[SOLVED] NVMe M.2 on ROG MAXIMUS VII (7) RANGER ?

[sinyx]

Hello everyone, I want to speed up my older system but I'm in an annoying situation, its still on a HDD.

The system itself isn't that bad and it works okay but since it's a 5 years old system it isn't that fast.
Delidded I7 4790k OCed at 4.6GHZ
16 GB of RAM (might aswell give it another 16GB if the price is right)
980 TI Zotac AMP! Extreme Edition
and and old 2TB Seagate Barracuda HDD
And since it uses the Maximus VII (7) Ranger I can't figure out what NVMe. M.2 is compatible.

On the website it says

M.2 Socket 3, , with M Key, type 2260/2280 storage devices support (PCIE mode).

And in the manual.

M.2 support (up to 10Gb/s data-transfer) so pretty primitive but still better than an HDD.
LE: The board has the latest BIOS driver, version 3503

I looked up and I found a nice deal on a 2TB FireCuda 520 SSD but I'm pretty sure the PCIe Gen4 ×4, NVMe 1.3 isn't compatible with the board and I'm not sure about the FireCuda 510 SSD that's PCIe Gen3.

Can anybody make it clear for me, what should I be looking for ?

 

[ChumP]

The board should support every PCIe 3.0 M.2 NVMe, but depending on how fast the drive is, it will be limited by the bandwidth allowed.

The M.2 slot can only use 2 PCIe 2.0 lanes, hence the max bandwidth of 10Gb/s or 1GB/s.

The thing is, that limitation brings you pretty close to SATA III speeds, so I don't really get the need of getting an M.2... unless it's cheaper.

If SATA SSDs are cheaper you might as well go for that... differences between them will be minimal on the majority of tasks.

 

[sinyx]

The board should support every PCIe 3.0 M.2 NVMe, but depending on how fast the drive is, it will be limited by the bandwidth allowed.

The M.2 slot can only use 2 PCIe 2.0 lanes, hence the max bandwidth of 10Gb/s or 1GB/s.

The thing is, that limitation brings you pretty close to SATA III speeds, so I don't really get the need of getting an M.2... unless it's cheaper.

If SATA SSDs are cheaper you might as well go for that... differences between them will be minimal on the majority of tasks.

I also found this and since the boards are almost identical I assumed it would work on mine too. Anyway, so basically any SATA SSD would work right ?

 

[ChumP]

I also found this and since the boards are almost identical I assumed it would work on mine too. Anyway, so basically any SATA SSD would work right ?

Keep in mind that the guy used the second PCIe 3.0 slot(it's the second red one your board... used for SLI usually) to put an M.2 adapter card... he did not use the M.2 slot. So he basically had split 8 lanes for the GPU and 8 lanes for the M.2 adapter... that's why he got the maximum speed out of his NVMe drive.

You'll still be limited by the M.2 slot if you intend to use that (10 Gb/s)... it's actually really close to the 6 Gb/s limit of SATA III. That's why an M.2 is not really worth on that motherboard.

Yeah... any 2.5" SATA SSD will work.

 

[sinyx]

Alright, thank you, can be closed!