PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 versus PCIe 3.0 x16 M.2

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ericguizzetti

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Jul 12, 2016
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I have seen cards using connectors that have pins for what appears to PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 and now am seeing cards that have pins that appear to be for PCIe 3.0 x16 ... Do the higher pin cards take more advantage of speed through PCIe connection?
 
Solution
Eximo
That depends on the speed of the drive(s) connected. Not going to go any faster than that.

That ebay item just lets you plug an m.2 drive into an available PCIe slot. It is still limited to 4x based on the length of the PCIe connection.

There are cards out there that allow multiple M.2 SSDs to be installed, and they can use up more bandwidth, and be configured for RAID. Though with your typically available NVMe M.2 PCIe 3.0 4x SSD that is around 3-4 times faster than a SATA III SSD. Though that only applies to heavy workloads.

For typical end user use it doesn't really matter if you get an M.2 SATA or M.2 NVMe or SATA III SSD.
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Eximo

Eximo

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May 27, 2010
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That depends on the speed of the drive(s) connected. Not going to go any faster than that.

That ebay item just lets you plug an m.2 drive into an available PCIe slot. It is still limited to 4x based on the length of the PCIe connection.

There are cards out there that allow multiple M.2 SSDs to be installed, and they can use up more bandwidth, and be configured for RAID. Though with your typically available NVMe M.2 PCIe 3.0 4x SSD that is around 3-4 times faster than a SATA III SSD. Though that only applies to heavy workloads.

For typical end user use it doesn't really matter if you get an M.2 SATA or M.2 NVMe or SATA III SSD.
 
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Solution
Ninjawithagun

Ninjawithagun

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Aug 28, 2007
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The major difference between the PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slot on the motherboard is that it uses a direct link connection to the CPU, whereas the PCIe x16 NVMe adapter utilizes the motherboard chipset to negotiate with the CPU. Utimately, the NVMe direct connection to the CPU results in slightly lower latencies - though for most applications and moderate users, the difference is fairly unnoticeable. As for actual bandwidth throughput, neither solution will utilize their full potential as the bottleneck will be the M.2 NVMe SSD itself. The fastest M.2 NVMe SSD doesn't come anywhere near the maximum bandwidth of either solution.
 
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