PCIe X1 and X4 to NVME SSD adapter cards review and install 

I've used Clover to boot my Hackintosh for years. It can be installed on any small SATA drive too, not just a USB stick. I'm currently building a 4th Gen system to use RDT to access my main PC. I learned there was a custom firmware that added NVMe booting to the motherboard I had. After a bit of vetting, I decided to go for it... It's only a 4th gen board. Not like it's new. Flash went flawlessly, and now the board can boot from an M.2 installed using one of these PCIe adapters!

Nice info over the Clover EFI bootloader. Thanks

In order to boot from SSD adapter, you need an adapter with it's own BIOS extension. (boot capable, with chips like Asmedia for example) You can even use it in an LGA775 main board, with PCIe 1.0 or 2.0. You will see an extra boot option in bios settings with these cards.

sata will be better speeds for ssd than pcie 1.0 x1 which is 250gb bandwith. 2.0 x1 is 500gb and 3.0 is 1gb. So pretty much go sata unless pcie 3.0 x1 or any pcie x4 adapter will be 1gb and up. Hope that helps others.

I appreciate the video. I've been thinking about getting something like this, and have been watching videos about them for the last hour or so. One thing I'm noticing is people having a lot of difficulty with the cards that hold 4 M.2 drives. They seem to _not_ be able to get more than two of the drives recognized. Also, some of them don't support PCIe Gen 3 (or higher). So it's nice to know which ones to avoid. Thank you.

There's different flavors of NVMe M.2 drives for specific purposes and it's buyer beware if you're looking for a SSD HDD replacement. A dead giveaway are the prices. It's worth doing some research on these drives so you won't be disappointed by the posted speeds.

im just curios about the difference in speeds between this and an older sata with a 2.5 inch ssd? would this be faster?

i was wondering if adding this to my motgherboard would work out because my only available pcie port is directly under my GPU but now I see yours is as well. How is that holding up ? i currently have only a sata drive so this would be alot faster correct?

great video thank you!

Price jumps like that are common. Got some Amazon shampoo and the same thing happened. Went back down after a few weeks.

Judging by the 3 PCI brackets on the second board that slot may very well be a PCIe 1.0 1x. I would advise using at least an intel gen 6 or 7 board.

First NVMe was not USB hd, bios did not support boot from NVMe (or NVMe was not bootable)

Can you install it at a PCI express x1 slot? Does it fit?

Thannk you

Please what is the name of the software you used to check the hdd

Some older machines require BIOS mods to support booting directly from NVME drives. I have a Dell 9020MT motherboard and I had to mod the UEFI bios to add a driver so it would support it. Such a mod may not be available for all mobos so kinda risky to try unless you do some research before hand. ;) There are some cards that use bios extensions. This requires having CSM setting enabled in UEFI for those to be bootable if you are on a machine that is primarily UEFI based. The ones you got seem to be simple passive adaptors so you'll need a UEFI/BIOS that supports it natively. Also it looks like you didn't initialize the drive until you put it into the second PC...that might also contribute to it not showing up properly on the first machine. You'll want to recheck how it behaves in the first one now that you initialized it. ;)

I don't know why it was showing as a USB drive. Maybe it has a controller similar to that of a USB drive. Or it might be something the manufacturer did and did not catch it.. I don't mess with BIOS updates unless I must to get a fix for Logofail but the next update may have that drive named properly. Do you get the expected speed from the drive? If so it is not that much of an issue and is probably just a typo in a table in the BIOS. I would not worry much about it myself unless I had other bizarre issues I could not explain.

Der-kit M.2 NVMe PCI-Ex16 adapter cards and no problem 😉😃

Hey! i need a support bracket for gpu 1050 ti how I can get one? i've been searching in amazon cant find one (with alumnium, only print one can be found)

Is that HP 705 G1? i am planning to do the same on this old AMD HP

The number of PCI-e lanes and speed is totally dependant on the cpu and the Motherboard chipset, NOT the specs of the interface card & SSD

I have a card similar to that and they are very basic. The nice thing is it makes those adapters dirt cheap to buy. It wouldn't surprise me if you could buy them in bulk for a lot less than the price of one each. Mine has a green LED on it and really that is the only thing noteworthy. I did not buy it for that or know it has it. I usually don't prioritize any kind of RGB lighting. The inside of my case is a dark dismal place really aside from that and the RTX logo on my graphics card lighting up. My motherboard could support an APU but I just went with a plain old traditional CPU. That is a Ryzen 9 5950x (16 core)

I got a vantec UGT-M2PC110 and on a pcie 3.0 bus I'm seeing 2.7 - 2.8 Gb/s reads on my el cheapo nvme I have in it.

9:02 Barely. The theorical speed of PCIe 1x1 is 2 x 250 MB/s. And we see it using a little more than 83 % of it. The theoretical speed of SATA(III) is 600 MB/s and we've seen 2.5" SSD drives as fast as 560 MB/s in practice! More than twice that speed! So get that instead of this.

For your first machine, you should use the bottom x16 since only 4 lanes are needed. The top slot is x16 wired while secondary slots usually do x8 or x4. Your second machine would be better suited to a SATA SSD. It has SATA 3 ports, which would give significantly better performance than the M.2 limited by x1.

