Using NVMe SSD in Precision T5500

[sd403]

Now that my original Crucial SATA SSD just died, has had any luck getting M.2 NVMe SSDs to work in a T5500 using an adapter card (like from SIIG, Silverstone, Ableconn)? If so, were you able to also boot from it, even though the A16 BIOS doesn't seem to have any UEFI?

Thanks for your time! = )

 

[sadams04]

You could use it, but won't be able to take advantage of its full potential. The T5500 sports its M.2 port using legacy SATA controllers (or PCIe AHCI). You would need to upgrade to a motherboard that uses PCIe NVMe. For your motherboard, there is no difference between M.2 and a SATA port other than the interface. Look toward a SATA SSD to replace it with whether it be 2.5" or M.2.

2.5" => http://pcpartpicker.com/products/compare/rrvZxr,vyKhP6,MZJkcf,kwkwrH/
M.2 => http://pcpartpicker.com/products/compare/NTvRsY,KXkwrH,tmrcCJ,bmrcCJ/

 

[sd403]

Thanks for the quick response! I didn't have a lot of hope, but when it was a freebie from work to use as an extra WoW (and whatever else I can get working on it) machine, I figured I might as well ask. = )

Even though it's maxed at SATA II (unless I try using a SATA III adapter card that's at least PCIe x4 or x8, etc.), would it be worth it to run SSDs in a RAID for the chance at extra bandwidth?

 

[sadams04]

You would see good speed from the mirrored array (two SSDs), but in all reality getting 250+ MB reads / writes from a single drive is still perfectly fine. Just having an SSD and not being tied to HD speeds (100MB reads / writes) is the biggest part. I would not add complexity to the system and set up a RAID array unless you really want hardware redundancy (in case one drive fails).