Question 1

Thinking of pairing this with a new Asus Z170 Pro Gaming motherboard which has an M.2 connector at PCI 3.0 x 4 lanes.  Would it remove the 560 mbps bottleneck of SATA III (I think it will) and, more importantly, can it work as the boot drive easily?

Accepted Answer

Hi!
I thinks ASUS Z170 Pro with M.2 with be wonderful but you must sacrifice SLI . I used ASROCK Z97 Extreme 6 with SLI GTX 970 so that I have to use second M.2 Gen2 x2. I remove SLI and try put it in M.3 Gen3 x4 and it run wonderful.
 
Read 2072MB/s Write 673.5 MB/s (seq Q32T1)
Read 1882 MB/s Write 672.9 MB/s (seq)
Read 433.5 MB/s Write 261.6 MB/s (4k Q32T1)
Read 52.28 MB/s Write 209.0 MB/s (4k)
Bench by Crystal Disk Mark 5.0 x64

It can use as boot drive easily BUT it wont boot fast like SSD. You must install windows with UEFI. In bios I cannot set it as first drive, I must set Windows Boot Manager. I think this is the reason that it boot slow. I think may be ASUS can handle better.

Question 2

Work whith an alienware laptop 15?

Accepted Answer

I cannot answer this question honestly since I do not own an alienware a.k.a dell laptop. However, I can answer with some details from what I know about this particular model of m.2. Essentially, this is a PCIE device that is not natively bootable. it has no onboard bios and requires the installation of UEFI during windows setup which is an arduous task that requires accessing and disabling advanced features in the computer bios. Features such as CAS and clearing disk security keys are not typically found in a laptop bios since they are not designed to be upgradable to the extent that a desktop is. Additionally, installation of windows requires it to be done using a bootable USB. Lastly, because windows does not install UEFI natively, simply ghosting your old disk onto one of these will not render a bootable M.2. I would first check you system to see if your M.2 is sata or PCIE. if it is sata, this device WILL NOT WORK in your laptop. if it is sata then look to the slower M/B key devices such as the Samsung 850 evo M.2 cards. You will still have to do an advance installation though.

lastly, if you are wondering how I know all of this it is because of the experience I had adding an M.2 to my wife's Z97 motherboard. This type of M.2 is an OEM unit designed for PCIE ONLY.

Question 3

will this work with a8x-g45 gaming by msi motherboard?

Accepted Answer

Not a question I could possibly answer since I don't own your board and generally stay away from AMD all together. What I would do is tell you to consult your manual and see which M.2 it accepts. They come in two types; PCIe and SATA. Additionally, there are interface types; M-key, B-key and MB-key. If you board supports SATA only, you can buy any retail package model that has MB-key interface. This type is PCIe and is m-key only. Not compatible with M.2 SATA.

Question 4

Will this work with z97mplus br motherboard?  I am using a I3-4160, it will bottleneck with this ssd?

Accepted Answer

I have been asked questions like this a lot so I appreciate you reaching out to me in regards. I own 2 of them and find them to be quite remarkable. Answering your questions however is not simple and I will explain why later in this replay. The short answers to your questions are Question 1. according to the SSD support list for your motherboard:
It IS NOT listed. 
Questions 2. CPU model is not factor with M.2 in anyway except one; which is the number of PCI Express lanes provided by your CPU. In a nut shell, if you have a CPU that has only 16 lanes available such as yours:
it comes into play with devices you've added on such as graphics cards and sata express. So, if you are using 2 graphics card in SLi or Crossfire, they will be using 8 PCI express lanes each leaving none available for use with this M.2 since it needs 4.

Moving on to specifics about this  M.2 SSD. M.2 SSD's come in several flavors ( SATA and PCIe). SATA is self explanatory and will use the same hardware interface as your hardrives even though it is plugged into and m.2 slot. This M.2 SSD however is PCIe and reading your manual, it indicates that the socket on it supports PCIe M.2.

Z97 and M.2. This is a very ominous topic considering when z97 launched; it brought with it the m.2 standard which had yet to be established and perfected. What you ended up with is case by case support.  I have 3 Asus Z97 motherboards here: 1 is PCIe 2x only, One does not support m.2 and the other is PCIe 4x. For your board, it may be a case of an un updated compatibility listing. I would try it out and see but I caution you, writing windows to this is a huge pain. I would suggest searching "install windows 10 on m.2 SSD" and following the guides. You will need a bootable USB windows 10 installation. If you are using 2 graphics cards though, you gotta remove 1 to make lanes available for it.

ask me another question if you need further details

Question 5

Will this work at full speed with a MSI Gaming 5 Z97 board or will I get half speed? If I do get half speed, that should still be better than what I'm getting with my current SSD (500MB/s read & 100MB/s write).

