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Can I upgrade my IMPACT VI mPCIe combo card to a IMPACT VII mPCIe combo card

RetardedTiming
Level 7
I bought a new Samsung 950 pro SSD not realizing there are three different connectors for M.2.

The combo card that came with my IMPACT VI has a "B" connector. The Samsung 950 pro SSD has a "M" connector.

It looks like the combo card that came with the IMPACT VII motherboard has the "M" connector.

Is it possible to swap them out? Do they have the same mPCIe connectors? Drivers shouldn't be a problem?

Unfortunately I can't send the SSD back since I opended the box. Grrr.
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9 REPLIES 9

Undesirable
Level 7
You could buy one of those M.2 PCI-e SSD to PCI-e Adapter Cards e.g. Lycom DT-120. http://www.amazon.com/Lycom-DT-120-PCIe-Adapter-Support/dp/B00MYCQP38

However, I'm not sure if you will be able to boot Windows on it with this motherboard.

Nate152
Moderator
Being they have different connections I doubt they are compatible. You can try what Undesirable suggests, I know the VII series boards could boot with a pcie adapter and there's not a whole lot of difference between the VI and VII series boards so it may work with the latest bios, I say may because I'm not 100% certain.

Undesirable
Level 7
You can see a couple of threads down in this forum that people cannot boot on Maximus VI to an OS with the Samsung SM951 because it does not contain a "boot ROM" and has no drivers that will allow you to boot from it, because it is an OEM product. People have to modify their BIOS to get it working properly, although they seem to be able to use the drive to store data when they boot from another device. There hasn't been a working solution posted with regard to booting the NVMe version of the drive either, (and the Samsung SSD 950 Pro appears to be an NVMe drive) even with BIOS modifications.

All I know about the Samsung SSD 950 Pro is that there is a driver available for it, but you have to be in Windows to run its Setup routine. It's also unclear whether you can extract the driver files manually and use them when installing Windows, allowing it to boot.

Link to driver 'n' stuff: http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/minisite/SSD/global/html/support/downloads.html

Also, ASUS don't seem to be supporting this motherboard (with BIOS upgrades) any more, so we appear to be on our own if we want to add unsupported hardware.

Nate152
Moderator
That is a good point Undesirable, the drive would need to be AHCI, the VI series boards do not support NVMe. And even with an AHCI drive it still may not work.

RetardedTiming
Level 7
Yeah the add-in card isn't an option on the IMPACT VI mini-ITX.

Sounds like I may just need to sell this SSD drive or upgrade to the VII IMPACT if I can find one.

Thanks for the suggestions!

RetardedTiming
Level 7
Yeah that is nutty. Thanks for checking though!

RetardedTiming
Level 7
I built a friends rig using that board and really like it.

I just prefer the ITX form factor. Would be a much simpler upgrade sticking with it. I really want to try that new Corsair ITX case.