Upgrading to a gen 4 m.2 on a HP sunflower MB

[Christian_-2]

So I’ve got a 690  Hp sunflower motherboard, and I want to upgrade my storage to a M.2 gen 4 Nvme and I’m wondering if they’re compatible or not before I go ahead and make the purchase. The nvme I want to install is the Crucial P3 Plus 1Tb PCIe Gen 4 NAND Nvme M.2. so before I make this purchase I want to know if it’ll work together or issues this may cause.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

The Crucial P3+ is compatible, but since your PC's NVMe slot is only PCIe Gen 3.0, the Gen 4.0 NVMe SSD will not run at its maximum advertised read/write speeds.

There is one other drawback to that motherboard.

It is configured so that the NVMe SSD only uses two PCIe lanes making it perform at around 1/2 of the speed it can run from the slot.

A related discussion:

Solved: NVME SSD performance - HP Support Community - 8152126

This table provides the maximum transfer speeds each PCIe slot generation can provide:

PCIe Speeds and Limitations | Crucial.com

[Christian_-2]

Thanks for mentioning that, is there any recommendations you can give for what nvme I should get or should I go ahead and buy the Crucial P3+ and deal with the drawback of it performing at only half its speed or just stick with it. Also in the description of the Crucial P3+ it mentions that it has backwards compatibility with gen3. Would that counter the issue of my ssd performing at only half its speed

[Paul_Tikkanen · Accepted solution]

You're very welcome.

Here's my 2 cents worth:

If you plan on transferring the SSD to a newer model PC in the future, I'd get a Gen 4.0 SSD.

Bear in mind that the slower the Read/Write speed on a Gen 4 or Gen 3 SSD, you have to divide that by 50% because of the two PCIe lane restriction.

And then I don't know how much further you have to reduce the Gen 4 SSD's speed due to the PCIe Gen 3 slot.

My 'guesstimate' calculation based on the Crucial PCIe table for the P3+ would be that your PC would run that drive at a max speed of 2,000 MBPS read/1800 MBPS write.

The Crucial P3 Gen 3.0 would run at an approximate maximum of 1,750 MBPS Read/1,500 MBPS write.

I know that is quite a 'tax' you have to pay for the slower Gen 3 slot and the 2 PCIe lanes, but the good news is that is still about 3 x faster than any SATA SSD can perform.

[Christian_-2]

Thank you a lot, you really helped me as I’m still decently new to the pc world and I was really worried I would somehow mess up my pc if I didn’t get the right ssd and I’ve been needing to upgrade my pc as it’s pretty outdated.

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Anytime. 

Glad to have been of assistance.