Will nvme ssd like samsung evo 970 work on a PCIe 3.0 x2?

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Hashan Darshana

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I have an acer laptop motherboard with a m.2 slot. It has a PCIe 3.0 x2 lane available. Will it be able to use a nvme ssd drive like samsung 970 evo? Will it be bootable? thanks.
 
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Barty1884
Yes, provided the M.2 slot is PCIe you can "use" it. Just at the lesser bandwidth afforded by x2 opposed to x4.

I have a 950 Pro M.2 on my Haswell board (x2 via the M.2 slot).
I wouldn't spend the premium for a 970 EVO if I were you.
(almost) any decent NVMe M.2 would be fine - outside of benchmarks, you're not going to notice much difference between any of them. Maybe a second or two in boots or saves.

Even saying that, if your M.2 used both PCIe and SATA, I'd probably be more inclined to just pick up a SATA based M.2

A ~250GB M.2 is as low as $70
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/w27v6h/western-digital-blue-250gb-m2-2280-solid-state-drive-wds250g2b0b

Vs. the 970 EVO at $110 for comparable capacity.

The WD Black PCIe 256GB...
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Barty1884

Barty1884

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Apr 16, 2015
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Yes, provided the M.2 slot is PCIe you can "use" it. Just at the lesser bandwidth afforded by x2 opposed to x4.

I have a 950 Pro M.2 on my Haswell board (x2 via the M.2 slot).
I wouldn't spend the premium for a 970 EVO if I were you.
(almost) any decent NVMe M.2 would be fine - outside of benchmarks, you're not going to notice much difference between any of them. Maybe a second or two in boots or saves.

Even saying that, if your M.2 used both PCIe and SATA, I'd probably be more inclined to just pick up a SATA based M.2

A ~250GB M.2 is as low as $70
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/w27v6h/western-digital-blue-250gb-m2-2280-solid-state-drive-wds250g2b0b

Vs. the 970 EVO at $110 for comparable capacity.

The WD Black PCIe 256GB is $80
https://pcpartpicker.com/product/DM7CmG/western-digital-black-pcie-256gb-m2-2280-solid-state-drive-wds256g1x0c

 
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Hashan Darshana

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Apr 4, 2015
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Thanks.

Will I be able to use this in a newer laptop also later? (nvme enabled laptop)
http://www.nanotek.lk/product/694



 
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Barty1884

Barty1884

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Different laptops implement it differently.

Some will use PCIe only (some have a SATA only M.2 slot), others will use a slot that's wired for both PCIe and SATA.

By spec, M.2 supports either, but there's no guarantees without checking the spec of a given laptop.
 
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msroadkill612

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Jan 31, 2009
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So to tidy up, so ur saying pcie3 x4 nvme devices are backwardly compatible w/ pcie3 x2 AND pcie 2 x4,

as they should be, but its nice to be sure before buying.

I would love to learn more on it. any links you would suggest re nvme & pcie?

whimsically, in an app where write was ~as important as read speed, there could be advantages in the lesser links.

In reality, few nvmeS write above 2GB/s. So the more ~2GB/s nvmeS you can squeeze onto limited lanes, the better the app works.

a mere pcie3 x8 lane slot could host a 16 lane 4x nvme adapter in a bifurcated slot, run in pcie2, and host 4x ~2GB/s read and write drives. Had 16 lanes of pcie3 been used, the write speed would still be the same.
 
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