For most computers, there are some expanded slots we commonly use.

PCIE

PCIE also known as PCIe or PCI-e, it is a short name of Peripheral Component Interconnect Express. This is a most common seen motherboard interface for computer graphics card, hard disk, SSD, Wi-Fi and ethernet hardware connections. PCIE is the replaced high-speed expansion bus to the older generation of PCI, PCI-X and AGP bus standards.

PCIE was created and designed in the year of 2003, until 2020, it has 5 different versions, the latest version of 6.0 will be published in 2021. PCIE can be divided by the numbers of transmission channels. There are X1; x4; x8; x16 channels.

How to define different channels? The simple one is checking the pin numbers.

PCIE x1 has 36 pin feet; length 25mm;

PCIE x4 has 64 pin feet; length 39mm;

PCIE x8 has 98 pin feet; length 56mm;

PCIE x16 has 164 pin feet; length 89mm;

Compare PCIE SSD and SATA SSD

the speed of PCIE SSD is faster than SATA SSD. Data is directly transfer to CPU by PCIE, but for SATA SSD, data will be read by the Memory RAM first, and then transfer to CPU, vice versa is the same, CPU process data first, and then transfer data to RAM, RAM transfer data to SSD.

Compared to the price, PCIE SSD is much more expansive than SATA SSD and M.2 SSD.

SATA slot:

M.2

M.2 also known as NGFF (Next Generation Form Factor), is an updated storage slot for mSATA, it supports bigger data storage capacity.

there are 3 different length: M.2 2242 which is 22mmx42mm; M.2 2260 which is 22mmx60mm; M.2 2280 which is 22mmx80mm.

For most PC supports these three sizes. But more and more Min PC models are designed with M.2 2242 SSD, for the small space requirement.

M.2 has two different connectors: Socket 2 and socket 3. Socket 2 supports SATA, PCIE X2 SSD; Socket 3 supports PCIE X4.

-----------------------------------END----------------------------------

Cherub Chen (Ms.)

Email: cherub@newsmaytech.com

www.linkedin.com/in/cherubchen

Barry Chan (Mr.)

Email: info@newsmaytech.com