[SOLVED] Asus Z690 Hero M.2 Question

[david_628]

Main drive going in M.2_1, obviously. But I am confused in _2 or _3 is better for my 2nd drive.... It's a 2TB 970 EVO.


_2 supports PCIE 3.0 x 4 mode and M key
_3 supports PCIE 4.0 x 4 and Sata mode Mkey

I think whats confusing me is that _3 is 4.0 and _2 is 3.0. You'd think it'd be the other way around.

 

[Roland Of Gilead]

Main drive going in M.2_1, obviously. But I am confused in _2 or _3 is better for my 2nd drive.... It's a 2TB 970 EVO.


_2 supports PCIE 3.0 x 4 mode and M key
_3 supports PCIE 4.0 x 4 and Sata mode Mkey

I think whats confusing me is that _3 is 4.0 and _2 is 3.0. You'd think it'd be the other way around.

Hey there,

Yeah, you really would think it would be the other way around. It may be to do with the tracing for the PCIe lanes outside of the CPU, or something.

Looking at it though, given the drive itself is PCIE 3 it should not make any difference in terms of speed for which slot you use. Best bet, is to try it out in both and check your read/write speeds, and random IOPS. You can use Samsung Magician to test in both slots. PCIe 4 is backward compatible, so shouldn't be an issue in that slot either.