Question 1

Can I boot Windows 10 from a SSD on this card?  I've a Gigabyte GA-Z97X-Gaming 7 motherboard.  It boots from M.2 PCIe Gen 3 x2 slot on motherboard.  Would like to use this card instead to get full x4 speed.

Accepted Answer

In your case the answer is YES but there are a few catches.  I did the same thing and it auto configures a few "bridge devices" and runs immediately with X4 speed.  No need to reinstall!  However, this motherboard will probably run any installed graphics card at X8 mode instead of X16 if you use ANY solution like this.  It is a motherboard design issue, nothing wrong with the PCI-E SSD adapter.  I was OK with graphics at X8 mode but it depends on your needs.  Review your manual or download one to see how the X modes are shared among slots.

Question 2

will this work on a SAMSUNG 970 EVO M.2 2280 500GB PCIe Gen3. X4? im about to get a 2 TB version of the drive so need to yank the 500 gb card and use this adapter to use it to transfer the almost 500 gb of data to the 2 tb. if it works that is.

Accepted Answer

I don't know for certain, but I am pretty sure it will. There are no doubt a couple of motherboard and chipset dependencies. The 970 EVO, for example, was introduced long after the card was designed. But the card is just a PCI (x4) card, and the 970 is a standard M.2 SSD. That's what the card was designed to work with.

As a side thought, do you have a second M.2 connector? If so, you could temporarily use both of them until the transfer was completed.

Question 3

my pcie lanes are x8 and x16 respectively. will this adapter work on x8 and x16 pcie lanes?

Accepted Answer

This is an adapter that works at PCIe x4, if you use this card on x8 and x16 slot, the SSD will run at x4. The speeds wont go beyond x4. My recommendation is not use it on x8 or x16 slots because you will be wasting PCIe lanes if you have a GPU.

On the other hand, If you dont have a GPU then by using this on the x8 or x16 slots, you will bypass the PCH and directly connect to CPU lane and will not hit the DMI bottleneck. So if you were to run a ultra fast SSD that reads or writes above the 3.9 GB/s then it does make sense to connect directly to CPU lanes. In most motherboards the x8 and x16 slots are directly wired to the CPU.

So in short this adapter will work on x8 or x16 slots but it will run at x4 speeds. (Assuming you have enough free pcie lanes)

Question 4

would the expansion card work with msi 970 gaming motherboard?

Accepted Answer

I don’t have experience with that particular mb, but if I was to guess I would say yes it is likely to work. I plugged it into 3 different motherboards (one was pretty old) and they all recognized the drive right away.

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