Author: parsec
Subject: The Toshiba OCZ RD400
Posted: 23 Jul 2016 at 10:11pm
Ok, the Z170M Extreme4 board. Has the Ultra M.2 slot, and supports NVMe SSDs as boot disks, stated in the specifications.
Why do you doubt it will work? You're just fishing me here man...![Wink]( "Wink")
At one point, my Z170 Extreme7+ board (with three Ultra M.2 slots) only had M.2 SSDs in it, three of them. There are many other people that post in this forum that use the M.2 slots, and don't have any problems.
The Intel Skylake platform is different than all previous Intel platforms, in that the chipset provides the IO resources to the M.2 slots. All the others use the PCIe 3.0 lanes provided by the CPU for the M.2 slots. Skylake boards leave all the PCIe 3.0 lanes for use with video cards, the others don't.
The tradeoff in Skylake boards is the M.2 slot shares resources with the SATA III ports. So be careful you aren't using the SATA III ports that will be disabled if the M.2 slot is in use.
You can use the adapter card in a PCIe slot on your board, but that will leave eight lanes for video cards, instead of 16.
Again, the adapter card is a convenience for use with boards that do not have an M.2 slot, or do not have an M.2 slot that supports PCIe SSDs (there are SATA M.2 SSDs), or the M.2 slot is not PCIe 3.0/DMI3 x4.
Installing Windows on any NVMe SSD is a little different than SATA drives. That is not related to using an M.2 slot or adapter card in a PCIe slot. The requirements are the same regardless of the physical interface, M.2 slot or PCIe slot.
What OS will you be using? Windows 7 does not have an inbox NVMe driver, so without loading an NVMe driver during the installation, it will fail.
OCZ provides an NVMe driver for the RD400, including a version that is used during a Windows installation. Windows 8 - 10 have an inbox NVMe driver, but it is best to install the OCZ NVMe driver.
You should read over my guide on installing Windows on PCIe type SSDs:
http://forum.asrock.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=1236&title=how-to-install-windows-on-a-pcie-ssd
Subject: The Toshiba OCZ RD400
Posted: 23 Jul 2016 at 10:11pm
 Nunyerbusiness wrote:extreme4, FWIW... I doubt it's going to work, so at least I got it on a card. |
Ok, the Z170M Extreme4 board. Has the Ultra M.2 slot, and supports NVMe SSDs as boot disks, stated in the specifications.
Why do you doubt it will work? You're just fishing me here man...
At one point, my Z170 Extreme7+ board (with three Ultra M.2 slots) only had M.2 SSDs in it, three of them. There are many other people that post in this forum that use the M.2 slots, and don't have any problems.
The Intel Skylake platform is different than all previous Intel platforms, in that the chipset provides the IO resources to the M.2 slots. All the others use the PCIe 3.0 lanes provided by the CPU for the M.2 slots. Skylake boards leave all the PCIe 3.0 lanes for use with video cards, the others don't.
The tradeoff in Skylake boards is the M.2 slot shares resources with the SATA III ports. So be careful you aren't using the SATA III ports that will be disabled if the M.2 slot is in use.
You can use the adapter card in a PCIe slot on your board, but that will leave eight lanes for video cards, instead of 16.
Again, the adapter card is a convenience for use with boards that do not have an M.2 slot, or do not have an M.2 slot that supports PCIe SSDs (there are SATA M.2 SSDs), or the M.2 slot is not PCIe 3.0/DMI3 x4.
Installing Windows on any NVMe SSD is a little different than SATA drives. That is not related to using an M.2 slot or adapter card in a PCIe slot. The requirements are the same regardless of the physical interface, M.2 slot or PCIe slot.
What OS will you be using? Windows 7 does not have an inbox NVMe driver, so without loading an NVMe driver during the installation, it will fail.
OCZ provides an NVMe driver for the RD400, including a version that is used during a Windows installation. Windows 8 - 10 have an inbox NVMe driver, but it is best to install the OCZ NVMe driver.
You should read over my guide on installing Windows on PCIe type SSDs:
http://forum.asrock.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=1236&title=how-to-install-windows-on-a-pcie-ssd