Alienware 15 m.2 ssd : PCIE or SATA?

AW15: two M.2 and one SSD all operate on SATA III 6 Gbps interface. SM951 has PCIe 3.0 interface and is not compatible with AW15. You may use 850 EVO or Pro (there are also a few other brands offering M.2 SATA modules). See also Crucial compatibility tool:

http://www.crucial.com/usa/en/compatible-upgrade-for/Alienware/alienware-15

You may also like to read here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/m-2-vs-regular-ssd.776671/

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/new-info-but-also-new-questions-m-2-ssd.770393/

Concerning the Alienware 15 R2 ... has anyone found any specs and/or technical data that confirm or deny that the two M.2 slots support PCie x4 on slot 1, and PCie x2 on slot 2? Can anyone  confirm if they are only SATA III speed, or will we get PCIe x4 Gen 3.0 speed? The only information given in the service manual related to this is the following:

1. Interface SATA 6 Gbps
2. Hard drive One 2.5‑inch drive
3. Solid‑state drive Two M.2 PCIe/SATA drives

Does this mean that the M.2 slots are limited to 6Gbps? Has it been determined whether the Alienware 15 R2 can do PCI-Express on the M.2 slot or is it limited to SATA III?

in the R2 both are pcie x4... pcie/sata means that you can use a sata m.2 ssd if you want 

Can you share the link from Noteboookreview Forum, please? I have searched and could not find any. There is someone mentioned about 4 lanes in slot 1 and 2 lanes in slot 2, but he/she was asking if someone can confirm/deny that information.

I am researching for a M.2 SSD. The Intel 600p with 256GB is PCI-E 3.0 x4 while Crucial MX300 is 275GB, $5 cheaper and use SATA 3 (I believe). Write speed is the same around 500Mbps while Intel has a higher read speed of 1500s (Crucial's read is about 510s). However, do you know if there is any difference in real life performance? I do not know if 19GB storage and less 5 bucks worth it? I probably play games, sometimes do AutoCAD/Inventor/SolidWorks stuffs and begin to learn basic photo editing.

However, I have heard that the Samsung 950 Pro NVMe come with Samsung Magician software that allow the drive to use computer's RAM to be rapid cache and boost the drive performance. I am looking for information about the Alienware 15 R2 native support for PCI-E 3.0 x4 interface in M.2 port and NVMe storage protocol support. :(

lollasdsad

Test

alienware 15 r2 support 2 nvme pcie drives (m.2) + 1hdd 2,5". 1 of the 2 m.2 drives are going to run at full speed and the second one is going to run at 90% of speed. its fully compatible with the 950 pro, i saw raids 0 of them on your system :). you should go for 960 evo

I can confirm that Samsung 950 PRO does not work. M.2 NVMe is apparently not supported, although oddly enough I was able to get windows recovery to write an image to the disk however the BIOS will not boot to it and subsequently when trying to do a fresh install the windows installer stated that my BIOS does not support booting to that HDD. So weird because the recovery option wrote data to the disk and created partitions, additionally the drive does show up in the BIOS properly. I really feel like Dell must be screwing us on some technicality with this. I know they wont update the BIOS but I keep hoping they will. If they don't it is my last Alienware for sure. I thought I was paying a premium for something top of the line, not last gen technology.... I specifically looked for M.2 when buying the computer and I specifically purchased it with that option... Yet it isn't really an M.2 enabled computer since NVMe is part of that spec... Just a real shame and Dell won't be getting my money in the future if it isn't fixed.