 

[simtcr]

then there is no downside for you

just an additional info:
"If M2_1 is occupied, PCIE4 will be disabled. "

Which is again no issue, as my gpu on PCIe 1

 

[helpstar]

yes

 

[simtcr]

As in the op, m2_2 supports PCI Express module up to Gen3 x2 (16 Gb/s)
where as m2_1 supports PCI Express module up to Gen3 x4 (32 Gb/s)

So m2_2 runs in half speed.
I plan to use m2_2 for installing games to get quick load times.
Will I actually get any benefits over normal SSD or HDD?

Currently m2_1 is occupied with 250 GB where is OS is installed.
Will swapping m2_2 to m2_1 and installing games to m2_1 will give me better performance? It will will be lot of hassle to reinstall the OS.