How can i find which m.2 works on my motherboard

Dustin_33

Commendable
Jan 28, 2017
2
0
1,510
I have "gigabyte technology co. ltd. z97x-sli" and I was wanting to get a m.2 ssd, but I don't know which ones would work. It is 10gb/s. https://puu.sh/tDx3b/f18d776f81.png is an image of the gigabytes "M.2 Support" from their website, but i think it might be outdated.

Ive got a 2tb HDD but i found out it is 5400RPM and it has very slow loading speeds in some games, so I wanted to use the HDD for most the storage and the M.2 for the OS and some games. Was wondering which m.2 would support my motherboard for OS + some steam games and blizzard games.
 
Solution



Your m.2 socket is only a M type but you would be able to use a M+B type M.2 as well as a M type.
If you simply using for an OS and gaming, you don't really need a nvme ssd. A sata based SSD will be sufficient enough.
That Z97 chipset motherboard uses two PCIe 2.0 lanes at the most delivering up to 10 Gb/s data transfer speeds.
SATA delivers up to 6 Gb/s data transfer speeds.
This motherboard does not use PCIe 3.0 for M.2 storage but is backwards compatible to PCIe 2.0 speeds.

You may need a BIOS update that offers support for NVMe devices. I would recommend only using later BIOS updates for support for Intel 5th Generation Core Processors.
Broadwell
Core i7-5775C
Core i5-5675C
Xeon E3-1285 V4
Xeon E3-1285L V4
Xeon E3-1265L V4
 

Dustin_33

Commendable
Jan 28, 2017
2
0
1,510


so it doesn't matter if it is M or M+B ?



i have an i7 4790.

I was thinking of getting the pm591, but that saids NVMe, so should i not get that one? Can anyone suggest an m.2 ssd that is really good at 256gb or 512gb

 



Your m.2 socket is only a M type but you would be able to use a M+B type M.2 as well as a M type.
If you simply using for an OS and gaming, you don't really need a nvme ssd. A sata based SSD will be sufficient enough.
 
Solution