Question 1

will this fit in a low profile slot?

Accepted Answer

It comes with a bracket for low profile but not having dealt with low profile slots before I don't want to say something wrong.

Question 2

To get full performance, does this have to go into an x16 slot?

Accepted Answer

The M8Pe uses 4 lanes of PCI express 3.0. You do not have to install it in an x16 slot to get the maximum speed, only an x4 slot.

Question 3

Can this be used as a W10 boot drive in a secondary PCIEx16 slot? My motherboard has only 5 PCIEx1 and 2 PCIEx16 slots. Zero PCIEx4 available.

Accepted Answer

I have it on my new MSI motherboard in the PCIEx8 slot and it works fine as the boot drive. (The 16 is being used by the video card.)

Question 4

Will this work with a X79 Motherboard like a Intel DX79TO? Didn't find any info on their website.

Accepted Answer

as long as you have a mobo that accepts NVMe storage on the PCIE bus with 4 lanes open it should work and is very fast. please note that it takes 4 lanes meaning you only have a maximum ob twelve left in most situations, and that makes SLI impossible.

Question 5

Is this compatible with PCIx16 2.0?

Accepted Answer

Short answer is yes. All PCI.E's are backwards compatible.

Long answer, overall this isn't a bad product and will prob do anything you need but your better off buying a samsung 960 pro 250 gig M.2 form factor for less has better ratings faster speeds and overall will be more viable in the future if you decide to upgrade your mother board. When you buy the M.2 style you will also need to buy an adapter such as StarTech PEX4M2E1 x4 PCI Express to M.2 PCIe SSD Adapter. The adapter is to make it fit your PCI.e slot

Good luck!

Question 6

Does anyone know if you can disable the red LED on the drive?

Accepted Answer

Hi, no the LEDS cannot be disabled, the red leds means that it's running ok, no led probably = drive is fried.

On another note though, this HHHL card is very nice, it's got a nice heft to it, very premium feel, feels like a tiny graphics card in your hand. And for the price, its a fast card, not as fast as a 960 Pro, about on par with the Intel 750 but much more aggressive styling. The Intel 750 was designed as an enterprise drive and this one is for gamers. I use it as a render cache for After Effects and it's fast. Also comes with 2 PCIE brackets a long and a short, my only regret is that I didn't buy a larger storage capacity.

Question 7

Can this drive be used as a boot drive (Windows 10) with motherboards like the Asus M5A97 which have PCIe 2.0 slots? The Kingston HyperX Predator SHPM2280P2H/240G (with HHHL Adapter) 240GB PCI-Express 2.0 x4 Internal Solid State Drive would not work as a boot drive. In fact it disabled the SATA controller.

Accepted Answer

It works as a boot drive on Asus M5A97 r2.0 on Windows 10 x64, however the raw performance is poor. With the Crucial momentum cache (yes, you read it correctly), as follows:

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) :  1440.458 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) :   737.759 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) :   184.095 MB/s [ 44945.1 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) :   215.186 MB/s [ 52535.6 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) :  1136.341 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) :   781.271 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) :    36.553 MB/s [  8924.1 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) :    72.523 MB/s [ 17705.8 IOPS]

Questions & Answers