Will PCIE storage work with the B85 Chipset?

Hardware HDD's & SSD's
1

Hi

I'm currently faced with a decision between a new PCIe/M.2 SSD or another SATA III SSD. (TL;DR below)
I'm in the process of building a home server to store media etc. on and for backups. I am thinking of buying an HGST 4TB NAS drive for backups and donating my 1TB WD drive for storage of music etc. to be backed up to the 4TB HGST.
Thus I need to expand the storage of my main rig:
i5-4440
8GB DDR3@1600MHz
Msi B85-G43
GTX 980
Samsung 840 EVO 120GB
(To be removed: 1TB WD Blue)
Corsair CX600M

I really like the look of the SM951 256GB, however as you can see I'm still using the B85 chipset which AFAIK does not support booting from a PCIe drive. So I can either upgrade my mobo to something that supports PCIe SSDs or buy another SATA III drive.

TL;DR
Can I run the SM951 in my current motherboard with a PCIe adapter or do I need to upgrade my mobo? Using the SM951 for windows would be ideal but my main use for higher speeds would be for games.

Sorry if my first post on the forum has been plagued with newbie mistakes, but Tek Syndicate is a community I would really like to be a part of.

2

you could always go raid 0. Might be cheaper. Also look into the new m.2 pci 3.0.

3

I've always been a bit skeptical when it comes to RAID 0. But nevertheless an option I will put on the back burner.

Also is the SM951 not M.2 PCIe Gen 3.0?

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I think if I remember correctly the 951 is the new one from Samsung. If the speed is 2gbps then it should be 3.0.... On the other hand you can get a tb of ssd for less than 400.

5

OK, do you really need that speed? I mean OK, its not cheap, but obviously this is not a problem. But do you really need the speed for storage space home server? Honestly, i have no idea, so i am both asking you do you really need the speed and asking to get an answer, cause i may need something like small home server soon. However, i am fairly average user and haven't really felt the need of more SSD speed for average work, and this will be storage server. I mean it is barely gona calculate stuff. I think. If i am wrong, and there will be a difference, then may be upgrade. Not a fan on layers over layers of software over the OS to make a hardware work. So i would choose to upgrade the hardware instead of looking for a way to make this kind of thing work.

6

Sorry for the late reply. Are you asking me if i need the speed for the home server? In which case this SSD is not intended for a server but for my main gaming rig! No home user needs 2GB/s for a storage server. However the speed on my gaming rig would be really nice for games like BF4 and Skyrim (heavily modded).

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I would get two in raid 0 but that's just me.

1 Like
8

Same. A RAID setup is what I'd go for too

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http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-raid-benchmark,3485-13.html ? The thing is that 2 120GB drives + a RAID controller cost around £120 where as the SM951 256GB is £118 on Scan right now. A RAID 0 array might get near 1GB/s read and like 700MB/s write where the SM951 advertises 2+GB/s Read and 1.2GB/s write. Also a RAID array will be destroyed if one of the drives fails.

However I still dont know whether the SM951 will be compatible with my mobo. If I can't use it as a boot drive thats fine. But if the system won't even detect it as a drive there is no point in me buying it. That being said i wouldn't mind upgrading my motherboard to a Z97 board because i plan to upgrade to something like a 4690k or 4790k in future now that Skylake is pushing Haswell prices down.

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Why not directly Skylake upgrade? I mean i am not sure about the $ prices, but in my country 6700K is around the price of 4790K and another thing - 2011V3... The mobos are a bit more expensive, but 5820K is not much more than 6700K, and again, this is based on the prices in my country, which have the tendency to be wired... Both cases, the mobos are better equipped with features and stuff... And there are some really cheap ones for 1151... DDR4 is not that more expensive either. I have looked into upgrade to 1151 upgrade, but i don't have the resources, but feature wise it is worth it.

12

I have renamed the thread because what i really need to know is:

Will PCIE storage work with the B85 Chipset?

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Oh i should probably add that i will use the SM951 with a PCIe adapter. If it works at all that is.