NVMe SSD for ASRock H97M-itx Board

[Texascowboy]

I currently have a MacOS Sierra build that runs on an H97M-itx motherboard with a spinning HDD as the boot/storage drive. As part of an update to High Sierra I'd like to install an SSD for the OS and storage of frequently used files (apps, etc.).

The H97M-itx board does not natively support NVMe or M.2 drives however there is a single PCIe 3.0 x 16 slot that is normally used for graphics cards. Since I use the integrated Intel graphics on my processor I am wondering whether I might use the PCIe slot, with a suitable adapter card, to install and NVMe SSD.

The primary reason for considering this route is future proofing. I'm thinking that I could reuse the NVMe drive in the future if/when I upgrade my system with a new motherboard / processor combination.

So I'd appreciate feedback as to whether any NVMe SSD might work with this motherboard and, if so, what kind of Read/Write speed might I expect to see. Also confirmation that the motherboard would be able to boot into MacOS using the NVMe drive as the boot drive.

Thanks.

 

[Lutfij]

Why not just move with a 2.5" SSD purchase and leave out the guess work. Often people have complained about not being able to install an OS onto an NVMe drive due to chipset limitations. In your case, you've got available SATA data ports so take advantage of them. On the flip side, you're going to see much more faster and cheaper as well as power efficient NVMe SSD's come to market which will make your current NVMe purchase moot, especially when you consider that you're going to need some work around just to use the NVMe drive.

How much are you looking to spend? You could looking into these brands:
SK Hynix SL308
Samsung 850 Evo
ADATA SU800

 

[Rdslw]

Long story short: Not worth it. You will spend hours figuring out layout, correct adapters, installing OS on non-standard drive and you will gain maybe 20% on day-to-day tasks if you're lucky.
Get a solid 2.5 SSD maybe samsung 860/850 512 GB if you can. One of best upgrades you can make for speed and reliability without compatibility headache

 

[rgd1101]

And you probably can't boot from NVMe, can only use it as a data drive