Switching OS boot drive to different slot?

derridada

Commendable
Mar 16, 2016
16
0
1,520
Hi,

I'm using a Samsung SSD 970 Evo NVM.e M.2 1TB as boot drive, currently installed in the PCIe add-in card HYPER M.2 X4 MINI which shipped with my Asus Z170 Deluxe mobo.
I'd like to purchase a new GPU, but since the one I've got my eye one that requires 3 slots, I'll have to move the Hyper card with OS drive to make room.

The most elegant solution would be to put the OS drive into the M.2 Socket on the mobo itself -- I used the Hyper-m.2 add-on card because it offered better thermal values, as the Hyper card back-plate was blocking the hot air coming from my GTX970 strix, whereas in the native m.2 mobo slot the temps were a lot higher (just purchased an m.2 Silverstone heatsink to try and combat that).

Long story short: I'd like to switch the OS drive to the m.2 slot on the mobo instead of the pcie add-on card.

1. Will this mess up the boot? Will the BIOS recognize it as OS drive and C-drive? I've 2 other SSDs and 2 HDDs connected, so I assume I would just have to unplug those when first booting into OS and then reconnect in the same sequence as before (I think)?

2. Thermal issues: the new GPU will provide amazing air cooling - I hope - but the hot air will just blow down to the m2; I considered just putting the PCIe add-in card above the GPU, but it's physically impossible.

Thoughts?
 

or.at2497

Prominent
Jul 29, 2018
56
0
660
1. the bios recognizes the hard drives no matter in which slot are they. if u r concerned about the first boot with the ssd in its new place u have to know 2 things. first is, does the other drives have an OS installed on them? because if not they wont be able to boot and the only boot option is the m.2 ssd. if there isnt any other OS on another drives, then windows boot manager will take control and will find the bootable drive. second, u can do it anyway, just enter the boot menu and change the boot priority to the m.2 ssd.

2. your 970 evo can perform well under 70c temperature. if u think that the case will be close or than 70 degrees then u should find a good cooling solution. there are a lot of monitoring programs like HWMONITOR which can let u see the drives temp. so before u burn up your ssd in games, u should try to see what really happenes. if it gets really hot then turn off your pc and then you have some options: buy a nice m.2 ssd cooler, use a pcie extender or buy a new motherboard :)

HWMONITOR - https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmonitor.html
m.2 ssd cooler for example - https://www.amazon.com/XPG-Storm-Cooling-Heatsink-ASTORM-C/dp/B077SSV15R/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1537710696&sr=8-5&keywords=m.2+cooler

hope this info is helpful.