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Area-51 R2, NVMe drive Samsung 970 EVO plus
Are there any issues with using a pci-e adapter card and using a nvme SSD drive in one of the x16 graphics card slots? Any heat issues or GPU slowdowns? Will I get close to the 3000mbps read speed? If anyone has done this and has a pci-e card they recommend, I'd appreciate it if you can tell me the brand and model. From what I understand, the latest bios should support it as a boot drive. Thanks!
JOcean
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March 2nd, 2019 17:00
This forum post has a lot of the information you are looking for.
https://www.dell.com/community/Alienware-General-Read-Only/Area-51-R2-Where-is-the-M-2-slot-on-the-motherboard/td-p/5576231
speedstep
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March 3rd, 2019 07:00
The X16 slots DO NOT SUPPORT NVME Storage cards.
Avenger2000
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March 3rd, 2019 07:00
Thanks, that post tells me everything. Is it true that an nvme drive can take longer to boot to windows because the time to post is slower than a sata ssd drive? Something having to do that it takes time to get to the pci-e slots for booting? Does this happen with the R2’s x99 motherboard?
Avenger2000
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March 3rd, 2019 08:00
Avenger2000
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March 3rd, 2019 12:00
I went through the thread again. It says to use the 3rd graphics slot. The x4 slot is PCI Express 2.0. Has something changed since this thread was created?
Techgee
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March 3rd, 2019 14:00
An Alienware Area 51 R2 with a Samsung 950 PRO running faster in the x16 PCIe 3.0 slot than it's x4 PCIe 2.0 slot here. Speed obtained indicates only 4 PCIe lanes are used in both scenarios. PCIe 3.0 vs 2.0 lane speed make the difference.
Generally, any PCIe device, including a NVMe M.2 SSD, will run in any PCIe slot - they'll just negotiate to least common number of PCIe lanes and speed.
Techgee
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March 3rd, 2019 14:00
Also check out this thread - has some good links to Area 51 R2 and M.2 NVMe SSDs.
Avenger2000
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March 3rd, 2019 15:00
Thanks! You wouldn't have to know how the post times are with the NVMe drive with a PCI card adapter? I know some motherboards take some time to post if it's the boot drive. I'm looking to speed up the overall boot time to windows 10 (from power up so including post) from my older SATA 3 SSD. I have an Area 51 R2 with the x99 motherboard. I know the windows 10 loading will probably be faster but the post time may eat up the difference.
Tesla1856
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March 3rd, 2019 16:00
1. No. All my newer machines have on-board M.2-NVMe SSDs.
2. I think that was just with older Legacy-BIOS machines. Anyway, they were generally slow POST-ing (my Aurora-R1 takes 30 seconds). I've never seen a slow-POSTing UEFI-based machine.
3. It might shave-off a few seconds. I boot the machine once a day, so not sure what the big deal is. Mainly, NVMe is very fast for everything (like while machine is being used). It's about 5-times faster (thru-put) of a SATA-3/600 SSD.
EpicBro101
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November 25th, 2021 21:00
Sorry to bump such an old thread, but I've done some testing with a Samsung 970 EVO 500gb with a pcie 3.0 x4 to nvme adapter. Bios version is latest A14. Not sure what the fuss about a new vs old model nvme not booting is because that shoudln't make a difference. The drive works and is bootable in UEFI mode at full speed in the bottom pcie x16 slot and I get about 3500 read and 2500 write. In the slot right above, the x4 slot, crystaldiskmark says the drive is only running at pcie 2.0, so don't use that slot.
The Area-51 R2 should be bootable with any pcie to nvme adapter and nvme drive youd want to use. I didn't notice any noticeable difference in boot times or post times vs my Samsung 850 EVO.