How can I tell if my motherboard has M.2 NVMe Support?

Question

I have an MSI z170A Gaming Pro Motherboard from MSI and I'm very confused as to what M.2 drives I can get.

I've downloaded the manual, which includes the lines:

1x M.2 slot*
▶Supports PCIe 3.0 x4 and SATA 6Gb/s standards, 4.2cm/ 6cm/ 8cm length M.2 SSD cards
▶Supports PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe Mini-SAS SSD with TurboU.2 Host Card**

(the ** is just saying the host card is sold separately)

Their website for the board ( https://us.msi.com/Motherboard/Z170A-GAMING-PRO.html ) doesn't mention NVMe anywhere (unless it's only in an image somewhere)

I'm confused now though, because the latest bios notes have comments like "Improved NVME device compatibility" and I find it hard to believe they'd update the BIOS just to better support the strange host-card combo feature, but they only explicitly say "supports NVMe" in relation to that odd host-card thing.

So I'm hoping I'm either misunderstanding something about the NVMe standard, or they're just not really saying if they support it or not on M.2 SSDs. Any help would be appreciated.

I know NVMe is just software/protocol (and I didn't THINK that some ports can not support it while others do) that allows the drive to be bootable or not, but how do you know if your board really supports NVMe and if so, if it supports the drive you want to buy?

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

How do you know if your board really supports NVMe and if so, if it supports the drive you want to buy?

NVMe support is handled through the firmware on the motherboard. You will find if you look hard enough that your firmware supports NVMe drives.

They're just not really saying if they support it or not on M.2 SSDs.

The specifications are crystal clear with regard to M.2 support.

Z170A GAMING PRO

Answer 2

"PCIe 3.0 x4" is NVMe

"SATA 6Gb/s" is SATA-III

So this...

"Supports PCIe 3.0 x4 and SATA 6Gb/s standards, 4.2cm/ 6cm/ 8cm length M.2 SSD cards"

...means that your system supports both. You can plug in either an NVMe M.2 SSD or a SATA M.2 SSD. Both should work with your motherboard.

If you will be running Windows 10, an NVMe (one notch) M.2 SSD drive is preferable, because it will be somewhat faster than a SATA (two notch) M.2 SSD drive.

I've read that Windows 7 lacked the appropriate drivers to support NVMe. I don't know that from personal experience, but if it's true then if you were planning to run Windows 7 an SATA M.2 SSD drive would be preferable.