Clarification regarding 950 Pro and Z97

[googler123]

CPU: 4770K
Mobo: MSI Z97M Gaming
BIOS: Latest update (E7919IMS.190)

Okay, my understanding is that the board's M.2 slot only covers x2 PCI-E lanes. I went ahead and bought an Asus M.2 x4 Hyper Card in the event that I would shortly buy a 950 Pro after it arrives.

If I installed the hyper card into the first PCI-E x16 slot, would it run at full speed if I set both PCI-E x16 slots to run at x8 lanes? Do I still lose two SATA slots if I installed the hyper card?

 

[Zedjulz316]

If you insert it in the first slot it would just run at x4, as it is designed to. So yes it would run at full speed.(x4 and x8). For it to run at full speed you also have to check whether you're MOBO has PCIE gen 2 or gen 3.

And yes with a z97, you would lose SATA ports.

 

[googler123]

According to the manual it says if I plugged in the 950 Pro onto the onboard M.2 I would lose both SATA slots.

I thought the Hyper Card adapter would get around this issue and treat it like a 750 Series SSD.

 

[Zedjulz316]

Yes you would still have the SATA ports but your GPU would now run in 8x instead of 16x and the HyperX card in 4x now.
Note that this reduce your GPUs performance by 1~3%.

FYI: Im posting this for anybody that might stumble on this thread looking for a similar answer.