Do PCIe M.2 SSDs need special support from motherboard?

[Alexlomm]

Do this type of M.2 cards need special support from motherboards, or would any mobo with PCIe slots do? Also, do every PCIe M.2 card disable the SATA ports?

 

[JaredDM]

M.2 is a special form factor slot that your motherboard either has, or does not have. Internally M.2 has both PCIe and/or SATA connections, however it's a different slot than either. They do make adapter boards to add an M.2 SSD into a standard PCIe slot, however you'll need to be sure that your SSD actually is a PCIe one (some are just SATA despite fitting into the M.2 slot). Also you'd need to check that your motherboard is capable of booting from PCIe. I think most do, but you never know with all the boards out there.

Only certain boards disable SATA ports, and that's only if the M.2 is actually using SATA instead of PCIe connections in the slot. Some other boards actually disable or steal channels from one of the larger PCIe slots when it's using PCIe. The limitation is related to the chipset and how many SATA/PCIe channels it can support.