[SOLVED] Will NVMe SSD work for me?

[jsmith24]

Hi all,

I've been absent from "the scene" for a while and need advice/education, so I'm starting here where I'm never led astray.

I have an MSI Z97S SLI Krait motherboard, Intel i5-4690K cpu, 32GB RAM, and currently an M.2 Samsung EVO 850 SSD (500GB) in the onboard M.2 slot, and one 4TB hard drive for storage.

I'd like to upgrade to a 1TB SSD, and would really like to step up to the NVMe drives. Will I be able to use a PCIe adapter card in one of my slots and get the full speed benefit of the NVMe SSD? If so, will any of my other devices suffer? I currently have a GeForce GTX 960 installed as well, though I do very little gaming, mostly graphics editing, Illustrator work, the occasional HD video project.

Thanks,

Jack

 

[Ralston18]

Check the motherboard's User Guide/Manual to determine what components it will support and in what combinations.

https://us.msi.com/Motherboard/support/Z97S-SLI-Krait-Edition#down-manual

Do verify that I found the applicable User Guide/Manual for your motherboard.

Look at Pages 1-20 and 1-21 that address M.2 and SATA.

Recommend that you read through the entire document just as a matter of caution.

Details matter.

 

[jsmith24]

Hi Phillip,

I've read that more than once. I know that my onboard M.2 will not let me fully utilize the NVMe, so I'm asking about whether an expansion card will let me boot and use the newer SSD.

Thanks,
Jack

 

[USAFRet]

Hi Phillip,

I've read that more than once. I know that my onboard M.2 will not let me fully utilize the NVMe, so I'm asking about whether an expansion card will let me boot and use the newer SSD.

Thanks,
Jack

For that, you'll have to look at the BIOS releases for your particular motherboard.
For some Z97 era boards, later BIOS updates did enable that function. Other boards, not.


Personally, I would leave the current 850 as the boot drive, and put the proposed 970 in a PCIe adapter and use that as the workspace for your graphics and video work.
That is exactly what I did when I put an Intel 660p in my ASRock Z97 system.

 

[atljsf]

if i remember correctly, some users could use such nvmes with the pci express adapter as storage, but bios could not use them as boot drives, because bios could lack the option to boot from nvme

if you already found information about a possible problem using the m.2 slot, it would decrease possibilities on that motherboard it is a bit old, and on that time nvme was really new, as well as m.2, so the possibility exist that it will not be usable as a boot drive, the 860 must be a m.2 ssd, so it works well

to be honest i moved from a cheap kingston ssd to a cheap gigabyte nvme, there is a improvement, but is quite small on terms of boot time and game load time, so at the moment, with the current os and games, i don't see vital to move to a nvme, so keep that detail in mind

nvme is spectacular to read and write big files fast, mine goes up to 1700megabytes per second, when compared to my old kingston that could go up to 500megabytes only, but as boot drive you need to read and write alot of small files, and under such circumstances it behaves like a decent ssd, so i didn't felt a tangible improvement really, the real improvement is when you move from a hard disk to a ssd, that one is like the difference between night and day

a option here would be if you can buy the adapter, the nvme, give it a try with the motherboard bios updated to the latest version and see if you can run a windows 10 install, see if it detects it, if it doesn't, you could see if it does work as just storage and consider keeping it or returning it

perhaps with this build it might not work as boot drive, but it doesn't mean you can't keep it and use it on another build, or next year you buy new intel motherboard with new cpu and can enjoy it

 

[mdd1963]

Even if the full PCI-e 3.0 spec speeds of 32 Gbps can't be utilized, who cares....' the Intel 1 TB 660P at $95-$100 is at normal SATA levels of pricing anyway, and, can be taken to your next rig, and is still faster than SATA, and, you'd have your 1 TB....

(I've seen a few 1 TB NVME drives for as low as $69 these past few days, so, keep your eyes peeled for sales!)

 

[popatim]

You need a (graphical) Uefi bios to have a chance at booting NVME and from what I've read you have the old text- style Bios so an NVME drive could only be used as storage. You will of course need to install an NVME driver. Win10 has one buiolt in and MS took down the one for Win7 but you can still find it with some searching.

Placing a n adapter In your other pcie3 x16 slot would drop your GPU's slot to x8 mode. This has a minimal impact on gaming so shouldn't interfere much with your work at all.

The 660P has a generous cache buffer, 44Gb on the 1TB (I think) to help make it as fast as it is, but it is dynamic, depending on how full the drive is. Other drives don't often have such a large or dynamic cache so please read reviews and benchmarks to make sure the drive you are looking at will work well with the files sizes you work with. Read size isn't an issue, just writes. This is also why Samsung Pro drives are so expensive. They can write at full speed for the whole drive.

 

[jsmith24]

Thanks for the input! I actually DO have a graphical UEFI BIOS. I would not mind the adapter card approach as long as I could boot from it. Someone else suggested keeping the original SSD as a boot drive and adding the NVMe for storage; Using the standard SATA m.2 to boot from and adding the expansion card really would not be useful, since all major system functions would only run at the lower speed anyway.

Thanks again for your info!

Jack

You need a (graphical) Uefi bios to have a chance at booting NVME and from what I've read you have the old text- style Bios so an NVME drive could only be used as storage. You will of course need to install an NVME driver. Win10 has one buiolt in and MS took down the one for Win7 but you can still find it with some searching.

Placing a n adapter In your other pcie3 x16 slot would drop your GPU's slot to x8 mode. This has a minimal impact on gaming so shouldn't interfere much with your work at all.

The 660P has a generous cache buffer, 44Gb on the 1TB (I think) to help make it as fast as it is, but it is dynamic, depending on how full the drive is. Other drives don't often have such a large or dynamic cache so please read reviews and benchmarks to make sure the drive you are looking at will work well with the files sizes you work with. Read size isn't an issue, just writes. This is also why Samsung Pro drives are so expensive. They can write at full speed for the whole drive.

 

[jsmith24]

Thanks everyone! It looks like the practical answer is that yes, an add on NVMe will work, but not as a boot unless I upgrade my motherboard, et alia. Right now I'll stick with my trusty 850 EVO or upgrade its size.

Thanks!