https://delightlylinux.wordpress.com...en-using-nvme/

Simply put /boot on a standard bootable drive, and put / and /home on the nvme fast drive.

Someday, if I still have these older sata III mb's and want to upgrade to ssd, I will now jump to nvme and use an add on pci-e card that plugs into the pci-e 4x slot.

My board is pci-e version 2.0, but a version pci-e version 3.0 card will work.

Any thoughts about this?

https://delightlylinux.wordpress.com...-does-it-work/

That's been a workaround for a lot of non-directly bootable drives for...years. Yes, it's nice.

My 1 comment in your usage case is if you have pci-e 2.0 only, then you're not getting any additional performance purchasing a NVME drive than you would in purchasing a significantly cheaper SATA SSD of the same size, since your performance of the NVME will be limited by the pci-e available bandwidth.

I read it is still faster than using the sata subsystem, it will run at pcie x4 version 2.0 speeds.
NVME drives on Amazon looked very competitively priced.
And is more future proofing technology, meaning if the MB gets changed, the drive is more useful than a sata ssd.

SATA max bandwidth is ~500 mbps.
pci-e 2.0 max bandwidth is ~500 mbps. Sure, an x4 will quadruple that (give or take), but the real world change isn't that drastic. Also depends on the disk you're using.

I plan on switching to NVME when they come down, but I recently purchased a 850 EVO 1 TB m.2 SATA for less than the 256 GB m.2 NVME 950 EVO was available to replace the 256 NVME that came in my laptop. In benchmarks (emphasize benchmarks) the performance of the original and replacement drive is very similar, and real life "feel" they're identical. Now could I have gotten a 1 TB NVME drive (which currently costs almost as much as the laptop & the 850 EVO costs combined), that would blow the SATA drive out of the water in benchmarks, but I'm not sure if it would still provide a "feel" difference.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5992792

For x1 yes, but for x4 pcie version 2.0 is 4 times that so then 2GB/s max speed.

I do believe the add on pcie nvme cards need a 4x slot.

PCIe Bandwidth Comparison (Each Direction)
PCIe 1.x PCIe 2.x PCIe 3.0
x1 250MB/sec 500MB/sec 1GB/sec
x2 500MB/sec 1GB/sec 2GB/sec
x4 1GB/sec 2GB/sec 4GB/sec
x8 2GB/sec 4GB/sec 8GB/sec
x16 4GB/sec 8GB/sec 16GB/sec

Yeah, I was editing, hadn't seen you posted the 4x...

AS long as you're happy with it, then it's great. But I can't justify the price for the miniscule "feel" advantage. spinning rust > SSD is a HUGE feel improvement. SATA > NVME is a huge cost for a benchmark advantage and no "feel" advantage from my experience.

It is definitely going to be an improvement, I read people were seeing 1500MB/sec using NVME with the add on cards using the pcie x4 slots version 2 motherboards.
Plus how many MBs you go through over the years. Definitely not going to have that older MB forever.

Well, actually I've had my current MB for 8 years. 4 CPU's, 3 GPU's, 2 HDD's, 1 SSD, 2 sound cards (onboard died about 3 years ago), 3 optical drives...

I am on my 3rd motherboard in that time frame. My last MB, a 775 system, the Asus P5QC, one day refused to post anymore.
Right now using an MSI 7596 with AM3+ fx6300 cpu. Been a good MB

I need to get a new system. This one I fear isn't far from it's final boot. But I just don't want to build another machine and new Ryzen 7 systems (not going Intel) aren't cheap!!