XPS MB support PCIe NVMe SSD?

Thanks, but 8700 refers to the cpu, not the XPS model.

Most likely this Costco item is XPS 8920 or 8930. I don't know for sure, as it isn't specified in Costco's listing.

PERFECTLY FRANK,

Below are the storage specs for the XPS 8700.

5 x SATA-III 6.0 Gb/s
1 x mSATA SSD
with RAID 0/1
No IDE

The XPS™ 8700 is shipped with an optional mSATA solid-state drive. mSATA drive occupies very less space. XPS™ 8700 is shipped with mSATA drives with capacity of 32 GB and 256 GB.

Thank you, Jesse. That answers my question.

To specifically answer your question - the XPS PC at Costco with the i7-8700 processor is a Dell XPS 8930.  And yes, you can install an NVME drive as the boot drive, as they are fully supported.

Hi Jesse

Thanks for the detailed answer but what's missing is whether the M.2 slot is a PCIe x1 or PCIe x4 slot in the XPS 8920 or XPS 8930 or whether the M.2 slot  "M" or "B" keyed. Can you provide that additional information? Thanks in advance

On the 8920 and 8930, they four-lane PCIe and keyed for M or B+M (you want the former for best performance).

For the XPS 8930, does anyone have a tried and true "process" to install a PCIe x4 NVME SSD in the M.2 slot and make it bootable?

Here is the process I shared when installing a Samsung EVO 960 NVME SSD in an XPS 8910.  I used the same process to install the same type of drive in my XPS 8930.

en.community.dell.com/.../20004639

Well I read your link and I'm sorry to say it's somewhat confusing and not a clear.  Besides you already had a 32Gb SSD installed so it should have been a simple image SSD, install the new SSD, and reinstall the image on the new SSD (I'm assuming the SSD held the OP system so I don't understand the need for RAID!).  

I'm looking for a tried and true process to install a new M.2 NVME SSD for the very first time on a "virgin" system (i.e without a pre-installed SSD). Can anyone help with that type of installation?

I installed the 960 EVO on an XPS 8930 with 8700 CPU.

Installed in motherboard m.2 slot

Rebooted and used ADM tools to install drive as GPT.

Rebooted and ran Acronis 2018 to clone C: image to EVO

Shutdown and disconnected original C:

Rebooted and system came up without any boot or BIOS changes.

The system performs noticeable faster, but I don't know if it achieves maximum performance.

I checked Device Manager and it reports device OK, but the event log shows:

Device started

Device configured (disk.inf)

Device not migrated (Don't know significance of this)

Information box shows:

Device SCSI was not migrated due to partial or ambiguous match

Did not install the Samsung driver

Samsung Magician does not detect the drive & shows AHCI deactivated. (Tried setting BIOs to AHCI, but system doesn't find boot device. Restored Dell RAID setting instead of AHCI. Have not pursued this any further yet.)

Here is how to change from RAID to AHCI without reinstalling everything.  I just did it and it took less than 5 minutes:

1.Right-click the Windows Start Menu. Choose Command Prompt (Admin).

2.Type this command and press ENTER: bcdedit /set {current} safeboot minimal

3.Restart the computer and enter BIOS Setup by pressing F2 multiple times during the boot

4.Change the SATA Operation mode to AHCI from RAID.

5.Save changes and exit Setup and Windows will automatically boot to Safe Mode.

6.Right-click the Windows Start Menu once more. Choose Command Prompt (Admin).

7.Type this command and press ENTER: bcdedit /deletevalue {current} safeboot

8.Reboot once more and Windows will automatically start with AHCI drivers enabled.

You can then install the Samsung NVME driver.  I installed version 2.3 and it works great.  The drive runs much faster.

Koeven

For your Boot Configuration Data (BCD) command line entry, what info is inputted into {current}?

Stan - just type it exactly as above.  I wondered the same thing as you, but your just type {current} as is.