Accepted Answer

It depends on how the M.2 slot is implemented on your motherboard.
I have one in a X99 motherboard that runs full speed.
I have one in a H97 motherboard that runs at half its rated speed.
Both boards are made by Asus.

That being said, to answer the second part of your question, yes it is worth it even at half-speed.  The one in the H97 system is still about 60% faster than the SATA III SSDs I have in the system according to benchmark tests.  It also frees up a SATA port if you are planning more drives.  Mine is used as a OS boot drive.

Question 6

I'd like to install this in my Lenovo X1 Carbon but dont know if it will be slim enough, does anyone have a thinkness dimension?

Accepted Answer

Not sure about exact measurements, but I would say roughly 3mm. It is very small and very thin.

You may also want to double check the interface on the Lenovo X1 Carbon to make sure it supports NVME PCI-E 3.0 M.2 drives. This is some pretty new tech and support for the NVME style drives is fairly limited right now.

Question 7

Will this fit into either the MSI Gaming Z170A M7 or M5 Motherboard? Or does it fit into any skylake z170 intel motherboard?

Accepted Answer

I suggest you read up on m.2 m-key, b-key and mb-key which are the three formats. Also, check your manual to see if the board slot Sata based or pcie based. This item is strictly pcie and requires 4 lanes. If your board supports pcie on m.2 but only supports 2 lanes, this item will be a lower than a standard ssd

Question 8

Will Windows 10 fit on this with space for World of Warcraft? I'm wonderin if 128 will be big enough. Thats pretty much the only game I will be playing... Maybe Battlefield 4 too. Thank you in advance.

Accepted Answer

It should be plenty if you clean up after yourself periodically. My system has windows 10, office 2013, chrome, firefox, 7zip, some music composition software, and 5 gigs of data and is using 36GB. Google says WOW takes 22GB, so that is less than half of 128GB.

Question 9

Will this M.2 drive work on the GIGABYTE GA-Z170X-Gaming 3 (rev. 1.0) Motherboard Without an Adapter Like MSI makes you buy?

Accepted Answer

Im not certain but i would assume so becuase it works fantastic with my asus x99-a (windows bootable and all which some people had problems with) at the advertised speeds.  One thing i did notice was that the memory chips get very hot to the touch which should not be a problem but im considering putting some ram sinks on them to increase the lifespan.

Question 10

There are currently a few Mfgrs that make a x4 slot adapter for this drive. Can i use this drive with an adapter for PCIe and put it on any board that has a x4 PCIe 2.0 or better? like a Gigabyte F2A88XM-D3H?

Accepted Answer

Yes, this should work fine.  Just make sure the M.2 is designed for a PCIe SSD, not a M.2 SATA SSD.

From my understanding, PCIe lanes are shared by the devices connected.  The more PCIe devices connected, the more lanes that are sharing the bandwidth of the lanes.  The best way to explain this is if you have two x16 video cards and two x16 slots.  Depending on the board manufacturer, you may have two dedicated x16 slots, (each video card gets the full x16 bandwidth) or you may end up with each video card only getting x8 lanes. (Two slots share the x16 lanes, divided by two cards means each card gets x8 lanes)

What this means for a PCIe SSD is that if you have two cards, say the SSD adapter x4 and a USB card x4 in two different slots, you may only be getting x2 lanes for each card.  I'm unclear but the same should theoretically apply on a M.2 adapter card.  For example, let's say you have 1 x4 adapter card with 1 M.2 PCIe SSD.  You should get full bandwidth for the x4 and the single SSD.  However, if you have 1 x4 adapter and 2 SSDs, each will theoretically share two lanes meaning each SSD will only run at x2.  If the adapter can handle 4 M.2, then each SSD will run at x1 and the max bandwidth for PCIe 2.0 x1 is 500MB making it as fast as SATA III.

So, to answer your question, yes you can do it.  Just be careful how you configure it though.

In conclusion, make sure you're going to get the bandwidth you need from the adapter depending on the configuration you are planning.

In other thoughts, the Samsung 950 PROs are around the corner.  It might be worth holding off for those.

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