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I'm trying to expand my storage for a gaming pc, and have the option to get a Sandisk 3d ultra ssd or an nvme card for roughly the same price. I would have to buy an nvme to PCIE adapter, of course.

I cannot find a straightforward answer anywhere. Will I be able to add the nvme as an additional drive on an older Dell Optiplex 7020 with the PCIE adapter? I only have 1 PCIE 3.0 port that is being used by a GPU, so will it work with a PCIE 2.0 port? It's slower than 3.0 but I believe it's still faster than an SSD. SSD is 600mbps and NVME is 3.5gpbs, while PCIE 2.0 will bottle neck it at 2gbps I believe.

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    NVMe cards are SSDs. Are you comparing them to SATA SSDs?
    – grawity_u1686
    Commented Oct 26, 2021 at 14:55
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    PCIE 2.0 x1 is 500 MB/sec which is the likely bandwidth that will be offered using an adapter card. So it would actually be slower than a SATA III SSD if that is true.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Oct 26, 2021 at 14:57
  • @user1686 Yes, with Sata SSDs. There are different devices though. NVME is not compatible with BIOS boot on older motherboards. So my question is if it is even possible to use it with an unsupported BIOS at all, not as a boot drive but as an extra drive.
    – SuperNormalDev
    Commented Oct 26, 2021 at 15:16
  • @Ramhound Thanks! So an nvme card is compatible with an unsupported motherboard (optiplex) via PCIE 2.0? I have a buddy who tried to use it as a boot drive and his optiplex motherboard didn't recognize it. I'm just trying to use it as an additional drive though.
    – SuperNormalDev
    Commented Oct 26, 2021 at 15:18
  • Your unlikely going to be able to boot to any drive connected to a NVMe PCIe adapter card. If you want to boot off a SSD you should get a SATA SSD. If your machine has BIOS firmware instead of UEFI then it will NOT work.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Oct 26, 2021 at 15:22

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