XPS 8900, M.2 NVMe compatible, M.2 speed

Question

Hello,

My computer was bought through Costco in late December 2016, so about 2 years ago.

Processor I7-6700
DDR4 RAM
Z170 chipset
(have not found the name/model of the motherboard)

I have a SATA 256GB m.2 card as my C: drive and want to upgrade to a larger and faster SSD (ex NVMe).

Can I check to see the speed of my m.2 slot, if it is x1 or x4
I have space to use a card and one of the PCIe slots but was hoping to learn and see what the m.2 slot can do.

Thanks for any help.

Techgee · Accepted Answer

The built-in M.2 SSD slot only has one PCIe lane - it's PCIe 3.0 x1.  You'll need a M.2 NVMe SSD to PCIe adapter in the 8900's x16 or x4 slot to get PCIe 3.0 x4 performance with a M.2 NVMe SSD.  See this post for further details. Once you have a M.2 NVMe SSD and are booting from it, I'd consider leaving your current M.2 SATA SSD in the built-in M.2 slot as a data drive.

JOcean · Accepted Answer

I assume these are the specs you are looking for. As for bottlenecks, the last link has some good general information.

https://www.dell.com/community/Desktops-General-Read-Only/XPS-8900-i7-6700-memory-questions-What-speeds-of-DDR4-can-I/td-p/4759627

https://www.dell.com/community/Desktops-General-Read-Only/XPS-8900-PCIe-Slot-Questions/td-p/5097384

https://www.apicasystems.com/blog/5-common-performance-bottlenecks/

JOcean · Answer

Per the Crucial site. The M.2 is PCIe NVME  Gen3 x4. And the max size on the Crucial site is 1 TB. But of course any quality 1 TB SSD PCIe NVME M.2 drive would be fine.

Cdj67 · Answer

Thank you so much for your help, do you know if there is a way to test or where I can read up about the speed for the different PCI's (don't think I received a manual that stated this) on the motherboard)?

I did do cmd and wmic and it states that the motherboard is a Dell 0XJ8C4 version A00

Using the supportassist it claims that I have the latest BIOS etc (that is provided by Dell).

I am also interested in trying to find out what the fastest RAM speed is that I can have (currently I have 2133MHz installed as that is what came with the computer) although that would probably not be an upgrade that I would do as I don't think that would be cost-beneficial.

Any idea where the most likely bottleneck would be after I have upgraded the hard drive (I am not a gamer so graphics/monitor might not be it even though I do some simple video records/editing).

Any guidance would be appreciated.

Sincerely,

cdj67

JOcean · Answer

I stand corrected and sorry for the incorrect information. Crucial's site was somewhat misleading. Thanks for the link to the earlier post Techgee.

tvaudioman · Answer

From reading, I see that that an NVMe drive in M2 Slot 2 will not get NVMe speeds. But would it be faster than a SSD via SATA iii port? And if so, what are the specs.

(would a non-NVMe drive in the M.2 slot be faster than SSD)

thank you.

(My PCI slots are full with other hardware)

XPS Desktops

XPS 8900, M.2 NVMe compatible, M.2 speed

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