Using a Fast M.2 SSD With My Z97 Board

[Schwartzinator]

First off, the motherboard I am using is the Asus Z97-AR. I bought a second 500Gb Samsung 850 Evo which I will be throwing into a RAID-0 configuration and want to get a different SSD for my OS. What I want to know, is will the Samsung SM951 M.2 SSD run at full speed off the M.2 Slot on my board? It says that it uses PCI-E lanes, so will it knock one of my GTX 980's down to X4, or is it using the separate X1 slot's lanes?

 

[TechyInAZ]

Unfortunately, Z97 is limited to 2x so your PCIE SSD will not run at 4x. I recommend the HyperX Preadator, some models come with a PCIE adapter that goes into your pcie slots on the motherboard, allowing you to run 4x.

 

[Schwartzinator]

If I get a PCI adapter, will it bump one of my GPUs down to 4x?

 

[TechyInAZ]

If I get a PCI adapter, will it bump one of my GPUs down to 4x?

No, it will go down to 8x or stay at 16X depending on where you put the adapter. For example, of you put it in the Gen 3 PCIE 3.0 slot, then the GPU will go to 8x because the PCIE 3.0 slots are routed to the CPUs PCIE lanes (16 total). But, if you put them on say the gen 2 PCIE slot or the pci x1 slots then it will use the chipset PCIE lanes.

 

[Schwartzinator]

Alright, that's what I thought. Unfortunately then, I won't be using an adapter. The only unpopulated slot that I could fit it in space wise would be the bottom 3.0 slot which would knock my 980s down to 8x and 4x. My top PCIE 1x slot as a wireless card in it, and the 1x slot between my 980's makes me a little uncomfortable as they can get hot and I don't want to ruin the SSD. In regards to the 2x M.2 slot, that won't interfere with my 980's PCIE bandwidth, correct?

 

[ko888]

The M.2 slot's two PCIe lanes are wired to the Z97 chipset's PCIe 2.0 bus. It's completely independent of the sixteen PCIe 3.0 lanes used by the graphics card.

 

[TechyInAZ]

Alright, that's what I thought. Unfortunately then, I won't be using an adapter. The only unpopulated slot that I could fit it in space wise would be the bottom 3.0 slot which would knock my 980s down to 8x and 4x. My top PCIE 1x slot as a wireless card in it, and the 1x slot between my 980's makes me a little uncomfortable as they can get hot and I don't want to ruin the SSD. In regards to the 2x M.2 slot, that won't interfere with my 980's PCIE bandwidth, correct?

No the 2x m.2 slot will only interfere with the sata ports.