Simon LeBon wrote:
I am pretty sure that the M.2 slot on your Z170i motherboard is not compatible with the latest NVMe Gen 3 drives.
The Z170i motherboard is more than 3 years old. THAT is when M.2 slots were still in their infancy and there were a lot of compatibility issues.
I'm not saying for sure... but I highly doubt the most current NVMe M.2 SSD will not work on that board in that slot. You might get it to work with a PCI-e card that has the latest NVMe Gen 3 slots on it.
It's not an ASUS only problem. You would have this problem with most any motherboard with an M.2 slot from 2015.
This is the truth. Your board does not support NVMe protocol. SATA and M.2 AHCI only. Very few of these were made, Samsung SM951 OEM was just about it. M2 was in its infancy ande NVMe had not yet been born. Not long after, as in less than 6 month the NVMe drives came out and are not compatible.
The SM951s now are so hard to find that they are commanding a higher price than an 970 pro.
The only option you have for that is the SM951 AHCI or an M2 Sata which is no different in performance than the 2.5 inch variety. If you go looking for the SM951 that actually gets far better performance than the SATA but no NVMe then make sure its the correct version as there are two. AHCI and NVMe.
Model starting with MZHPV is AHCI
Model starting with MZVPV is NVMe and wont work. This model is the OEM for the 960 pro
If you get a PCIe NVMe adaptor card the drive will work BUT you wont be able to boot from it.
The M2 supported drives are listed in your manual VIII, NVMe is not on the list.
https://www.quietpc.com/samsung-m2-ssds
aeffertz wrote:
Than you so much for your help. I have not read anywhere saying that the m.2 on this motherboard were m.2 Sata only, I’ve read people online stating they are using NVMe m.2 drives and the manual doesn’t mention anything about it being m.2 Sata. I sincerely appreciate your help. **
Well, I dont know about this particular ASUS mobo, but Z170 chipset usually does support NVMe SSd’s.
I used Samsung 950 and 960 PRO in a ASRock Z170 Extreme7+, in single and RAID0 modes, bootable, with very satisfying results (photo: testing the Samsung drives):
It’s very true. Your board was late to the Z170 party and was released after NVMe drives, it’s an exception rather than the rule. Most Z170 boards do not support NVMe. The manual specifies “ultra M2” 6GB/S. * This was like the 3 or 4th Asrock Z170 board. It’s predecessor just before it does not support NVMe. On the downside Z270 came out just a month or two a after the 7+. It would be nice if ASUS pumped out boards like that but I can see where it could be considered cost prohibitive with the speed at which these chipsets evolved. Went from Z170 to Z370 in less than a year. The 270 was almost obsolete before it was released for sale. Went from skylake to kabylake to coffeelake in less than a year. Last of skylake were Oct 2016, kabylake showed up Jan 2017 and coffeelake out Oct 2017. Kabylake was like a bad dream. Highly anticipated yet also disappointing especially when the chipsets changed too. The Z170 was supposed to be able to support kabylake with a BIOS update but few worked. I know I tried it going from a 6700K to a 7700K on an ASUS M8E and it would not run. Coffeelake is still here because Intel can’t seem to get to a 10nm process although they have been promising it for well over a year.**Actually first Canon lake was supposed to be 2016!!
BTW, where is your GPU? A bit of overkill on that PSU. Is it needed to run that M2 cooling fan? LOL. EK makes some decent M2 heatsinks. BTW pretty much all Z170 boards have M2 sockets but that doesn’t mean they support NVMe. Also your crystal diskmark version is out of date and benched on an empty drive.
Please research the board in question to prevent the OP from making the same mistake twice. :cool:*
BTW, where is your GPU? A bit of overkill on that PSU. Is it needed to run that M2 cooling fan? LOL. EK makes some decent M2 heatsinks. BTW pretty much all Z170 boards have M2 sockets but that doesn’t mean they support NVMe. Also your crystal diskmark version is out of date and benched on an empty drive.
Please research the board in question to prevent the OP from making the same mistake twice. :cool:*
