[SOLVED] PCIe x4/x2 for M.2

[Marky000]

Hello people.

Looking at the following board: https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/B560M-DS3H-rev-10/sp#sp

and I see the following specification:
1 x M.2 connector (Socket 3, M key, type 2260/2280/22110 PCIe 4.0 x4/x2 SSD support) (M2P_CPU) (Note)

Can someone please explain to me what situation would have the card running at x2 lanes? I assume it depends on what SSD card is added?

Following on from this question, assuming x4 lanes is available, that is a max transfer rate of 8GB/s. I am guessing there is very few cards cable of saturating 4GB/s, let alone 8GB/s. So fair to say that PCIe 3.0 standard is still sufficient (for now) and going a board with PCIe gen4 is for future proofing only?

Thanks

 

[CountMike]

Hello people.

Looking at the following board: https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/B560M-DS3H-rev-10/sp#sp

and I see the following specification:
1 x M.2 connector (Socket 3, M key, type 2260/2280/22110 PCIe 4.0 x4/x2 SSD support) (M2P_CPU) (Note)

Can someone please explain to me what situation would have the card running at x2 lanes? I assume it depends on what SSD card is added?

Following on from this question, assuming x4 lanes is available, that is a max transfer rate of 8GB/s. I am guessing there is very few cards cable of saturating 4GB/s, let alone 8GB/s. So fair to say that PCIe 3.0 standard is still sufficient (for now) and going a board with PCIe gen4 is for future proofing only?

Thanks

You need at least PCIe x4 (NVMe) for full speed no matter which PCIe version is. x2 would cut it's theoretical speed in half.
Same thing with PCIe v3 vs. PCIe v4.
Keep in mind that those are theoretical INTERFACE speeds only, the rest is up to actual speeds of chips and controller on particular SSD.
Now, PERCEPTION of speed in actual use is quote different "animal" as it never gets close to theoretical speeds or as measured by benchmarks because of varying conditions and needs of OS and programs. One of things many don't pay attention to is size of cache on particular SSD which directly influences transfer of files/data of varying sizes. When cache is saturated, writing speed will fall like a rock. OS mostly uses small files/data sets so it will benefit from (large)cache the most as well as programs that work same way.
Transferring large files that exceed cache size also depend on write speed and read speed of disk you are transferring from, it will always depend on slowest one.
One other benefit of faster disks is system load which is always present while reading and writing to disk. Faster the disk is, less and shorter load on whole system and so better system (as whole) performance.

 

[Bob.B]

Hello people.

Looking at the following board: https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/B560M-DS3H-rev-10/sp#sp

and I see the following specification:
1 x M.2 connector (Socket 3, M key, type 2260/2280/22110 PCIe 4.0 x4/x2 SSD support) (M2P_CPU) (Note)

Can someone please explain to me what situation would have the card running at x2 lanes? I assume it depends on what SSD card is added?

Following on from this question, assuming x4 lanes is available, that is a max transfer rate of 8GB/s. I am guessing there is very few cards cable of saturating 4GB/s, let alone 8GB/s. So fair to say that PCIe 3.0 standard is still sufficient (for now) and going a board with PCIe gen4 is for future proofing only?

Thanks

They might just be saying the slot will support a x4 or x2 ssd.

Get a gen3 x4 ssd.
Very few folks will see a diff with gen3 vs gen4.
If you get a gen4 you get to fight with the heat issue.