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About NVMe

albix
Level 7
Hello,

I am assembling my new PC based on a ROG Maximus XII Formula and the following drives:

1 x Samsung MZ-V7S2T0 970 EVO Plus SSD 2 TB, PCIe NVMe M.2
1 x Samsung MZ-76E2T0 860 EVO SSD 2 TB, SATA III, 2.5"
2 x Western Digital WD40EZRX Caviar Green 4TB, SATA III, 3.5”

When available I also wish to install an RTX 3080 card.

I read on the motherboard manual that M.2 ports are sharing bandwidth with PCIEX and SATA ports.

My question is: in order to keep the best bandwidth for the video card and all of the drives, which port should I use to install the NVMe SSD? M.2_1, M.2_2 or M.2_3?

Many thanks for your help.
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2 REPLIES 2

Jesseinsf
Level 10
It's M.2 (number 2 port) that does, but they both share the bandwidth from the chipset. The Chipset only has 4 PCIe lanes going to the processor. M.2-2 will disable one of the SATA ports and switch the PCIe slot #3 from 4x to 2x PCIe lanes. If I were you, I'd save up to get two NVMe SSDs and retire SATA altogether. If you can't escape SATA the I'd get to 2TB 970 Evos and a SATA WD Black 4TB.

Thank you very much for your answer.
I own already the 860 EVO SSD and the two WD Caviar Green 4TB from my previous PC and I wish to save them.
If I have understood, installing the 970 EVO Plus SSD NVMe in port M.2_1 (number 1 port) shouldn't affect the bandwidth of other ports then. Is this correct?