Setting up M 2 .. New world for me .. New build

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K

kdiver58

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Mar 12, 2015
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I am finally getting all of the parts and putting my build together. The more I assemble the more I need to know. My Gigabyte GA-Z170-HD3 ATX LGA1151 motherboard has M2 . I've never heard of it and don't know how to set it up ,
Should I set it up?
I have an A-data-internal-hard-drive-asp550ss3240gmc as my boot drive . will it work with that ?

If I don't setup the M 2 I'm guessing I would just plug it into the PCI e Sata socket on the motherboard ?

Thanks .. K

 
Solution
Barty1884
M.2 is a new(er) interface. You either buy a compatible drive, or just leave it alone. Having the socket & not using it isn't going to do you any harm.

Drives for M.2 are a different form-factor. You have a 2.5" SSD (an SP550), that's not compatible with M.2.

The board supports a PCIe x4 M.2 drive, and also SATA based M.2. SATA M.2 is pretty pointless, but you'd see improved speeds with a PCIe x4 M.2 drive (a Samsung 950 Pro is a nice option).

This is the 950 Pro - a PCIe M.2 option:
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147466&cm_re=950_pro-_-20-147-466-_-Product

Again, you don't need to use it.
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Barty1884

Barty1884

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Apr 16, 2015
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M.2 is a new(er) interface. You either buy a compatible drive, or just leave it alone. Having the socket & not using it isn't going to do you any harm.

Drives for M.2 are a different form-factor. You have a 2.5" SSD (an SP550), that's not compatible with M.2.

The board supports a PCIe x4 M.2 drive, and also SATA based M.2. SATA M.2 is pretty pointless, but you'd see improved speeds with a PCIe x4 M.2 drive (a Samsung 950 Pro is a nice option).

This is the 950 Pro - a PCIe M.2 option:
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147466&cm_re=950_pro-_-20-147-466-_-Product

Again, you don't need to use it.
 
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Solution
J

joex444

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Feb 16, 2006
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M.2 is the interface, it doesn't specify anything about how the M.2 drive would operate. Some are SATA, some are NVMe. So you have two different protocols using the same interface which is slightly unusual. A SATA based M.2 drive performs no better than a typical SATA SSD, which is what you have. An NVMe based drive can either use PCIe 2.0 x2 or PCIe 3.0 x4. The latter would have real-world read speeds in the 2-3GB/s range whereas SATA is limited to about 500MB/s (0.5GB/s -- yes, NVMe is 4-6x as fast and has many more I/O per second than SATA which is already massively ahead of HDDs). The M.2 SATA drives are really for laptops and tiny desktop builds where there's no space for a 2.5" disk.

Similarly, saying you have a 2.5" SSD isn't helpful. It's probably SATA, but it could be U.2 (Intel 750). In that case, U.2 is actually NVMe -- it's PCIe 3.0 x4 over a cable. In that sense, M.2 is similar to saying 2.5". And of course 3.5" drives could be SATA or SAS, which is not backwards compatible with SATA controllers.
 
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