M.2 Socket (Optane memory) Question.

I have been thinking about installing another SSD in mydesktop. I have a ASUS PRIME B360M-A Motherboard that came with 16GB Optane memory in the M.2_2 socket that I never set up or used. This is what the manual says.

Expansion Capabilities

One PCI Express 3.0 x16 Slot (x16/x4)
Two PCI Express 3.0 x1 Slots
Two M.2 (Socket 3) slots
Note:
If the M.2_1 socket is occupied by a SATA-type M.2 device, the SATA2 port will be disabled
Only the M.2_2 socket supports Optane™ memory

I know I can't use the M.2_1 socket because it would disable the SATA2 port. Would it be possible to replace the 16GB with a larger drive or is the M.2_2 socket only useful for the OPTANE memory?

This is the SSD I'm thinking about. Robot Check

The 16GB Optane drive was intended as a nonvolatile cache for an HDD. It's too small to be useful for much else.

As posted by "TV2", both M.2 slots support PCI-E 3.0 X4 NVME drives, so that's what you'd want.

I'm not sure why an Optane drive can only be used in M2_2. At a guess, that one derives it PCI-E lanes from the CPU, rather than the motherboard chipset. (Or, it's the other way around.)

TV2 said:

Yes, that SSD module is an NVMe, and they use the PCI-e bus.

The specs for that motherboard confirm that both m.2 sockets will run the NVMe.

Thank you for the reply. I wasn't sure if socket 2 was usable for a larger drive or not.

bobkn said:

The 16GB Optane drive was intended as a nonvolatile cache for an HDD. It's too small to be useful for much else.

As posted by "TV2", both M.2 slots support PCI-E 3.0 X4 NVME drives, so that's what you'd want.

I'm not sure why an Optane drive can only be used in M2_2. At a guess, that one derives it PCI-E lanes from the CPU, rather than the motherboard chipset. (Or, it's the other way around.)

I agree the 16GB is way to small for any thing other than its intended use.

thomaseg1 said:

I have done so on my Hp. Replace the Optane 16 gig with a 500 gig evo.Only problem I had
was turning off the raid in the bios as well as in windows ( since your not using the Optane
this should be a problem).
I now use it as my OS drive.

Great to hear that it will work. When I purchased this desktop the first thing I did was replace the HDD with my SSD from my old desktop. I did that so I wouldn't have to reinstall all my programs and settings. Both were Windows 10 Pro so the licensing wasn't a problem. The only thing I didn't setup was the Optane Memory. I tried once just to see if it would make any difference in performance. I followed a guide I found online but after making the change in the Bios the computer wouldn't boot so I reset the bios and removed the driver. I did give it a drive letter once in Disk Management just to see if it would work. Other than that it has never been used.

I just order a Samsung 970 EVO 500 GB M.2 NVMe drive from Amazon. Seeing the speed increase of this SSD compared to my Sata SSD is there anything extra I would need to do to make this my C: drive?