Gigabyte Gaming 5 Z97 motherboard M.2 issue.

[Ali_Schofield]

Can anyone tell me how to make my Samsung sm951 available as a boot drive in the BIOS on this board please?

 

[lukelaw]

Find "boot order" or "boot options" or something similar and set the SSD to be the first in order

 

[Calvin7]

You need to identify it by the third letter in the part number. The NVMe model is designated by a V, while the AHCI model has an H. You should also identify the OS you want to boot.

Only a handful of X99 and Z97 boards have "Ultra," "Turbo," or otherwise amped-up M.2 slots with enough bandwidth to fully exploit the SM951. Quad-lane slots should be more common on next-gen Skylake boards this summer. In your case, the SM951 can be mounted on an M.2 adapter card and plugged into any full-sized PCIe slot.

Lycom DT-120 M.2 PCIe to PCIe 3.0 x4 Adapter
http://www.amazon.com/Lycom-DT-120-PCIe-Adapter-Support/dp/B00MYCQP38/ref=pd_sim_147_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=1PFP86MAP9PV9PP5PK8T

See review By Taylor Vowell on August 13, 2015

 

[Ali_Schofield]

so you're saying that I need to use an adapter in order to for it to be recognised by the BIOS? If so, why would they include the native M.2 slot?

 

[Ali_Schofield]

Sorry, should have said; the BIOS isn't recognising the M.2 drive in its native port, even though the board does in fact have one.

 

[Ali_Schofield]

It's finally working!

Downloading the latest BIOS software and putting it on a flash drive, and subsequently using Q-flash to update it worked. Although, make sure to take the flash drive out as it will try to use it as a boot drive.

Thanks everyone.

 

[Calvin7]

The Samsung supports four Gen 3.0 PCIe lanes.

Using the your M.2 slot you are limited to two lanes Gen 2.0 PCIe (1 GB/s).

M.2 to PCIe adapter - such an expansion slot has four 2.0 PCI-Express lanes (2 GB/s for PCI-Express 2.0) which is the reason to use an adapter.

 

[rafalrej]

It's finally working!

Downloading the latest BIOS software and putting it on a flash drive, and subsequently using Q-flash to update it worked. Although, make sure to take the flash drive out as it will try to use it as a boot drive.

Thanks everyone.

hello
I have also gigabyte z97x gaming 5 mobo.
I am going to buy sm951 nvme 256 gb ssd
do you have any problem with this ssd ?
is it working on full speed on m.2 slot ?
please send me a message
ley1@wp.pl
thanks

 

[rafalrej]

The Samsung supports four Gen 3.0 PCIe lanes.

Using the your M.2 slot you are limited to two lanes Gen 2.0 PCIe (1 GB/s).

M.2 to PCIe adapter - such an expansion slot has four 2.0 PCI-Express lanes (2 GB/s for PCI-Express 2.0) which is the reason to use an adapter.

hello
I have also gigabyte z97x gaming 5 mobo.
I am going to buy sm951 nvme 256 gb ssd
do you have any problem with this ssd ?
is it working on full speed on m.2 slot ?
please send me a message
ley1@wp.pl
thanks