[SOLVED] M.2 SSD - Performance on Adapter Card vs PCI-E Lanes

Tigerhawk30

Distinguished
Dec 16, 2015
221
15
18,765
Good evening!

In a very much surprise event to me, I was gifted with a 2TB M.2 SSD (Sabrent Rocket NMVe 4.0, specifically) and I am wondering if I can use it, or at least use it at least somewhat efficiently. On my B450 Tomahawk/R9 3950X combo, I have exactly one option if I'm able to use it, and that would be to attach it to a PCI-E adapter card. The board has give PCI slots, of which two are currently being populated with an MSI 5700XT in the 3.0x16 slot, and a sound card in one of three 2.0 x1 slots. There is one 2.0 x4 slot available that such a card could fit in. My rig is otherwise populated with multiple SATA drives, which include two SATA SSDs (one 960GB and one 500GB), one 1TB HDD and a 1TB M.2 as the C: drive. In essence, all SATA connections are being utilized.

I am not entirely understanding of PCI-E lanes and the effect/limitations they may be subject to where motherboard/chipset and CPU are concerned, so I guess my initial question is this, and any additional info (where a noob vocab might be used) anyone may feel is useful/pertinent afterwards: Would using an adapter card for such an M.2 be usable? I understand that the read/write speeds would probably be below maximum due to fewer lanes (if I understand correctly), but would this impede performance so much that it wouldn't be worth it to add?

Thank you in advance, and have a great one!
 
Solution
Even if you have to run it at PCIe 2.0 x4, it's still faster than SATA. And even then, often times you don't see an appreciable drop in loading times going from SATA to NVMe.

If you're concerned about where the PCIe lanes are coming from, if the slot is not x16 size, they're not coming from the CPU.
Good evening!

In a very much surprise event to me, I was gifted with a 2TB M.2 SSD (Sabrent Rocket NMVe 4.0, specifically) and I am wondering if I can use it, or at least use it at least somewhat efficiently. On my B450 Tomahawk/R9 3950X combo, I have exactly one option if I'm able to use it, and that would be to attach it to a PCI-E adapter card. The board has give PCI slots, of which two are currently being populated with an MSI 5700XT in the 3.0x16 slot, and a sound card in one of three 2.0 x1 slots. There is one 2.0 x4 slot available that such a card could fit in. My rig is otherwise populated with multiple SATA drives, which include two SATA SSDs (one 960GB and one 500GB), one 1TB HDD and a 1TB M.2 as the C: drive. In essence, all SATA connections are being utilized.

I am not entirely understanding of PCI-E lanes and the effect/limitations they may be subject to where motherboard/chipset and CPU are concerned, so I guess my initial question is this, and any additional info (where a noob vocab might be used) anyone may feel is useful/pertinent afterwards: Would using an adapter card for such an M.2 be usable? I understand that the read/write speeds would probably be below maximum due to fewer lanes (if I understand correctly), but would this impede performance so much that it wouldn't be worth it to add?

Thank you in advance, and have a great one!
Pcie 2.0 x4 equals 2000MB/s so it should be faster than your sata ssd's.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Tigerhawk30
Even if you have to run it at PCIe 2.0 x4, it's still faster than SATA. And even then, often times you don't see an appreciable drop in loading times going from SATA to NVMe.

If you're concerned about where the PCIe lanes are coming from, if the slot is not x16 size, they're not coming from the CPU.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Tigerhawk30
Solution