Can my motherboard support an M.2 Slot 960 Evo

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Antreas Solou

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Sep 15, 2014
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Hello everyone,

I have this motherboard.
My question is:

Can my motherboard support an M.2 Slot 960 Evo (PCIe 3.0 x4, NVMe 1.2) since it only supports M.2 Slot 1x 2280 Key M(PCIe Gen2 x2/SATA) or will I get reduced performance making the purchase of 960 not worth it?
 
Solution
D


The drive will run at about half speed with that board.

https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/Z97-MPOWER.html#hero-specification

" Push your SSD to the limit

Enjoy a blazing fast system boot up and insanely fast loading of applications and games with MSI Overclocking motherboards. We offer the next generation of high speed storage support through M.2 and SATA Express. M.2 and SATA Express transfer data through a PCI Express 2.0 x2 interface up to...
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Deleted member 217926

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The drive will run at about half speed with that board.

https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/Z97-MPOWER.html#hero-specification

" Push your SSD to the limit

Enjoy a blazing fast system boot up and insanely fast loading of applications and games with MSI Overclocking motherboards. We offer the next generation of high speed storage support through M.2 and SATA Express. M.2 and SATA Express transfer data through a PCI Express 2.0 x2 interface up to 10 Gb/s, making it 67% faster than SATA 3.0 solutions."

You need a PCI-E 3.0 x4 M2 slot with a full 32Gb/s to run an NVME drive at full speed.

It may or may not have the UEFI module necessary to boot from NVMe. I don't see NVMe specifically mentioned on the page. Without that support the 960 couldn't be a boot drive.

So half speed for sure and may or may not only be usable as a storage drive.

Don't get it. Just get an 850 Evo or Pro.
 
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Solution
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mdd1963

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Jan 14, 2006
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I'm not sure Z97 was capable of the full 3,000 MB/sequential read speeds offered with later mainboards with PCI-eX4 connectivity with M.2 slot; the Z97 spec sheet seemed to imply SATA3 specs, unless I misread it....

The full speed NVME/M.2 spec should mention 32 Gb/sec, the spec of PCIe x 4 lanes of bandwidth
 
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Deleted member 217926

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Some Z97 boards have full speed PCI-E 3 x4 M2 slots and some can boot from NVMe. This isn't one of them.
 
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Deleted member 217926

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You get about half speed out of the older 10Gb/s slot. The fastest NVMe drives ( 960 Pro so far ) doesn't fully saturate the full 32Gb/s link.

Since it doesn't specifically mention NVMe it almost certainly lacks the UEFI module necessary to boot from a fast drive anyway.
 
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