Can someone explain M.2 SSDs to me?

Pankaikz

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Jun 2, 2014
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I am building a new rig with an ASUS Maximus VII Hero, which has a M.2 Socket 3 slot on it. My question is, why would I want to run an M.2 SSD rather than a SATA III SSD? I can't find very much info on M.2 aside from the Wikipedia entry, which didn't answer any of my questions. By the way, the drive is going to be used for my operating system (win8.1). Any information will be helpful, thanks.