NVMe

Can someone provide a list of motherboards that supports the boot function of the SSD added card?

preproman wrote: Can someone provide a list of motherboards that supports the boot function of the SSD added card? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820167300

I wish I had that list in my back pocket.

You are asking about the Intel 750 series of NVMe SSDs. Add In Cards (AIC) can also be adapter cards for use with M.2 SSDs, as Dan said. AIC adapters can also be used with PCIe AHCI SSDs.

Since you asked about a specific type of AIC PCIe SSD, the NVMe type, I will talk about those only.

The main thing a mother board needs to support booting an OS from PCIe NVMe SSD is support for NVMe SSDs in the UEFI/BIOS.

That assumes that nothing different is done with the PCIe slot lane connections in newer mother boards, compared to older boards. I do not know if anything has been changed about the PCIe lane connections. I do not think there are any differences, but IF there was, older boards (five or more years old) would not be bootable from an Intel 750

Due to that possibility, and other reasons, only newer mother boards should be considered for use with AIC PCIe NVMe SSDs (Attack of the acronyms ) as the OS drive.

Looking at Intel boards, the models that will most likely have support for booting Windows from these SSDs would be the ASRock Z170, Z97, and X99 boards. But how do we confirm that?

There are three ways to do that, the first one being the best method of confirming a board can boot an OS from a PCIe NVMe SSD. All of these methods use the ASRock product page for each of their mother boards to find the information:

1. In the Specifications page, in the Slots and/or Storage sections, look for this: *Supports NVMe SSD as boot disks.
2. In the Storage Support List page, locate the PCIe SSD you want to use. NOTE: That list may not be up to date. For example, the Samsung SM951 and 950 Pro NVMe SSDs are not listed in my Z170 Extreme7+ board's Storage Support List. I know they both may be used as the OS drive.
3. In the Download section, BIOS Download page, check the Description column for Add NVME support. This method is the one to use for boards that are older than the latest models/chipset currently available. For example, my Z97 Extreme6 board only has the Add NVME support information available. The latest Intel chipset is the 100 series, so the Intel 9 series chipset is not the latest and is slightly older.