Solved Upgrading to NVME on my Asus P5QD Turbo.

[roberthansjorg]

Hi all,

I'm just wondering if it's even possible to use NVME SSD on my PC. I've got a PCI_2 slot available on my MOBO.

As I'm sure you all know adapters are available to allow an NVME SSD to be attached via a the PCI slot.

As always it's not that simple however. Does NVME require PCIe3 to attach to? And can the BIOS cope? It's

dated AMI BIOS 2009.

If I've only got PCI then is it even possible? My PCIEX16_1 has got my graphics card in it.

I believe Windows 10 is configured for NVME out of the box whilst Windows 7 Ult will require NVME drivers to be installed.

Ultimately I'll get a modern high spec mobo and use Win 10.

In the mean time however.......

 

[SIW2]

You need a pciE slot. Preferably pcie3.0 x4, though nvme disks can run from pcie2.0 x4 at a lower speed.

To boot from nvme via an adapter on a pcie slot, your bios needs to support nvme boot. Or you can use clover on older mobos.

 

[SIW2]

From your mobo manual, it doesnt look like you have anything suitable because your pcie2.0 x16 is occupied by the graphics card.




For general use and pottering around, there isn't much noticeable difference between a sata ssd ( on sata 3 port) and nvmne.

But I expect your mobo doesn't have sata 3 either. Attaching a sata ssd to a sata 2 port is still an improvement, so I would suggest that as a worthwhile move.

 

[roberthansjorg]

P5QD Turbo/NVME

Thanks SIW2,

I've got an attached SATA SSD. SATA 2 or 3 I don't know yet.
I'll migrate my OS to this drive using Macrium Reflect.
Should have done this before.
Thanks for your advice.

 

[Megahertz07]

Thanks SIW2,

I've got an attached SATA SSD. SATA 2 or 3 I don't know yet.
I'll migrate my OS to this drive using Macrium Reflect.
Should have done this before.
Thanks for your advice.

You've made a good choise.
I have a PCIe SSD (1900MB/s read) and for my surprise I only see the difference to a regular 2.5" SSD on the benchmark.

Please mark this thread as solved

 

[roberthansjorg]

Thanks Megerhertz07,

I migrated my OS to the SATA SSD using EaseUS Partition Manager 15.8. Changed the BIOS boot up disk priority
to match and rebooted. It works fine.
There is a noticeable speed increase in start up functions and overall performance.
My mobo is dated 2008. Asus has long stopped BIOS upgrades for this unit.
I could install more SATA SSD's and even configure them to RAID if I wanted but for my purposes
on this PC I don't think it's necessary.
My next project is to build a high performance video editing PC from scratch and I'll have to
go to Windows 10.
Thanks everybody for the advice given.

 

[Megahertz07]

roberthansjorg, to use the old HDD as a data drive I suggest you boot from the SSD drive, open Disk manager (C:\Windows\System32\diskmgmt.msc) and delete all partitions till you have one and only one unallocated space. Than create a new primary partition and format as NTFS. Change the assigned letter to your needs.

The reason to clean the old disk is because it has some system files that can interfere on the boot of your SSD.

 

[roberthansjorg]

Making a SATA SSD the boot drive

Thank you Megahertz07 once again,

I used EaseUS Partition Manager 15.8 to do exactly as you suggested.
I designated the SATA SSD drive as the C: drive using the Disk Management utility within Win 7.
I renamed the old HDD drive ( old boot up drive) as drive D: - it reads Healthy, Active, Primary Partition.

I've used this new setup several times now and not noticed any interference during the boot up process.
In BIOS I set my SATA SSD drive as drive number one and made it boot priority number 1.
So my PC is not confused and boots up from the SATA SSD very quickly.
Just as a matter of interest my HDD - D: drive still has all my windows files on it. The windows files I migrated to my SATA SSD drive. It's 65 GBytes worth.
Once I'm happy my new setup is stable I'll delete those files. I've got lots of backups anyway.
Thank you for your advice.