Solid State Drive (SSD) has been mainstream for well over a decade. The introduction of SSD drastically improved the overall performance of a PC. By addressing the bottleneck in the entire hardware stack, you gain significantly more speed. Because of this, it extends the lifespan of the computer quite dramatically.
While traditional SSD in the 2.5inch SATA format factor is still considered a good investment for older PCs, you should shift your eyes to the new kid on the block, M.2 SSD, if you are building a new PC or upgrade your new laptop. More specifically, M.2 SSD with NVMe (non-volatile memory express) over PCIe bus which has a max speed of 3.0GB/s,
Can my Computer run NVMe M.2 SSD?
OK, we’ve established that M.2 NVMe SSD is the new king of choice on your next build. Next step you will need to make sure that the motherboard supports it. New motherboard for the new gen of Intel and AMD CPUs all supports the M.2 NVMe SSD. If you are unsure whether your motherboard has this slot, check their specification or use CPU-Z to find out.
What to avoid when purchasing NVMe M.2 SSD
There are some M.2 SSDs out there that exactly use the same format as M.2 NVMe SSD but with SATA connection. This defeats the whole purpose of adopting this format. Avoid getting any M.2 SSD that uses SATA connection at all cost, you will not gain any speed advantage compared to the tradition 2.5 inch SSD
In addition to the M.2 SSD that uses the SATA bus, please also avoid the other two types of SSD form factor shown above. The one on the very left is the Micron M600 SSD form factor, and next to that is the mSATA SSD form factor. Support for these two types of SSDs are low and as the name
Lastly, if you don’t plan to build a new PC, but still want to use the new M.2 SSD on your legacy desktop to maximize the performance, you are looking at PCIe adaptor that allows you to mount the M.2 NVMe SSD. Be extra careful on picking the adaptor. Depends on the PCIe x multiplier you may or may not utilize the full potential of the new SSD. It also will be tricky to boot Windows from a PCIe slot if your old motherboard’s BIOS does not support it. If you can’t use it as the main bootable partition it may not worth it going to that route.
The bottom line is that it’s best to pick M.2 SSD with NVMe along with a new motherboard and CPU. For an older motherboard, say 4 years or older, the chances to make it work is quite unlikely.
I got the program listed, but I don’t understand what I am looking for inorder to know if my board supports M.2 or not. The program interface doesn’t exactly have a compatibility question section or anything so. . . What would it look like if it was?
Excelent article. Congratulations, it help me a lot.
Dowloaded CPU-Z but it says nothing about M.2 or SSD information – wasted time!
Yes CPU-Z doesnt say anything about .M2 or SSD
M.2 is one form factor of SSD. They are all SSDs. You are looking for the wrong info.
Kent, you seem to know what we should be looking for in CPU-Z. Can you tell us? What info should we be looking for?
the program ain’t show anything about m2 ssd
Jonathan Hu, would you please come back and clarify this article? What information are we looking for in CPU-Z that would tell us if we can use an M.2 SSD?
This differs from each motherboard, and they can vary, and that’s why I left out from the main article. Sorry, this caused your confusion. What you need is to find out your motherboard model number and it’s chipset more specifically southbridge. This with this info you can look up (Google) each of the motherboard’s manufacture to check if they support the M.2 SSD interface. Hope this helps.
Wrong …the ssd callimg m.2 nvme is a ssd .m.2 this is just terrible to give false imformation …this is no help to someome looking for viable imformation. Please take this page down if you cant redo it.
exactly my thoughts. The information stated here is actually wrong, so are the images… Hope people see these comments and realize that.