Computers & Electronics

Problem with M.2 SSD, Please help.

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Aug 23, 2004
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Problem with M.2 SSD, Please help.

Went to Canada Computers today and saw a Crucial MX300 275GB SATA M.2 SSD on clearance at $99.99. So I asked a sales if it will be compatible with my motherboard which is an Asus Z97-A USB3.1, the guy checked on his monitor and told me it will work. Bought it and installed it. Changed bios settings to M.2, nothing, could not see the drive. Checked my motherboard manual and it stated it works with PCIE mode only. The Crucial is Sata mode , no wonder.

Canada Computers has marked the receipt as final sales, no exchanges or refund. I will go back tomorrow to see if I can get a refund if not try to change it to this Intel M.2 600p http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_ ... _id=102655 since it seems they have an open box in London. If not the next thing up is the Samsung 960 which is at $169.99. I don't want to pay that much.

If they are not going to refund or exchange, what options do I have other than sell it at a lost. Are there any convertor that can change it to a regular SSD and connect to the Sata port?

Thanks in advance.
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Nov 15, 2011
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apvm wrote: Went to Canada Computers today and saw a Crucial MX300 275GB SATA M.2 SSD on clearance at $99.99. So I asked a sales if it will be compatible with my motherboard which is an Asus Z97-A USB3.1, the guy checked on his monitor and told me it will work. Bought it and installed it. Changed bios settings to M.2, nothing, could not see the drive. Checked my motherboard manual and it stated it works with PCIE mode only. The Crucial is Sata mode , no wonder.

Canada Computers has marked the receipt as final sales, no exchanges or refund. I will go back tomorrow to see if I can get a refund if not try to change it to this Intel M.2 600p http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_ ... _id=102655 since it seems they have an open box in London. If not the next thing up is the Samsung 960 which is at $169.99. I don't want to pay that much.

If they are not going to refund or exchange, what options do I have other than sell it at a lost. Are there any convertor that can change it to a regular SSD and connect to the Sata port?

Thanks in advance.
With 2.5" case:
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/B-M-key-socket-2 ... 25ae3297e9

Just a circuit board (cheaper):
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/M2-NGFF-ssd-SATA ... 25c75da4b0
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birthdaymonkey wrote: I have both of these and they work fine.
Thanks, but stuff from China took more than 2 months to arrive, I ordered something almost 3 months, not here yet. Anyway thanks.
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apvm wrote: Does it slow down the SSD performance?
Yes......... Is it noticeable ......... Hmm not really

MX300 reviews look good so just keep it
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apvm wrote: Does it slow down the SSD performance?
No, the drive uses SATA anyway. This is essentially just a pin conversion.
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george__ wrote: Yes......... Is it noticeable ......... Hmm not really

MX300 reviews look good so just keep it
Thanks, I'll be keeping and buy one of the adapter that birthdaymonkey recommended and use it as a regular ssd.
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Feb 29, 2008
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600p is waste of money. Except for you since you seem to be the only person I know looking for SATA performance in NVME drive.

Can anyone confirm this? The Intel chipset cannot accept SATA m.2? Only nvme?

This is a pretty bonehead implementation.
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I just read teh manual for your board. Looks like the M.2 slot only runs at PCI-E x2 speed. Jesus what a craptastic implementation. WHo did this? Intel or asus.

Just use a 2.5" drive or adapter.
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mr_raider wrote: I just read teh manual for your board. Looks like the M.2 slot only runs at PCI-E x2 speed. Jesus what a craptastic implementation. WHo did this? Intel or asus.

Just use a 2.5" drive or adapter.
That is what I am going to do, Thanks. Should have read the manual before buying but $99.99 is a good price for a 275GB MX300 even if I need to buy a adapter. Thanks again.
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mr_raider wrote: I just read teh manual for your board. Looks like the M.2 slot only runs at PCI-E x2 speed. Jesus what a craptastic implementation. WHo did this? Intel or asus.

Just use a 2.5" drive or adapter.
Both of them ..
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mr_raider wrote: 600p is waste of money. Except for you since you seem to be the only person I know looking for SATA performance in NVME drive.

Can anyone confirm this? The Intel chipset cannot accept SATA m.2? Only nvme?

