M.2 on PCIEX expansion slot

WD SSD Products WD SSD Drives & Software
1

Recently placed a M.2 card (PCIe Gen3x4,NVMe 1.2,512GB) on an adapter and placed it in my PCIeX x4 expansion slot - works great.

Now looking at purchasing a “WD Black 512GB Performance SSD - M.2 2280 PCIe NVMe Solid State Drive - WDS512G1X0C” and using another adapter card but wanted to know if it can be used in the x8 slot and if so will it be a constant speed regardless of the number of PCIe lanes (x4 vs. x8)?

Thanks

Spec’s:
Intel-i7 8700K (Coffee Lake)
ASUS ROG Maximus X Hero (Wi-Fi AC)
MSI Radeon RX 480 Gaming X 4GB
G.Skill TridentZ RGB Series DDR4 3600, 16GB
Windows 10 Home-64xBit

2

Hi zer0State,

In order to install the WD Black PCIe M.2 SSD drive, It is recommended checking the compatibility for performance. Please see link below:

https://support.wdc.com/knowledgebase/answer.aspx?ID=17144&s=

3

My question was: …wanted to know if it [WDS512G1X0C] can be used in the x8 slot and if so will it be a constant speed regardless of the number of PCIe lanes (x4 vs. x8)?
Let me rephrase the question slightly… is the WDS512G1X0C capable of running and using 8 PCIe lanes of traffic, or by its construction, is it topped out at something less like 4 lanes?

4

You can even install an adapter into an x16 pciex16 slot, but all nvme drives, not only the WD black, are limited to using 4 lanes.

Do note that pci2 version 3.0 with 4 lanes has 3.94GB/sec of available bandwidth, so much more than the WD black can deliver.

5

WD support seems confused.

6

@zer0State I looked up your board and you already have 2 m2 slots on that motherboard. No real need to use a adapter.