You just bought an M.2 SSD and your motherboard has several such slots and you don’t know where to install it? Well, don’t worry, we’ll teach you how to locate the right connector and the one that best suits the unit you just purchased. And it’s not as easy as screw in and ready and that’s extremely important know where to choose the right M.2 slot to connect the SSD. Do you want to know how? Keep reading.
The M.2 form factor has the particularity of occupying very little space, which saves us from having to use full-size cards to be able to expand storage using SSDs or solid-state drives. However, the first difference is that we have two ticket subtypes. The first is the M.2 SATA which uses this interface to communicate with the drive and a different connector. The second is M.2 NVMe which uses a variant of PCI Express x4.
Which M.2 slot should I use to connect my SSD?
If you have a laptop or a MiniPC, the safest thing is that you only have one slot and you don’t have to worry, but in this case the important thing is to know the speed of the one This and the type when we buy a new M.2 SSD tells us which models we can buy. Buying a unit that is faster than the one that supports said socket is like paying more for performance that you won’t be able to enjoy.
Now if you bought a latest model unit, the fastest on the market and you know that your card supports it, then you should know that currently said connectivity is not provided by the chipset, but by the processor himself. Where they usually share the PCI Express hub next to the graphics card. One way to tell if you’re going to connect your SSD to the fastest connection is to trace the wiring of the pins on the motherboard to see where they end. However, one chipset can power an M.2 slot at PCIe 3.0 speed and a Gen 4 slot.
Normally the different speeds are printed on the board, if not, then in the motherboard instruction manual there is always an exploded view of each of the ports, which will help you know the actual speed of different ports. connectors. If you don’t have it handy, you can simply use benchmarking tools like CrystalDiscMark, where you can measure the transfer speed. If you see that it is lower than that supported by your SSD, you have not chosen the right slot.
Types of M.2 slots on our motherboard
There are two types of slots, which will help you determine whether you can install an M.2 or SATA SSD.
- those of the type M are for PCIe drives, i.e. for NVMe-SSD.
- In exchange, Type B ones are for SATA SSDs, which are no faster than 2.5 inches, just in a smaller form factor. Currently, these ports are in disuse.
- Some M.2 slots are M+Bwhich means they have two connectors, one on each end, and can be used both to install a SATA drive as NVMe.
Two clues that can help you, M+B type is generally slower than M type, the second one is that normally the M.2 slot closest to the processor is the fastest.
