[SOLVED] How do Motherboard Specs differentiate Gen 3 from Gen 4 slot for m.2 NVMe SSD drives?

[American2021]

If selecting an AMD - Ryzen 9 3900X Matisse 3.8GHz 12-Core AM4 Boxed Processor with Wraith Prism Cooler, for example, which motherboard choices support a 2TB M.2 NVMe Interface PCIe Gen 4 Internal Solid State Drive?

In fact, I can't find in any motherboard specs where they differentiate between Gen 3 and Gen 4 for m.2 NVMe SSD drives.

I know Gen 4 is backwards compatible on Gen 3 slots but at the reduced Gen 3 speed, and Gen 4 is much faster.

Any help figuring out how to differentiate between m.2 NVM3 Gen 3 from Gen 4 on a motherboard would be appreciated.

I think many will benefit from learning how to differentiate between a Gen 3 and a Gen 4 m.2 NVMe slot on the motherboard.

P.S. I like budget Gigabyte boards (I know the complaints about them but they've worked for me).

 

[Darkbreeze]

It says what it supports, right there in the specs under "Storage" for every aftermarket motherboard out there that has a product page from MSI, ASUS, Gigabyte, ASRock or EVGA.

This is taken directly from the Gigabyte X570 Aorus Elite. But I've never seen ANY motherboard that didn't fully list the compatibility of it's storage headers and slots.

Integrated in the CPU (M2A_SOCKET):
· 3rd Generation AMD Ryzen™ processors:

1 x M.2 connector (Socket 3, M key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 SATA and PCIe 4.0 x4/x2 SSD support)

· 2nd Generation AMD Ryzen™ processors/2nd Generation AMD Ryzen™ with Radeon™ Vega Graphics processors/AMD Ryzen™ with Radeon™ Vega Graphics processors:

1 x M.2 connector (Socket 3, M key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 SATA and PCIe 3.0 x4/x2 SSD support)

Integrated in the Chipset (M2B_SOCKET):

1 x M.2 connector (Socket 3, M key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 SATA and PCIe 4.0*/3.0 x4/x2 SSD support)
* For 3rd Generation AMD Ryzen™ processors only.
6 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors
Support for RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 10

 

[American2021]

So that's how you tell. Excellent reply. Thank you.