PCI-E SSD for a GA-h81m-ds2v_e mothboard

[IanG367]

Looking through other entries in the forum I gather that a PCI-E SSD would be superior to a SATA one for the purposes of holding Windows 7 pro later updating to Windows 10 (if forced by M$).

I have a Gigabyte GA-h81m-ds2v_e motherboard with a Gigabyte NVIDIA GTX 750 Ti installed.
There are three SATA Hds and a DVD Rom drive connected to the onboard SATA ports.

Is it possible for me to move the OS to an SSD and, if so, can this motherboard support booting
from a PCI-E SSD?

How big an SSD should I get to support Windows 7 later transitioning to Windows 10?

Thanks in advance for any help/advice.

IanG367

Edit/Update.

Thanks for the info guys.

I plan to buy a PCI-E -> Sata board and perhaps a 200GB SSD. If I find that i can't make that bootable I will swap the DVD-Rom drive with it and take up one of the 6GB SATA ports to boot from the SSD.

I am pleased that I asked rather than continued down Gotcha road into hours (or days) of frustration trying to make a board that can't boot from PCI-E boot from it!

Merry Christmas to all who frequent tomshardware dot anywhere!

Regards,
IanG367

 

[drtweak]

You need a 9 Series Motherboard to support PCIe Booting. The 8 Series doesn't support it. Sorry buddy.

 

[JohnnyLucky]

I have even more bad news for you. Your motherboard has only one PCI-e 2.0 x 16 slot. Your video card occupies that single slot. The motherboard would have to have a PCIe 3.0 x16 slot available to support a modern PCIe ssd.

Luckily your motherboard has two SATA 3 6Gb/s ports/connectors so you could install a standard 2.5 inch SATA 3 6Gb/s ssd. You can boot from a standard ssd.

The current sweet spot are 256GB ssd's which are on sale for about $150.00. You'll have about 228GB available after overprovisioning. Windows will only take up about 22GB depending on the version. That leaves you with about 200GB for applications, uitilties and games. If you need secondary storage space a hard disk drive will do. If you are on a tight budget you could get a 256GB ssd on sale for about $75.00.

I normally recommend Samsung ssd's. They perform well and have a proven track record. SanDisk and Crucial are also worth considering.

I maintain an ssd database listed in a sticky at the very top of this forum section. Here is the link:

http://www.johnnylucky.org/data-storage/ssd-database.html

Scroll down to the SATA 3 6Gb/s section where you will find Samsung, SanDisk, Crucial, and many other brands. Follow the links to the technical reviews. The reviews are in English and many other languages.

 

[Carbongrip]

If your problem is that you are short on sata ports then look for a pcie sata card, some are bootable and should work with your board.