My 960 Evo M.2 PCI-E SSD is running very hot under heavy loads and I'd like to cool it down. At the moment it's in the motherboard M.2 slot but I was thinking of getting a PCI-E card with an M.2 slot to put in the bottom PCI-E X16 slot (running at X4 according to motherboard specs). These are the specs of my Gigabyte AB350M motherboard:
1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x16 (PCIEX16)
* For optimum performance, if only one PCI Express graphics card is to be installed, be sure to install it in the PCIEX16 slot.
* Actual support may vary by CPU.
(The PCIEX16 slot conforms to PCI Express 3.0 standard.)
1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x4 (PCIEX4)
1 x PCI Express x1 slot
(The PCIEX4 and PCI Express x1 slots conform to PCI Express 2.0 standard.)
Storage Interface
1 x M.2 connector (Socket 3, M key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 SATA and PCIe x4*/x2 SSD support)
* Actual support may vary by CPU.
6 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors
Support for RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 10
* Refer to "1-7 Internal Connectors," for the installation notices for the M.2 and SATA connectors.
My GTX1080Ti occupies the top PCI-E X16 slot and all the other PCI-E slots remain unpopulated. I have 1X SATA drive and don't plan on adding more.
Now just to confirm, the motherboard M.2 slot and the PCI-E slots are all on the same bus so I shouldn't have any bottlenecks with moving the SSD to a PCI-E slot, correct? Would I lose any performance in any way?
1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x16 (PCIEX16)
* For optimum performance, if only one PCI Express graphics card is to be installed, be sure to install it in the PCIEX16 slot.
* Actual support may vary by CPU.
(The PCIEX16 slot conforms to PCI Express 3.0 standard.)
1 x PCI Express x16 slot, running at x4 (PCIEX4)
1 x PCI Express x1 slot
(The PCIEX4 and PCI Express x1 slots conform to PCI Express 2.0 standard.)
Storage Interface
1 x M.2 connector (Socket 3, M key, type 2242/2260/2280/22110 SATA and PCIe x4*/x2 SSD support)
* Actual support may vary by CPU.
6 x SATA 6Gb/s connectors
Support for RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 10
* Refer to "1-7 Internal Connectors," for the installation notices for the M.2 and SATA connectors.
My GTX1080Ti occupies the top PCI-E X16 slot and all the other PCI-E slots remain unpopulated. I have 1X SATA drive and don't plan on adding more.
Now just to confirm, the motherboard M.2 slot and the PCI-E slots are all on the same bus so I shouldn't have any bottlenecks with moving the SSD to a PCI-E slot, correct? Would I lose any performance in any way?
