[SOLVED] Will an M.2 NVMe SSD like Samsung 970 Evo Plus work on a M.2 PCIe 2 x2 slot?

[John Rae]

I have a ASUS H110M-E/M.2 motherboard. It says in the motherboard manual that the M.2 slot is capable of running either SATA or PCIe, but the slot is only capable of running up to 10Gbps that is mentioned on the mobos product page. I only assumed that the slot is only gen 2 x2. Will a Samsung 970 Evo Plus work with my M.2 slot? Or any recommendations on what NVMe SSD should I use?

 

[Lutfij]

Read this post;
https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/asus-h110m-e-m-2-support-nvme-ssd.3660952/post-22096718
in essence, yes it'd work but the speeds would be lower than what the Samsung 970 Evo Plus is rated for. I'd suggest getting a SATA based M.2 SSD or a lower tier PCIe based SSD.

 

[USAFRet]

I have a ASUS H110M-E/M.2 motherboard. It says in the motherboard manual that the M.2 slot is capable of running either SATA or PCIe, but the slot is only capable of running up to 10Gbps that is mentioned on the mobos product page. I only assumed that the slot is only gen 2 x2. Will a Samsung 970 Evo Plus work with my M.2 slot? Or any recommendations on what NVMe SSD should I use?

Will it work?
Yes.

Will it be much much slower than it should be?
Again, yes.

Recommendations?
Don't spend the extra money on an NVMe drive, and just go with SATA III SSDs instead.
You'll never notice the difference.

 

[avg9956]

Don't spend the extra money on an NVMe drive, and just go with SATA III SSDs instead.
You'll never notice the difference.

Seconded:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3AMz-xZ2VM

PCIe Lanes – Cots

Also some info as to how it was arrived that 10Gbps about 1/3 the speed of PCIe 3.0 x4
10GBps (Giga Byte) is not the same as 10 Gbps (Giga bit)
1 Byte = 8 Bits

10Gbps /8 = 1.25 GBps

PCIe 3.0 x4 speed is 3.94 GBps
3.94/3 = 1.31 GBps

So yup, that 10 Gb/s you're seeing on the product page is indeed about 1/3 the speed of a PCIe 3.0 with 4 lanes on it. Gets confusing that they used bits instead of Bytes that you oughta do some conversion...

 

[dorsai]

Will a Samsung 970 Evo Plus work with my M.2 slot? Or any recommendations on what NVMe SSD should I use?

Yes a 970 Evo will work just fine.

I use both SATA and NVME m.2 drives from various manufacturers including Samsung, WD, and Sabrent - here's my advice:

There's little if any benefit to nvme drives faster than pci-e 3 and in most cases even the standard SATA m.2 drive is so fast you won't be able to tell the difference from an NVME drive. I only notice a difference when doing very large data backups. I routinely back up gigabytes of photos and the NVME drives are noticeably faster than SATA...it's not even close. But unless you're regularly doing very large file transfers capable of saturating the pci-e bus the NVME speed will go largely unused as even my game load times are not noticeably faster than on my SATA m.2 drives.

If you do decide you can make use of an NVME drives speed then make sure you buy one with a dedicated cache...cache-less or small SLC cache NVME drives should be avoided for people routinely performing large file transfers as data will stall after the first gigabyte or so is transferred and the drive will act more like a SATA drive.

If all you're doing is gaming then more affordable SATA m.2 drives are a solid choice.

 

[InvalidError]

LTT and a handful of other places have evaluated the overall user experience between HDD, SATA3, NVMe 3.0x4 and 4.0x4. Without storage or file copy benchmarks, none of the people who tried the challenge could reliably tell SATA3 from 3.0x4 or 4.0x4. So, at least for now, there is no point in paying the NVMe price premium unless you regularly deal with huge file transfers between ludicrously fast devices.

I probably won't bother with NVMe until they reach price parity with SATA3 drives of similar size and comparable quality.

 

[John Rae]

Read this post;
https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/asus-h110m-e-m-2-support-nvme-ssd.3660952/post-22096718
in essence, yes it'd work but the speeds would be lower than what the Samsung 970 Evo Plus is rated for. I'd suggest getting a SATA based M.2 SSD or a lower tier PCIe based SSD.

Will it work?
Yes.

Will it be much much slower than it should be?
Again, yes.

Recommendations?
Don't spend the extra money on an NVMe drive, and just go with SATA III SSDs instead.
You'll never notice the difference.

Seconded:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3AMz-xZ2VM

PCIe Lanes – Cots

Also some info as to how it was arrived that 10Gbps about 1/3 the speed of PCIe 3.0 x4
10GBps (Giga Byte) is not the same as 10 Gbps (Giga bit)
1 Byte = 8 Bits

10Gbps /8 = 1.25 GBps

PCIe 3.0 x4 speed is 3.94 GBps
3.94/3 = 1.31 GBps

So yup, that 10 Gb/s you're seeing on the product page is indeed about 1/3 the speed of a PCIe 3.0 with 4 lanes on it. Gets confusing that they used bits instead of Bytes that you oughta do some conversion...

Yes a 970 Evo will work just fine.

I use both SATA and NVME m.2 drives from various manufacturers including Samsung, WD, and Sabrent - here's my advice:

There's little if any benefit to nvme drives faster than pci-e 3 and in most cases even the standard SATA m.2 drive is so fast you won't be able to tell the difference from an NVME drive. I only notice a difference when doing very large data backups. I routinely back up gigabytes of photos and the NVME drives are noticeably faster than SATA...it's not even close. But unless you're regularly doing very large file transfers capable of saturating the pci-e bus the NVME speed will go largely unused as even my game load times are not noticeably faster than on my SATA m.2 drives.

If you do decide you can make use of an NVME drives speed then make sure you buy one with a dedicated cache...cache-less or small SLC cache NVME drives should be avoided for people routinely performing large file transfers as data will stall after the first gigabyte or so is transferred and the drive will act more like a SATA drive.

If all you're doing is gaming then more affordable SATA m.2 drives are a solid choice.

LTT and a handful of other places have evaluated the overall user experience between HDD, SATA3, NVMe 3.0x4 and 4.0x4. Without storage or file copy benchmarks, none of the people who tried the challenge could reliably tell SATA3 from 3.0x4 or 4.0x4. So, at least for now, there is no point in paying the NVMe price premium unless you regularly deal with huge file transfers between ludicrously fast devices.

I probably won't bother with NVMe until they reach price parity with SATA3 drives of similar size and comparable quality.

Thank you all for the information, I learned a lot.

 

[avg9956]

If you're looking to buy a SSD or HDD right now, may as well do it now before prices jack up even further
According to this article

Personally I don't do crypto mining myself because its just impossible to compete with big entities.
However when that crypto does crash, used HDDs and SSDs will flood the market. If I were buying brand new, I am going to definitely check if it was used or not and definitely dispute it if I do get a used drive. Same thing for when I buy a new GPU, don't wanna get scammed by vendor. Crypto mining on these components does put a considerable wear and tear on the component, reducing its longevity.

 

[John Rae]

If you're looking to buy a SSD or HDD right now, may as well do it now before prices jack up even further
According to this article

Personally I don't do crypto mining myself because its just impossible to compete with big entities.
However when that crypto does crash, used HDDs and SSDs will flood the market. If I were buying brand new, I am going to definitely check if it was used or not and definitely dispute it if I do get a used drive. Same thing for when I buy a new GPU, don't wanna get scammed by vendor. Crypto mining on these components does put a considerable wear and tear on the component, reducing its longevity.

That’s good to know, thank you for sharing the article.