Is it possible to use a PCIe NVMe SSD on an older Lynnfield/P55 chipset motherboard?

1

1

I have:

  1. A PCIe NVMe SSD
  2. An NVMe to PCIe x4 adapter card.
  3. An old Asus P7P55D-E motherboard.

I have the PCIe x4 card sitting in the x16 slot, which I think is fine by the PCIe standard. The drive does not show up in bios.

The adapter card states "Support ASUS Z170/H170/X99/Z97/H97/B85 series motherboard models" chipsets. As far as I can tell the motherboard is a P55.

Is there some way to use the NVMe card or do I need to replace the motherboard?

RJFalconer

Posted 2017-01-31T19:05:53.403

Reputation: 9 791

1The drive does not show up in the BIOS firmware since the BIOS has no idea how to handle the NVME protocol. It might still work perfectly fine if you can boot an OS which does NVME support. (Note that this means that you cannot use the NVME disk to boot from with this motherboard, you would need an motherboard with up to date firmware. And probaly with UEFI instead of BIOS). – Hennes – 2017-01-31T19:09:12.420

Answers

1

Yes, and no. Yes, you should be able to use the drive for storage with the adapter without any issues.

But you will not be able to use it as a boot drive. According to Intel, one of the companies that designed NVMe, you must have a Z97 or more recent chipset to use it as a boot drive.

Mitchell

Posted 2017-01-31T19:05:53.403

Reputation: 51

Asked: 2017-01-31T19:05:53.403

Viewed: 1 670 times

Active: 2017-01-31T19:17:31.927