Gigabyte GA-Z97X-Gaming 3 NVME Support

May 29, 2020
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Hi guys, so I have a really good offer on a Micron 2200 256gb NVME gen 3 x4 but I am still using a Gigabyte GA-Z97X-Gaming 3 motherboard which supports nvme but I can find any info on when it supports Gen 3. Anyone have any info?
 
If you mean Gen 3 as in the SSD is PCIe Gen 3 x4, then it doesn't matter as long as the mobo supports NVMe afaik,

PCIe is backwards compatible, so if the board supports NVMe drives (I think Z97s will generally support NVMe 1.3, which means modern drives) it should work.

The issue is that, again as far as I know off the top of my head, Z97 boards don't have the full Gen 3 x4 bandwidth you'd expect off a modern motherboard.

The M.2 slot may only be PCIe Gen 2 x2 (like it is on the Asus Z97A). Which means you might end up getting speeds not all that much better than a Sata SSD (~1GB/s theoretical, but there's overhead that eats into it).

Of course, you could migrate the drive to a new system in the future and get the full speed from it then. However, by then, you may find 256gb criminally small, to the point that having a 256gb drive in one of your precious M.2 slots is a waste of the slot.

I've been in a similar position myself -we have a Z97 based machine - and decided not to get an NVMe drive for it for this reason.
 

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