So whats the point of having PCI-e x1, x4, and x8 slots if they are rarely used? Instead of a useless PCI-e x1 slot, why not put in a useful PCI slot insted? Perhaps the most important determining factor for choosing the model of an M.2 PCIe Adapter is whether or not it supports your SSD. M.2 Key Of course, these Benchmarks were mainly testing Gaming performance, and there might very well be specific workloads that you utilize that make much better use of PCIe Bandwidth – and would be impacted more strongly. Installation Difficulties

PCI-e x1 slot into an old PCI slot? - Super User Can I turn a PCI-e x1 slot into an old PCI slot? - Super User

Firstly, you want to make sure that there is enough room between the second PCIe slot and the GPU to allow for the M.2 PCIe adapter. This is especially the case if you plan to have heatsinks for the SSDs. While most current motherboards, even the micro ATX ones, come with an onboard slot for an NVMe SSD, plenty of users still use slightly older hardware that does not have that feature. A lot of times, even if you have a mainboard with an SSD already in the M.2 slot, you would want to add more SSDs to your system for more storage. For this, you can use the PCIe slots of your mainboard to connect a small piece of silicon called NVMe PCIe Adapters that can hold an SSD or two for you.However, if one uses an adapter and plugs this SSD into the second PCIe slot of the motherboard, it will be given PCIe 3.0 CPU lanes. AMD has been providing support for the fourth generation of the PCIe interface since their Zen 2 CPUs. Now, with the launch of their 11 th generation processors, Intel also provides support for this interface.

PCIe Adapters for NVMe or PCIe SSDs in 2023 Best M.2 PCIe Adapters for NVMe or PCIe SSDs in 2023

In fact, even in a PCIe Slot running at PCIe 3.0 x8 lanes, the divergence is only 3%. Similar discrepancies were found from Gamer’s Nexus benchmarks; which are minute enough to be considered within the margin of error. There has been a dimension shift in the computing industry in the last few years. Once hard disk drives with terabytes of space were the norm, newer and more advanced storage devices in the form of SSDs have gradually started to take over this space. Hard disks are still rampant when it comes to big storage spaces as the prices of high-capacity NVMe SSDs are still nowhere near affordable. You must note that not all M.2 PCIe adapters are compatible with all types of M.2 SSDs. The majority of the M.2 PCIe adapters only support NVMe SSDs with an M-Key notch or edge connector. The PCIe or NVMe solid-state drives have an M-Key edge connector, while the M.2 SATA solid-state drives have both B-Key & M-Key notches or edge connectors. An M.2 PCIe adapter compatible with M-Key M.2 PCIe SSD will only support NVMe SSD and not the other types that include B-Key M.2 PCIe or SATA SSDs. Moreover, you cannot use an M-Key PCIe AHCI SSD into an M.2 PCIe adapter that only supports M-Key PCIe NVMe SSD. So, to ensure compatibility, you must match the M-Key connector and Interface (NVMe/AHCI) to the ones supported by the M.2 PCIe adapter that you are going to buy. Below you can see the Key positions for different M.2 solid state drives. Important to mention, is that this boost in performance is mostly relevant in terms of the SSD’s sequential read, and write speeds. If all chipset PCIe lanes are in use, installing two additional NVMe drives into the PCIe slot (via an M.2 PCIe Adapter) means siphoning resources from the GPU, as the SSDs begin tapping into the CPU’s PCIe lanes.These CPU lanes can be reconfigured into an x8/x8/x4 layout (for certain motherboards); from which the GPU can use eight, instead of 16. Will This Impact the GPU’s Performance? Zen 2 and Zen 3 Ryzen CPUs come with an identical amount of PCIe lanes (24); though four go toward the chipset.