Check your PCI lane availability for both an M.2 SSD and a GPU simultaneously.
Check your PCI lane availability for both an M.2 SSD and a GPU simultaneously.
Is your internet speed above 550MBps (4Gbps)? Your CPU is 4770k, Devil's Canyon is 4790k—slightly newer, that’s okay. You’ll need to look it up; it might work as a storage drive, though I’m not too sure about the boot drive. So far, nothing seems incompatible, but...
The setup involves a 4790K and Z97 motherboard. All 16 CPU PCIe lanes are directed to the graphics card without any loss of bandwidth. Two PCIe 2.0 lanes are assigned to the SSD, which reduces performance. This setup is effective for basic tasks like gaming and launching Windows. I transferred an NVMe drive to another system, but the PCIe speed gain wasn’t significant.
You're facing an issue where your chipset, Haswell, doesn't support M.2 drives, which means you can't use them. It seems like you might need to switch to a different setup.
Haswell refers to a microarchitecture in the 4000 series Intel chips, such as the 4770K, 4790K, and 4570K. The motherboard used is Z87, and the Asus Z87-C lacks an M.2 port. Z97 and H97 models, along with Haswell refresh variants like the devil's canyon, 4790K, and 4690K, were launched together to support M.2 SSDs. There exists a unique B85 motherboard featuring an M.2 slot, which is quite convenient. I initially thought my motherboard would have an M.2 slot but overlooked that Z87 boards don't natively support NVMe drives. They can work with a riser card, though it’s not particularly necessary.
I understand that using a PCI adapter and BIOS adjustments can enable an M.2 SSD with the Z87-C motherboard. It may not be the fastest option, but it functions. The idea is that once you already have this SSD and processor, you could install a 980 PRO Samsung M.2 drive as your primary storage and later transfer it to a new system when needed.
I’d suggest using the drive as a secondary one instead of the main storage. As I mentioned, starting Windows doesn’t really change performance, and if you’re moving files quickly—especially for tasks like video editing—it performs just fine without it being your primary choice. You can still rely on your regular SATA SSD to boot the OS; it makes things easier. Regarding its cost, the 980 Pro isn’t an affordable option. What’s your main reason for using the SSD? I didn’t see that in your original message.