Too many M.2 slots on the motherboard.
Too many M.2 slots on the motherboard.
These firms are offering more M.2 options to increase their pricing slightly while making it more appealing. For instance, a newcomer could view the expanded choices and decide to invest in additional M.2 slots for future flexibility. Some users might actually prefer those M.2 drives instead of a single large 8TB NVMe unit, as they avoid purchasing an expensive 1500 dollar drive and opt for multiple smaller ones. But I don’t see a typical consumer needing that many slots—perhaps only two would be practical on a budget model, allowing storage upgrades later without replacing the main operating system drive.
I own four M.2 SSDs in my setup. Three are mounted on a PCIe card since I’m using HEDT, and one sits directly on the motherboard. I don’t plan to replace the main board unless necessary because I already have two 1TB drives plus a 500GB unit, or I could allocate that slot for a larger 2TB drive. I keep many SSDs since modern ones have an extremely long lifespan, so there’s no need to discard them. The 250GB 960 Evo I found in a used laptop or the 970 Evo 1TB I bought years ago still shows over 95% health according to SMART data. Ideally, mainstream boards should have more PCIe lanes, which would let me install four affordable x4/x4/x4/x4 PCIe cards if needed, without burdening others with higher costs or inconvenience. However, adding more lanes would likely make chips bigger and pricier, so the benefit would mostly shift to those who need it.
I own two storage units, but the reason is I purchased a 1TB model and later upgraded to a higher-capacity one. Now my games drive is in the weaker slot. I’m not sure how often I’ll do that again. For video editing, experts suggest three drives: an operating system/application drive, a temporary storage, and a dedicated project folder drive. I’m not convinced manufacturers are aggressively targeting video editing yet. I’m guessing M.2 slots might be more cost-effective than PCIe ones, which explains their popularity.
I could picture needing three slots in total: one for Windows, one for another operating system, and a spare for backup or replacement purposes. It would be helpful to have more flexibility in choosing between M.2 devices and PCIe slots.
My setup currently holds three drives, but I completely understand your perspective. The main reason I keep them is because I frequently buy and sell hardware. Many users don’t replace SSDs when they’re still in their original cases (I’ve acquired a range of capacities like 5 970 Evos), they’re reluctant to remove them, and I simply use the lower capacity drives for storage while keeping the high-capacity ones for gaming. When I owned an X570 Taichi, servicing it was quite challenging. You’d need to take out the GPU entirely to access the M.2 slots, which carried a risk of damaging the chipset (since the heatsink and M.2 unit were essentially the same). Water cooling would have taken more than an hour just to insert and remove drives. Things are easier now with boards that don’t require such extensive removal. I still support PCIe storage because it’s compact and affordable, but I’m not in favor of mounting SSDs directly on the board. For standard ATX systems, I’d prefer a riser card included for flexibility, similar to ASUS’s approach with their DIMM system. Or better yet, bring back dedicated PCIe slots that aren’t just for SSDs. Very few people have three 1TB SSDs at once, so having versatile slots would be more practical.
Avoid placing one component directly into a PCIe slot or using it in an x8 port shared with your GPU. This limits flexibility for standard add-in cards and forces reliance on more costly M.2 to PCIe x4 adapters. It also leads to a cluttered board layout, confining you to half-height expansion cards unless you have ample free slots. Ideally, I’d like to see an ITX board featuring four M.2 ports alongside the PCIe x16, but that seems unlikely.
I have the following components in my main PC:
- Sabrent Rocket 4.0 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME
- Corsair MP600 CORE 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME
- Western Digital WDBSLA0040HNC-NRSN 4 TB 3.5" 7200 RPM
- Western Digital Red 6 TB 3.5" 5400 RPM
My experience with these isn't the same as yours.