pci-e revision question.

cereberus said:

"Silk purse out of sow's ear" is a common British expression LOL.

It was common in the US as well. It may be out-of-date for most Americans now. (When did most Americans last use the word "sow", female pig?)

It's not part of the great linguistic divide, like sweater/jumper or "knocked up".

MaloK said:

Any cheap NVME adapter will reach the maximum theoretical speed of 1700 MB/s on PCIe Rev 2.

I know I will sound crazy. But... If I would want to "top" this old machine for cheap.

Getting 6 cheap 64GB SSds and putting them all on a raid 0 would give 384GB at 3600 Mb/s...

Total cost 136$. Guaranty to work as expected. And 100% bootable.

Just need to find out how to install them in there.

Any adapter? Or do you specifically mean a x8 pci-e3.0 adapter plugged into an x8 pci-e2.0 slot?

That is a cool suggestion but I am not looking to top out the machine or buy more hardware than is necessary. The money will be spent on a 1TB nvme drive for a newer system, period. I am simply wishing to be able to do something with a soon-to-be-sitting-on-shelf smaller/older nvme drive. I do not want to buy hardware for this old PC, if I can avoid it. Switch adapters are too pricey but a regular $20 adapter is an acceptable solution. Later, when I bother to make it bootable, it will increase the speed overall and avoid hardware sitting, not being used. RAID is fun but it's also a pain in the ass and adds overhead to the system. 6 drives for a 'system drive' is a problem waiting to happen, in my opinion. I'd sooner buy the switch adapter at that point

I really can't believe only one person responded with anything useful. I went out of my way to be as detailed and accurate as possible in what I wanted to know and yet most assumed or interpreted my words to mean something else. A lot of you should go back to grade school and relearn how to read. All I wanted to know is if I placed a x8 pci-e3.0 nvme adapter card into an x8 pci-e2.0 slot, if I would be able to achieve x4 pci-e3.0 speeds, as that is what the nvme drive is. I am led to believe I would need a switch adapter for this but I wanted to be sure. I am not throwing out a perfectly good system that performs well; I am not buying hard drives for this old system; I am not trying to get max speed from anything. Since I am going to replace a 250GB nvme drive with a 1TB nvme drive, I figured I could cheaply throw it into the old PC.

You said it yourself "The pci-e slots are revision 2.0,"

So
PCIe Rev 2 = 500MB/s x 8 = 4000 MB/s
PCIe Rev 3 = 985MB/s x 4 = 3938 MB/s

Theorically they are pretty near

But it does not mean that your MB is going to treat it like that...

bobkn said:

Nope. I understood what you wrote. I wondered why you were pursuing that course. A fast SSD would typically be used as a boot drive. I shouldn't have mentioned the hacks required to do that on an older motherboard. That wasn't for your benefit; I assumed that you'd already know.

I did indeed ignore your specific question. I assumed that an adapter would work with a PCI-E 2.0 board, with the caveat that the maximum transfer rate would be half that of 3.0.

If no respondents have done exactly what you wish to do, I wouldn't be surprised. But I wish you luck.

If you expect narrow, precise answers in a forum, you may be disappointed. Those are rare enough from people who are trying to do that. (I wasn't.)

Did I ask you if I should pursue something, or did I ask a specific question regrading pci-e? Is your head so big that you think you know what is best for me through inference of the question(s) that I ask? So, instead of answering the OP you decided to "assume" and not answer it at all, and go off on down your own path? Who said anything about being able to boot from it? I specifically stated I was not interested in booting from this drive. As to why that is, is nobody's business; that question was not on the table. Why do you assume anything? Why not stick precisely to what was asked or say nothing at all?

So you admit to understanding what information I was seeking to know but you purposely decided to tell me something else because you "assumed"? Were this my website, for that act and admission, you'd be banned. Did I ask for someone to assume and give me an answer based on assumption, or could it be I was hoping someone actually knew from real world experience?

If respondents can't stay on point, only answering what was asked and nothing more, could it be they should stay silent instead of polluting the chat? I wish you and others luck carrying around those big heads, as that must be hard on the neck.

I do expect narrow precise answers as that is the point of forums...to stick precisely to what the OP is about. Not assume or do as you want. I am disappointed and annoyed. Yet again, you admit to purposefully detracting from the OP.

There is nothing wrong with providing extra information or asking questions surround the OP, provided one actually answers the question originally asked.

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MaloK said:

You said it yourself "The pci-e slots are revision 2.0,"

So
PCIe Rev 2 = 500MB/s x 8 = 4000 MB/s
PCIe Rev 3 = 985MB/s x 4 = 3938 MB/s

Theorically they are pretty near

But it does not mean that your MB is going to treat it like that...

Exactly. Right. That is what I am here to find out. Will a regular adapter do this or would I need a switch adapter?

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itsme1 said:

I don't believe, on pci express cards they are physical X4 slots, the end it has X4 m.2 ports, it would take x8 slots for the ssd to work at full speed on your pci express 2.0. I don't believe it's commercially available.

You mean the actual m.2 port would have to be x8, on the adapter card? I was wondering this too. There is no such thing as a x8 m.2 drive that I am aware of.

I think a regular adapter will run 4 x 500MB/s on PCIe rev 2

I don't know what is that Switch adapter... But, 1 Nvme drive will use 4 lanes no more, you need to add more drives to get more lanes active that's why a 16x nvme adapter has provision for 4 nvme drives 8x for two... They must be all installed to use the whole bandwidth of the slot.

This will be much faster than one SSd alone. But you might end up forced to use one to boot anyway.

bobkn said:

It was common in the US as well. It may be out-of-date for most Americans now. (When did most Americans last use the word "sow", female pig?)

It's not part of the great linguistic divide, like sweater/jumper or "knocked up".

Okay, okay... So I'm a little old fashioned. Meh, the song remains the same.