Question NVMe Drives and M.2 interfaces

[kaladorn]

My board is a Gigabyte H-310M-A (rev 1.0). In the manual, it mentions PCIE and SATA versions of SSDS. It doesn't mention NVMe anywhere I saw. Yet in the compatibility list for storage, it lists some MVMe drives. It allows 1 M.2 drive and if you use it, you lose SATA 3. I guess it takes up some controller resources. I believe I saw mention of x2 or x4 PCIe support.

How does that work?

And I've read some articles that suggest that PCIe implies NVMe. Is that necessary in all cases?

I'm trying to determine if I want to buy a new SATA 3 SSD (regular), a SATA 3 M.2 SSD, or a PCIe SSD.... or a PCIE MVNe drive... or what....?

I've read but not specifically for my board that if you plug in a PCIe SSD (maybe NVMe), it can drop down the performance on other cards - something about the handling of the number of bus lanes by the PCIe controller or some such. Is this a common issue? I've heard this has also happened when people put an NVMe drive in a PCIe NVMe adapter card and plugged that into the PCIe bus.

If my motherboard will accept a PCIe NVMe drive and I can get it to run up around 3-3.5 GBps, I would love to install that for my OS drive. That's the goal here.

If, however, it is a PCIe drive without NVMe, not sure I gain much from that. I understand that may have similar performance to existing SSDs (SATA or SATA M.2). So that's my dilemna.

Thoughts? More clarity than I seem to have?

Mobo home page: https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/H310M-A-rev-10/sp#sp

Mobo Manual: https://download.gigabyte.com/FileList/Manual/mb_manual_h310m-a_e.pdf

Hardware Compatibility for SSDs for my board: https://download.gigabyte.com/FileList/Document/mb_m.2_support_180619.pdf

I'd love a faster swap and OS drive.

Right now I have two drives: A platter spinner (1 TB) and about a 750 Gb SSD which I think (judging by me only seeing signs of 1 SSD header with something going into it) might be connected to the M.2 chip somehow... but not sure...

See if you can shine some light into my foggy slog through drive interface horror land... with thanks in advance....

 

[tennis2]

PCIe on the M.2 slot = NVMe.

Generally, installing an M.2 drive will disable a couple SATA ports and/or a secondary expansion slot (the top x16 slot never gets touched)

What capacity SSD are you looking at?
What country are you shopping in?
What is your budget? (SSD prices don't vary a ton, but we need to know if you're on the bargain end, or the high end of the spectrum)

 

[kaladorn]

PCIe on the M.2 slot = NVMe.

Generally, installing an M.2 drive will disable a couple SATA ports and/or a secondary expansion slot (the top x16 slot never gets touched)

What capacity SSD are you looking at?
What country are you shopping in?
What is your budget? (SSD prices don't vary a ton, but we need to know if you're on the bargain end, or the high end of the spectrum)

I'm not quite certain. I might be able to free up a couple of hundred bucks or a wee bit more, but upwards of $300 would be fantasy in the current economic/world health situation.

So far I've looked at:

https://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=179_1927_1930&item_id=134016

https://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=179_1927_1930&item_id=133813

So, if they say an M.2 PCIe is supported without using a SATA controller (makes sense) and that if you use a SATA M.2 it does take out the #3 SATA controller, that seems reasonable. If you tell me PCIe on M.2 support means NVMe, then I guess I that explains why they have NVMe on their list of supported drives. Just odd I never saw NVMe SSDs or NVMe support mentioned by name on their spec page.

 

[tennis2]

Both good choices