Z77 PCIe M.2 Card

[prince_xaine]

Just curious. I have an AsRock Z77 Exterme4 motherboard. Obviously, it doesn't have a M.2 Slot. My question, if I bought a M.2 SSD and a PCIe Card with a M.2 slot on it, would the card operate in SATA or perform normally? Thanks.

 

[Darkbreeze]

Since it would be connected to the PCI bus, and not the SATA bus, it would work at least marginally normally, if that PCI card adapter is even supported by your motherboard and operating system.

Whether or not it would be BOOTABLE, is another story altogether. It might be, but it might not. I can't say for certain because I've never tried to use one of those adapters on an older chipset board like that. Honestly, the difference in performance for MOST things, short of very large sequential file transfers, is negligible. You'd probably be better off just using a standard SATA SSD as far as any real world performance gains are concerned.

http://forum.asrock.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=3319&title=z77-extreme-4-nvme-pcie-ssd-booting

 

[USAFRet]

Just curious. I have an AsRock Z77 Exterme4 motherboard. Obviously, it doesn't have a M.2 Slot. My question, if I bought a M.2 SSD and a PCIe Card with a M.2 slot on it, would the card operate in SATA or perform normally? Thanks.

It would probably be slightly better than SATA performance, but only as a secondary drive.
Not the boot drive.

Result - A waste of money.

 

[Calvin7]

Intel Series 7 Chipsets - Z77 have no BIOS support for NVMe storage booting. You would need a third-party BIOS-mod or software such as Clover to boot from it.
https://www.win-raid.com/t2375f50-Guide-NVMe-boot-without-modding-your-UEFI-BIOS-Clover-EFI-bootloader-method.html

 

[prince_xaine]

This is actually a great way to boot from a m.2! It doesn't mod the BIOS in any way, so this makes it quite a usable program. Yes it touches the performance a bit, but that's okay.

To everyone, thank you for the responses. In my opinion SATA SSD is no where close to M.2 SSD in terms of booting Windows, programs and desktop performance. I have a MSI Gaming Plus Z370 motherboard with a Samsung 970 Pro. It blows even the Samsung 860 SATA SSD out of the water, loading programs before the desktop is even loaded. For example, when it reaches my desktop, Steam is already loading. With a SATA there's seconds of delay. This is true for all applications load times, and the adapter plus a 500GB 970 Pro comes to about $180.

 

[Darkbreeze]

IDK about that. I have a 250GB 970 EVO and the only time I notice a difference is during large file transfers, maybe also when opening and running rather large program installers. Other than that, I don't see much difference in boot times or real time usage in other aspects of the operating system between my 970 EVO and my 850 EVO. Entire system is SSD as well so there are no HDDs limiting anything.

But as long as you found an answer that helps you, that's all that matters.

 

[incxbxs]

Intel Series 7 Chipsets - Z77 have no BIOS support for NVMe storage booting. You would need a third-party BIOS-mod or software such as Clover to boot from it.
https://www.win-raid.com/t2375f50-G...r-UEFI-BIOS-Clover-EFI-bootloader-method.html

sorry best solution is not entirely true.
asrock z77 extereme indeed support nvme ssd booting. They released new bios for it (P2.90Q)

I was able to install win10 and boot from nvme ssd using AKASA m.2 to pciE adapter and sabrent rocket nvme ssd.