Which type of M.2 SSD does my motherboard support?

I found 2 Dell articles that show the M.2 support matrix for various OptiPlex models and my system has a M.2 socket that uses PCIe x 4 lanes. Another good article in the KB has M.2 keys and its common uses.

M.2 NVMe Device Specifications and Upgrade Requirements for Precision, OptiPlex, Latitude and XPS Systems

How to distinguish the differences between M.2 cards

Regards

The size matters and the 7040 comes in Tower all the way to Micro.

NVME PCI-E is likely what they use.  Sata might be a problem.

http://topics-cdn.dell.com/pdf/optiplex-7040-desktop_owners-manual_en-us.pdf

https://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/19/sln306629/optiplex-3050-support-for-pcie-m-2-ssd-hard-drives?lang=en

https://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/04/sln308295/m-2-nvme-device-specifications-and-upgrade-requirements-for-precision-optiplex-latitude-and-xps-systems?lang=en

When installing an M.2 SSD hard drive in the OptiPlex 3050, the drive must use the PCIe bus instead of SATA. The following image (Figure 1) provides a visual reference for the two formats:

Same issue i have dell optiplex 7040 sff

Guide me which Ssd can i buy for best performance

M keyed only PCI-E version will be the fastest.

Sata is 5X or more slower.

Sata is 5X or more slower?

raw speed, not through put, read real bench marks to see truth.

Artificial benchmarks are not "real" they are ways of testing.

600 Meg Sata 3 is never going to be as fast as 3D XPoint aka PCI-E NVME 3000 meg NVME

https://ssd.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Samsung-960-Pro-NVMe-PCIe-M2-512GB-vs-Intel-905P-Optane-NVMe-PCIe-960GB/m182182vsm498903

It DOES boot in seconds but it DOES NOT make your machine many times faster for most things.

My reason for using SSD's is mostly for durability from dropping in laptops.   Long term storage is still Hard Drives for my data.

It's hard for me to believe that an SSD works faster for boot times, then slows down to HDD speeds for everything else.

Respectfully, bradthetechnut

"SSD works faster for boot times, then slows down to HDD speeds for everything else"

This is NOT what I'm saying.

The "SPEED" issue is the same as adding faster RAM to your PC.

XMP ram DOES NOT allow your system to overclock or run faster if your BIOS and CPU do not support overclocking.

SSD's do make your laptop more durable and less prone to dying if you drop it.  They do not make your machine faster for most games for example.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUGt0M6YhsU

Sata SSD's are slower than PCI-E SSD's and always will be.  The issue is that when you use your hard drive its not getting the data from the drive all the time.  Once the OS is booted or the program is loaded into ram there is not a lot of drive access.  Because of this Applications like games DO NOT GET many more FPS aka it is faster but its hard for your eyes to see much more than 30FPS.  Things are faster but not 10 to 20 times faster for rendering video etc.   Game performance is more tied to GPU rather than CPU because that is what is churning the visual data.

This is also why people are fooled by the Mhz Myth.

2.5 vs 3.0 vs 4.0 Ghz is faster but not 100 percent or more faster.

2 cores vs 4 cores vs 6 cores vs 20 cores can help but only if the software uses them. 4 cores is not 300 percent faster.  Each core adds a bit like 6 percent then 3.5 percent then 1.7 percent and so on.  Its measureable but not orders of magnitude faster.

hi. sorry to interfere here. Are you using an ssd nvme in the end?   i am in the same situation optiplex 7040 SFF, bought a kingston a2000 nvme and even in BIOS doesn't show.

Fresh installed windows 10, new bios 1.18.1 , installed driver Intel-Rapid-Storage-Technology-Driver-and-Management_2PMT8_WIN_16.8.3.1004_A06 and still doesn't show.

i am angry, desperate and feel also stupid...

what can i do anymore...?

Here's another great site for comparing Dell configurations to others and other years of same model.

https://www.hardware-corner.net/compare/

Jen