Confused about M.2 PCIe NVMe SSDs

I'm speccing up a PC and the Motherboard is likely to be a Gigabyte Z270 HD3P. This has 1 x M.2, 2242/2260/2280/22110, PCIe/SATA expansion slot and supports SATAe / SATA3 / M.2 in terms of SATA.

I need to spec storage for this and the PC will be running Windows 10.

Is it possible to install two Samsung 250GB 960 Evo PCIe NVMe Solid State Drives on this motherboard so I have one 256GB C: drive and one 256GB D:?

If this seems a bad storage setup then what storage would be better? I want a fast OS C: drive and a fast app D: drive. I don't think I need more than 256GB for a D: drive.

As far as I can tell, the motherboard only has a single M.2 socket. You could install a single 512Gb NVMe M.2 drive, & partition it so that you have C: & D: drives that are 256Gb each (although the actual usable storage space would be a bit less after formatting).

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Originally Posted by Taz

I'm speccing up a PC and the Motherboard is likely to be a Gigabyte Z270 HD3P. This has 1 x M.2, 2242/2260/2280/22110, PCIe/SATA expansion slot and supports SATAe / SATA3 / M.2 in terms of SATA.

I need to spec storage for this and the PC will be running Windows 10.

Is it possible to install two Samsung 250GB 960 Evo PCIe NVMe Solid State Drives on this motherboard so I have one 256GB C: drive and one 256GB D:?

If this seems a bad storage setup then what storage would be better? I want a fast OS C: drive and a fast app D: drive. I don't think I need more than 256GB for a D: drive.

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Fairly sure that mobo only has one M.2 slot
https://i.imgur.com/ZIY2A9o.png
so unless you want to install a PCIe to M.2 adapter in your second x16 slot (x4 signal) [adapters are cheap on ebay from £6 but that drive would probably be not bootable], the only way you're going to get 500GB is if you buy one of Samsung 500GB 960 Evo M.2 drive.
Plus: this will be cheaper than two 250GB drives. And will have faster write speeds.
Minus:one single point of failure instead of two single points (so if your OS drive physically goes, so does your D: drive).

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Originally Posted by Taz

If this seems a bad storage setup then what storage would be better? I want a fast OS C: drive and a fast app D: drive. I don't think I need more than 256GB for a D: drive.

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Stick to normal SATA 6 drives as you won't be able to tell the difference and will save money / more for your money.

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Originally Posted by Terbinator

Stick to normal SATA 6 drives as you won't be able to tell the difference and will save money / more for your money.

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I disagree, best thing I did was upgrade the raid0 sata6 SSD's to a single 950 pro speed wise.

Taz, buy what you can afford size wise :)

If you can afford 1 NVMe drive 512gb with at least 1800mb/s read speed it will be faster than 2 sata6 drives and you can then add another drive down the line when you need it m8.

I bought a Samsung SM961 256GB, absolutely rapid! (3GB/s read - 2.1GB/s write)

Also.. They require no wires!

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Originally Posted by GoNz0

I disagree, best thing I did was upgrade the raid0 sata6 SSD's to a single 950 pro speed wise.

Taz, buy what you can afford size wise :)

If you can afford 1 NVMe drive 512gb with at least 1800mb/s read speed it will be faster than 2 sata6 drives and you can then add another drive down the line when you need it m8.

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Well I guess it depends on what you're doing, but he's just looking for a C:\ drive. Coming from an SSD to NVMe myself, the difference is negligible for a general system disk.

Thanks for the replies, all.

I'll price up a single 512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe. I've only started looking at components today after a couple of years and things change so quickly!

When I was looking at SSDs (the threads below yours) I was advised to go for SATA. Although I would have liked NVMe, as the mobo is from 2015 and running W7 I decided to stay with SATA.
Your mobo and BIOS should be well up to NVMe, so you could go for M.2 slot for one SSD (if it's the same as mine, it runs at 10Gb/s, so a bit faster than SATA 3) and one on PCIe then use the one that you prefer for boot.
I'd decided on a Samsung 960 rather than the 961, as I preferred the NAND used.

As it is, I got a Samsung 850 Pro, 512GB and it's going well. I suspect that the system specs on my PC would be a limiting factor for NVMe. The score was 5.9, limited by the SATA 3 HDD; it's now 7.0, with graphics being the limiting parameter - but not bad for integrated graphics.

Sorry for the thread hijack but I've been wondering about these lately too. I have a 512GB Crucial MX100 drive as my C: drive just now, would I be at all likely to see any appreciable improvement doing stuff like booting Win10, running/switching between apps, loading games etc. if I went for a similar size M.2 drive like the Samsung 960 Evo?

It's worth point out, that whilst you only have one M.2 slot on the motherboard, you can add in PCIe adapters - but do check you don't run out of PCIe lanes on your consumer level motherboard.

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Originally Posted by 8bit

Sorry for the thread hijack but I've been wondering about these lately too. I have a 512GB Crucial MX100 drive as my C: drive just now, would I be at all likely to see any appreciable improvement doing stuff like booting Win10, running/switching between apps, loading games etc. if I went for a similar size M.2 drive like the Samsung 960 Evo?

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Only if it's nvme

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

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Originally Posted by GoNz0

Only if it's nvme

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And where did you notice the difference?

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Originally Posted by EndlessWaves

And where did you notice the difference?

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Anything that caused a bottleneck with the SSD

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Originally Posted by GoNz0

Anything that caused a bottleneck with the SSD

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And for you what would that be?