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My motherboard is Gigabyte B360M D3V which has the following:

  • 1 x M.2 connector (Socket 3, M key, type 2242/2260/2280 SATA and PCIe x4/x2 SSD support)

SSD which I'm considering is:

  • Corsair MP510 240 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive
  1. Is the term "PCIe SSD" used to represent the same thing as "NVMe SSD" ?
  2. Is this NVMe SSD compatible with my motherboard ?
Giacomo1968
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Utshaw
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  • Specifically PCIe Generation 4 can run at faster speeds than a traditional NVMe, but NVMe does take advantage of PCIe slots. – Kraigolas Aug 29 '20 at 04:01

1 Answers1

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No they aren't the same. NVMe is a storage protocol, PCIe is an electrical bus.

The drive you are looking at is the NVMe storage protocol on a PCIe bus in an m.2 connector. The manufacturer product page says

CORSAIR Force MP510 NVMe PCIe Gen3 x4 M.2 SSD

Now, it's become hard to find any drives which are either NVMe or PCIe without being both, but the earliest PCIe drives came out before the NVMe standard was created, so they used the AHCI or SCSI storage protocols, and looked to the OS just like a single SATA or SCSI drive connected to a PCIe host bus adapter.

NVMe gets rid of the host bus adapter.

Ben Voigt
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  • Can you give answer to my second question which states "Is this NVMe SSD compatible with my motherboard ?" – Utshaw Aug 29 '20 at 11:56
  • @Utshaw: The drive is PCIe x4 in an m.2 connector, which is your motherboard's m.2 slot is designed for. It's the maximum length that the motherboard slot supports, so there should be an appropriate screw hole. Whether the heatsink on a particular drive interferes with other components on the motherboard or other periperhal cards, I cannot say. You will need to use an OS that has NVMe drivers, and to boot from it you will need NVMe support in the system firmware ("EFI" or "BIOS") – Ben Voigt Aug 31 '20 at 15:04