This is a pretty bonehead implementation.
The 600p is perhaps a "waste of money" if you buy it at full/normal price and only because there are more and more NVMe offerings being released as time goes on. I bought my 600p (256GB) for $99 so I can't complain. It's not exactly "SATA performance" as the reads are significantly faster than any SATA drive out there. Even with a Z97 PCH bottleneck, the 600p still performs faster than most SATA drives, in most categories. It's not exactly a stellar increase in performance from the X400 (SATA) I had in there before [on Z97] but it is faster all around anyway.

Also no, Z97 accepts both SATA and m.2 if it's a PCH-wired slot. If it's connected to the processor instead (thus dropping the x16 slot to x8--which is actually a better idea in most cases), then it won't be able to use SATA drives. However this is actually a much better solution, as mentioned, because then you get an NVMe drive at NVMe speeds instead. Only you couldn't have dual GPUs in that case (which is why I'm glad my board is PCH-wired for m.2), but most people don't have dual GPUs so dropping the x16 to x8 and giving the m.2 full-bandwidth is a better idea for them.
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mr_raider wrote: I just read teh manual for your board. Looks like the M.2 slot only runs at PCI-E x2 speed. Jesus what a craptastic implementation. WHo did this? Intel or asus.
Still faster than SATA 6Gb/s. However in that case it should be PCH connected and therefore it should also be connected to the SATA controller (for SATA drives). The mystery here is why it can't be use for SATA drives as well?
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ES_Revenge wrote: The 600p is perhaps a "waste of money" if you buy it at full/normal price and only because there are more and more NVMe offerings being released as time goes on. I bought my 600p (256GB) for $99 so I can't complain. It's not exactly "SATA performance" as the reads are significantly faster than any SATA drive out there. Even with a Z97 PCH bottleneck, the 600p still performs faster than most SATA drives, in most categories. It's not exactly a stellar increase in performance from the X400 (SATA) I had in there before [on Z97] but it is faster all around anyway.

Also no, Z97 accepts both SATA and m.2 if it's a PCH-wired slot. If it's connected to the processor instead (thus dropping the x16 slot to x8--which is actually a better idea in most cases), then it won't be able to use SATA drives. However this is actually a much better solution, as mentioned, because then you get an NVMe drive at NVMe speeds instead. Only you couldn't have dual GPUs in that case (which is why I'm glad my board is PCH-wired for m.2), but most people don't have dual GPUs so dropping the x16 to x8 and giving the m.2 full-bandwidth is a better idea for them.
Thanks, I will give it a try tomorrow to see if CC will either refund or exchange before buying the adapter. But knowing CC and I have no proof that their sales had told me it will work with my motherboard, I doubt it will be successful since the Crucial is marked as clearance and final sales.
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Do the newer Intel chipsets resolves this? The amd b350 birads seem to use the slot for SATA or pci-e 4x.
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Since I need a SSD for my Vista era work laptop which mostly doing power point stuff etc. I think I will keep the m.2 mx300 and use an adapter and give it to my daughter's computer and took the Transcend SSD340 256GB from it and put it in my work laptop, it should give some new life to the Acer laptop and I think the m.2 MX300 even with an adapter should be faster than the Transcend SSD340. Am I right here? thanks.

Meanwhile, I will just keep using my Scandisk ultra plus 128GB as boot disk with my PC and wait for some deal on a M.2 PCIE drive.
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You have to realize that the big jump is going from HDD to ssd. The difference between SSDs, SATA gen 1, 2 and 3, and then pci-e 2x and 4x are fare more subtle.

Yes you may notice them under certain workloads, but for day to use, even a 3 year old mx100 is plenty fast. If you do a lot of writes and video editing, faster SSDs may be worthwhile. The fastest NVME drives though only show their power and heavy enterprise grade workloads. You need to hammer a 960 pro with gigabytes at a time to see its performance. Think copying BluRay ISO 24/7
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mr_raider wrote: Do the newer Intel chipsets resolves this? The amd b350 birads seem to use the slot for SATA or pci-e 4x.
100-series and 200-series chipsets use DMI 3.0, so yes they do. This is with the exception of the H110 which still uses DMI 2.0, but I don't think there's may (or even any) H110 boards with an m.2 slot to begin with.

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