Can a PCI-E x4 SSD card fit and work with the X16 slot on the Motherboard ?

[knowledge2121]

My MB has an onboard graphics + a dedicated one(HD8570) installed on the x16 slot.

can I switch out the DGPU with an x4 PCI-E SSD card ?

the MB has two PCI-E slots only one X1 and one X16....

will it fit and work ?

 

[InvalidError]

PCIe was designed so people should be able to put any lane count card in a slot of the same or higher lane count. An x4 card should be fine in an x16 slot.

The opposite is sometimes true too, depending on whether the motherboard uses open-ended PCIe connectors (physically capable of taking cards with longer edge connectors than the connector itself) and whether the card will accept to work in a lower lane count slot.

Sacrificing the discrete GPU for an SSD is an unusual choice to make. Though the HD8570 might be slower than most modern CPU IGPs.

 

[knowledge2121]

OK, here is another issue I have :

how do I know if my motherboard is capable of booting an OS from a PCIe Adapter Card / nvme ?

 

[InvalidError]

For booting on an NVMe drive, you'll have to check with the motherboard manufacturer, manual and BIOS update change notes to make sure your motherboard's BIOS supports booting from NVMe.

For machines that don't have BIOS support, it should be possible to get an add-in board with an EFI extension to add that support.

 

[knowledge2121]

Can you check for me ?

You can find the change notes here :

http://www.dell.com/support/home/ca/en/cabsdt1/product-support/product/optiplex-9020-desktop/drivers

here is the manual :

http://topics-cdn.dell.com/pdf/optiplex-9020-desktop_owners-manual_en-us.pdf

Many Thanks

 

[InvalidError]

That manual is garbage, doesn't cover the BIOS at all and only has the most vague hardware coverage beyond computer (dis-)assembly. No mention of what particular i-series CPU goes on this board, the only clue is HD4600 graphics which pegs it as Haswell-era.

It is doubtful that Dell has updated the BIOS to add NVMe boot support. Just use a good SATA3 SSD, it'll be nearly as fast as an NVMe drive for most everyday uses/gaming. The only workloads which significantly benefit from NVMe are intensive storage IO workloads such as a heavy traffic database.