Samsung 850 EVO 500GB - Will be replaced with the M.2
Motherboard - Asus X99-A II
I have 6 WD 6TB hard drives
Corsair Vengeance LPX Black 16GB - will be upgrading to 32GB soon
M.2 drive will have Windows 10 Enterprise on it. used for Video/Audio editing and playing games like Kingdom Come Deliverance which ill buy when i have the drive setup.
Using the motherboard port will I get the same speeds as using a PCIe Expansion Card?
I have read that some onboard m.2 ports only run at sata III speed, and using a PCIe card ill get the most out of the m.2 drive
You read wrong.
That depends 100% on the actual board.
Most boards with a m.2 port will run at normal PCIe speed.
Some few may limit it to SATA III.
What does yours do? What does it say in the user manual?
Specifically, it says this about that m.2 port: "32Gb/s M.2 X4 support"
https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/X99-A-II/
The manual doesnt say anything about speeds, but says
"1 x M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 Socket 3 with M Key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 (support PCIe storage device only)*"
The manual doesnt say anything about speeds, but says
"1 x M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 Socket 3 with M Key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 (support PCIe storage device only)*"
The same performance as a PCIe slot.
No adapter needed.