Samsung PM981 with the GA-Z97X-Gaming 3 motherboard

[sarinism7]

Sorry for the noob Q, will these work fine together? .

GA-Z97X-Gaming 3
Samsung PM981

 

[USAFRet]

Sorry for the noob Q, will these work fine together? .

GA-Z97X-Gaming 3
Samsung PM981

Work fine for what?
Speed will be about 1/3 the expected performance of that drive.
Booting may not be possible without a 3rd party BIOS upgrade.

Personally, I wouldn't until I have a motherboard that can use that drive natively to its full extent.
I also have a Z97 board (ASRock), and haven't gone to an NVMe drive for those specific reasons. All my drives are SATA III SSD.

 

[Calvin7]

Drive is PCIe Gen3 x 4, while motherboard M.2 is PCIe Gen2 x 2.

Drive will be limited to up to 10Gb/s. That can be doubled to 20Gb/s by using a PCIe x4 adapter card for M.2 drives.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIABP565E1156&Tpk=9SIABP565E1156

Motherboards as old as Gigabyte Z97 do not have PCIe 3.0 for those NVMe drives.