NVME M.2 to PCI-E - which of these adaptors?

[Dreece]

I'm throwing an NVME M.2 into a workstation, now the board doesn't have an M.2 slot for NVME so looking at a straight-forward converter card.

Of these two, which would you presume to be the better design and why?

A: vs B:

Now (A) appears to have some kind of voltage regulating circuitry, and (B) has a lovely Nichicon aluminium electrolytic capacitor and some SMD LEDS. Personally I'm thinking that there is no real need for (A) in a good motherboard for the motherboard should already have good voltage regulating facilities, but (B) is probably a better buy because of the capacitor. Now my vector in thought could be entirely flawed whence requesting assistance...

Which one you prefer, and why?

 

[mstone]

whatever's cheap & available

 

[Dreece]

I find "cheap & available" often makes one bang head against the proverbial wall once dust settles and purchase is realised to be inferior to something else only a few bob more.

I was hoping someone with some prior experience of these "cheap and available" cards would pop in a comment or two with some technical knowledge regarding the differences as I can't really find any information on these cheapish nvme adapters for consumers... in the end I tend to just shore up a bigger wad to cover the cost of an enterprise grade card (usually the wisest option), but then in this case it really is just a conversion of sorts whence the interest in the basic electrical components of these adapters.

 

[Dreece]

Interesting... HP's Z Turbo PCIe to NVME card has quite a fair bit of circuitry going on...

 

[mstone]

Interesting... HP's Z Turbo PCIe to NVME card has quite a fair bit of circuitry going on..

Most of which seems to be for components that aren't there. I'd guess they reuse the same board for multiple products.

 

[Dreece]

Most of which seems to be for components that aren't there. I'd guess they reuse the same board for multiple products.

Would be very helpful if manufacturers actually provided schematics of their equipment publicly, then reviewers of hardware get to dive into the electronics side of things too, better informing users rather than A pulled 2500mb/s vs B at 2000mb/s... end of review.

 

[mstone]

Would be very helpful if manufacturers actually provided schematics of their equipment publicly, then reviewers of hardware get to dive into the electronics side of things too, better informing users rather than A pulled 2500mb/s vs B at 2000mb/s... end of review.

1980 called, they want their computer magazine back. Seriously, you're overthinking this.

 

[nthu9280]

HP Z turbo is bios locked to HP Z workstations. Don't get that unless you want to hack it. There is a thread here on how to.

ASUS has Hyper M.2 card they seem to go for $15-20.

You may also want to look at Asus Hyper quad card which runs $60 but need pcie bifurcation support in bios. So is Dell Ultra speed quad card. That is goes for $140 range.

 

[Dreece]

1980 called, they want their computer magazine back. Seriously, you're overthinking this.

I get that a lot... I just have a habit of wanting to whitebox blackbox things... learn more about things that way.

 

[Dreece]

HP Z turbo is bios locked to HP Z workstations. Don't get that unless you want to hack it. There is a thread here on how to.

ASUS has Hyper M.2 card they seem to go for $15-20.

You may also want to look at Asus Hyper quad card which runs $60 but need pcie bifurcation support in bios. So is Dell Ultra speed quad card. That is goes for $140 range.

This is purely for a workstation which doesn't have an NVME slot, I was actually considering the Hyper M.2, but what started to bug me was the difference in components, whereas some of these cards have barely anything on them and then it made me think well why not?...

I ordered a supermicro card with a builtin switch for a server and that's working great. For this particular workstation I have to be careful I don't get something which could bite me in the rear later, I've heard horror stories regarding NVME drives frying and motherboards too.