has anyone tried these? my asus board has this tab locking thing for nvme slots which while a great idea its useless when the nvme has a big heat sink on
Like most of that ilk there will be good ones and bad ones. Something like that is probably going to live or die by the quality of the ribbon cable. Personally i'd put more faith in a pci-e slot -> m.2 converter if you have slots free Also can the toolless retention mechanism not be replaced with something more conventional?
that is what i thought, they are mean be removaable but i think asus has changed some thing it wont come off my old mobo the lactic tab like in this pic could be removed with a bit of force, this mobo also has a metal heat sink type thing underneath and my 4090 waterblock is also not helping
sorted my issue out, all i had to do was pull the thermal pad on the mobo slot and the t700 fits, but goddamn that is one toasty nvme
ITX owners with a taste in small cases would probably beg to differ! 2 NVMe slots on an ITX board is really welcome. Not got to gen 4 yet, no need for me. So no super hot drives yet. 2 NVMe slots on a sub 2L Deskmini board is next level
Thats quite the hot take! I love M.2, way less wires, way more tidy builds, way smaller chassis, for litterally more speed! We run 8TB ones at work, our systems can have 32TB ON THE MOTHERBOARD! Its totally bonkers!
Nope Yep Yep I would much rather have m.2 drives in my mITX case than 2.5" SSDs. Sadly my motherboard only has one m.2 slot but whenever I next upgrade I will be going 100% m.2 and not looking back
Yes, Using 2 right now. An older gen 3 one for my gen 3 drive that would have sat directly under the GPU. A gen 4 riser for gen 4 drive so it has better airflow. From the slot next to CPU, it goes to the rear exhaust fan. The drive sits directly in line of the airflow. But using these introduces a lot of jank. My drive is cable tied to the fan guard. Depends on how much jankiness you can accept.
They're a pain in the arse to install. they're a pain in the arse to cool. they're a pain in the arse to swap out when something goes wrong with one or if you want to upgrade it. This very thread centres on the jank that's often required to accommodate and cool them. They might make some level of sense in SFF where you have an apple tier cable allergy and are already resigned to make life and/or building the pc as complicated as possible. Personally i'd rather u.2/u.3 got more widespread adoption in desktops.
Ah this stage I've used over a hundred across various systems and haven't had any of these problems. Are you hammering them with sustained IOPs?
i've certainly catapulted more of the stupid little screws than i'd care to. and i'm speaking purely in terms of building and overhauling systems for others including one where the ssd died after a power cut. and i've encountered the 'performance tanks as the drive gets full' that's [more] prevalent in consumer ssds annoying frequently. oh and to add - mobo makers love to use them to jack up board complexity and thus price... you've got 4 m.2s!... you can't actually use them all bc of how pci-e bandwidth is divvied up [or if you can you can't use anything else] but sure they're there...
Oh the little screws are highly annoying, I have my own supply of ones I know are magnetic that I always use at work, and I'm really glad for the screwless systems! But it is frustrating with the SSD makers don't adhere to clearance areas!
some mobo makers can't even stick to cpu socket keep out areas on some of their board... but it's yet more jank associated with m.2
Surely this has hee-haw to do with form factor though? Going to be a problem whether you're using NVMe m.2, SATA m.2 or SATA 2.5"...
no but the form-factor related ballache means doing anything about it gets kicked into the weeds having to removing the gpu... then a heatsink [which in some cases requires removing half the board and other expansion cards]... then the ssd... then reinstalling everything... hoping the ssd works with the integrated heatsink... or that the board accommodates the ssd's heatsink... leads me to going **** it and doing some more file shuffling to and from a NAS in all but the most obtuse cases swapping a 2.5" ssd takes a fraction of the time as a SFF enjoyer, you've probably made peace with having to fully disassemble the pc to swap out any internal components... i've better things to do with my time.
Well, as a SFF enjoyer I just pull the right-hand side panel off my (SFF) case and then I can directly access the m.2 NVMe installed on the backside of my motherboard as the (SFF) case has a sizeable cut-out for exactly this purpose
I think we've had hugely different world experiences biasing our positions on this, as I can count on one hand how many SSD's I've had to swap out in the last decase, and a tiny fraction of that is M.2's (basically none), and thats why I love them as they last nearly forever! But I'm highly selective with them and have had the freedom to make that selection with the large array of machines I've designed. You are right, for any kind of repairablity or servicing M.2 is a pain, its why all enterprise great is U.2/U.3 or Cartridge/Blade format SSD's, as then they're largely like traditional HDD drive bays. But 2.5" drives aren't the one, 2 cables, 4 screws and 10x the volume for less storage... IT BELONGS IN A MUSEUM!
