I’m planning on giving an older machine a small upgrade with an SSD, but since that machine does not have an m.2 port, I was thinking about buying the cheapest PCIe adapter I could find. Besides the obvious stuff like ports, PCIe gen and lane count, is there anything I should look out for? Specifically regarding Linux?
If you buy one with multiple M.2 slots, then your motherboard need to support lane bifurcation, if it just have one, it should work with no issue, however, I never booted an OS from these things.
Also, why not just a sata ssd if it’s just to revive a PC? It might be cheaper no?
Mainly because I have an m.2 from another machine in the drawer, so the costs are zero.
But from my (admittedly very short) research, the prices are almost the same, regardless of the format.
If your machine doesn’t have UEFI, only a few early NVMe SSDs are bootable, for example the Samsung 950 Pro. If you can’t find one, you could try installing the bootloader on a USB stick.
It’s not that old and currently UEFI boots from a SATA SSD.
Get as slow as you can, pcie 4 nvmes get pretty toasty and without proper cooling they will throttle anyway. Either that or make sure you get cooling options.
Not all adapter cards are the same or will run every ssd in every motherboard. I have half a dozen of those things because one brand will work in one computer with one type of ssd and not in any others.
If you get one with multiple, make sure your motherboard can split your pcie lanes so you can access all ssds on the card. Or find one with a pcie switch, though that can slow things down if you are not careful.
Stay away from dell and hp branded stuff unless it is going into a dell or hp. Dell made this awesome four ssd card with fan and everything, can only get it to run in dells.
make sure your motherboard can split your pcie lanes
I heard of bifurcation in that context, but how is that called in “mainboard spec lingo”? What buzzword should I worry about?
Dell made this awesome four ssd card with fan and everything, can only get it to run in dells.
It’s a Dell, so I’m safe here.
