asus rog strix z370-e gaming motherboard and the use of M.2 slots ???

[zniff]

im using an asus rog strix z370-e gaming motherboard, and im wondering what they mean by one sata port is disabled if i use a m.2 slot. what im currently doing is using an samsung 970 pro series 512GB. and im using ALL the sata ports and not a single one is disabled. so is the speed of the m.2 ssd affected OR is it not affected at all by this. why did they mention that one sata slot would be disabled.. im just confused

 

[alexoiu]

It means that you're using the M2_1 socket. One or two SATA ports would have been disabled if you connected a SATA M.2, or if you installed the drive in the other M.2 slot.

 

[DRagor]

I'll expand above good answer a bit. There are two type of M.2 drives - NVMe and SATA. Each board specification will tell you exactly which type of drive will cause SATA ports to be disabled. If the board says SATA drive will cause disable and you put NVMe drive into such slot, no ports are being disabled - and this exactly your case since your drive is NVMe. Note that other M.2 port on same board may (and usually have) have different disable clause.