I remember once I installed a card like that in my PC and for the life of me could not find the correct driver yet Windows 10 had it and installed it for me anyhow when I was due for a fresh install and redid my computer.

Hey! I have i3 7 gen GA-H110M-H Can I use a m.2 nvme ssd attached on to PCIEX1 port through an adapter?

What about those pciex1 to pciex4 or x16 adapters? Do You actually get more speed? Pcie X1 is only 500 MB not any faster than sata 3😮

If you want to boot from a NVME SSD natively on a system that doesn't support it you need to get a Samsung 950 PRO SSD, that is the only NVME SSD with a boot rom build in, anything else wont work

Is there a version of this adaptor which we can use in laptop

I've heard on other channels that if you don't support that GPU the sagging will cause the memory to fail after a while.

I actually had success trying BIOS modding to get a bootable NVME drive on an old Xeon machine. In retrospect, it probably wasn't worth the effort.

UNFORMATED NvME DOESN'T DETECT IN BIOS. IT ONLY DETECTS WHEN WINDOWS BOOTS. ONCE FORMATED & PARTITIONED IT DETECTS IN BIOS TOO BUT YOUR BIOS MUST BE UPDATED.

Can you install it without the bracket

You actually dont need the bracket for this. Just slot it in and remove the braket unless your oc has not enough elvents then the braket will be one exhaust. In summary the bracket is not needed for most cases

can we install operating sys on this type of nvme

honestly i bought the pcie x1 because my gpu is too big so it takes up the other 2 pcie ports and i just need it for storage

I noticed that your computer's BIOS is from 2014. You also mentioned that the SSD was NVME. Are you sure your computer's BIOS supports NVME?

what to do if you dont have PCIE x16 slot?

can it work in my Hp z220 sff workstation with latest bios ?

What's the software your using on the right for disk info please

Well , i buyed 3 of those ( 4XPCIe 3.0 ) Adapters for ~ 7 Dollar over E-Bay (new) . I would be not surprised if they work with PCIe 4.0 as well because there is no chip on the PCB , its only rewireing . Maybe shielding could be a Problem for the PCIe 4.0 signal .Besides , most NVME will run with 2 Lanes or even one Lane and it dont has to be PCIe 3.0 . 2.0 will work to , its only slower . Its a waste of Lanes to use it on a X16 Slot with real 16 Lanes , if the MoBo uses Bifurcation for that slot = supports 4 x 4 Lanes i would consider to buy an Hyper X from Asus Card where you can put 4 NVMEs on it , i consider it for my NAS if i throw out the HDDs and put in SSDs in , with it i could use up to 7 NVMEs in my TrueNAS ( old B450 Board with 3900X on it , 32 GB ECC Ram )

Thanks There were no instructions of how install it in the box

Cool video, but decent sata 3 SSD would smack the shit out of that PCI-e 1.0 x1 interface ngl. Even cheap dram less drive would do at least 450 read 400 write

When using these adapters, should I always put them in an X16 slot or lose potential bandwidth ? What happens when I put one in an X4 slot or smaller? Still works but slower?

it wont be getting tecognised as a usb hard drive that was the boot menu selection you was in

looks like the place were you set the adapter is not the correct place for

which one is better sata ssd or nvme pci 1.o one ?

only thing by using that card in the 16x slot means you cant instal a dedicated GPU

You bought a cheap nvme that's only PCIE one . Your motherboard supports pcie2 so if you get a new envy me drive 350 reads on a pcie 2.0 slot.

You'll need to mod your BIOS first so it would detect your NVMe as PATA drive in your BIOS, I don't know if there's mod available one for your HP motherboard, but I got one for my ROG Rampage IV, here's the mod link for Rampage IV motherboards ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-uZDBBYfsNK8.html (you'll need the mod for NVMe file added to your current/latest BIOS for it to works and bootable)

screw the gpu in the clamps dont have the force, also unless you only, have a 1x slot why limit the drive performance with a 1x card instead of a 4x.

watch "Modify the BIOS of the HP EliteDesk 800 G1 to natively support NVMe SSD"

i have this morherboard " msi pró X299 is pci 3.0 if i buy SSD adapter PCie 4.0 x 16 i gain bost or only stay in PCie 3.0 ?!!

Chipset driver have install

I was going to add that AMD's latest APU, 8600G has great 1080p graphics so you don't need a GPU, therefore the X16 slot that is usually designated for a GPU is now free to use with a storage form factor provided you choose a compatible X16 adaptor.

They are Nvme’s not SSD’s.

Your hardware is old. The Nvme (not SSD) card is fine. Don’t blame the card…….blame your hardware for the speed of your Nvme.

Yeah but you did not boot from it!

Standoffs.

x4 is pronounced "by 4"

Why go through all the trouble? That old hardware deserves a SATA drive at best. I can tell you from experience, that you'll never come out ahead trying to upgrade old systems to something comparable to newer hardware.

A good hit with a hammer will make it fit.

Imagine putting greasy hands all over the chip

foff

1400 mbs using a 2 drive raid 0 on a old p5q3, next week I'm gonna try 4 ssds in raid 0 to see how fast she moves and you can boot off it since it's set up from the bios.