Request advice Optiplex 790 - m.2 drive

Question

Please may I enquire as a novice. I am helping a friend get his PC up and running. We have a PCI card on to which one can mount an SSD m.2 card.

I know very little about these cards, but have read a couple of articles.

Please does anyone know whether an m.2 card fitted to the pci adapter will work.

Does it matter if it is NVME or PCI-E or otherwise.

Could one run the OS off this drive

On the other hand is there a slot on the motherboard to mount one (2280 size maybe?)

Would I need to make any changes to the bios

It is somewhat bewildering to have to make these considerations. On the other hand with a simple SATA drive one just knows one has to merely plug it in and it is done with.

May I thank any forthcoming help.

Ian

JOcean · Accepted Answer

You could not run an OS off the M.2 mounted on an adapter. The 790 does not have an M.2 slot on the MB, and M.2 SSD are NVMe/PCIe drives. The 2 choices in SSD are either SATA or NVMe/PCIe. This forum post has a huge amount of information about M.2 drives and the 790.

ian c-nall · Answer

Thank you for this most helpful and informative reply which has cleared the matter up for us.  We appreciate also the reference to other info on this forum concerning the matter. Many thanks

JOcean · Answer

Happy to help out!

petermuss · Answer

Hello...use this guideline to make your 790 PC ready to boot from NVMe M.2 drive.Make sure, your M.2 drive is a NVMe and not a Sata M.2!Look at the attached pic pls!https://www.tachytelic.net/2022/02/dell-optiplex-790-990-nvme/Its easy to follow the steps.

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Request advice Optiplex 790 - m.2 drive

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