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30% off Selected SilverStone Accessories (ECM24-ARGB M.2 NVMe SSD to PCIe Card $34.30) + Delivery ($0 VIC C&C) @ Centre Com

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SILVER30

Centre Com are having 30% off selected SilverStone accessories with the coupon SILVER30 and I've scraped together a list below that should include every product in the sale. Products included in the promotion will have the coupon listed above the price.

The ECM24-ARGB listed in the title is a good deal as this PCI Express card allows you to add an M.2 SSD to your PC. Great if you currently don't have an M.2 slot or need to add an extra one. It comes with a heatsink and has ARGB lights on top, but if you're not a fan of RGB there's a model without it here. There's also an in depth review here.

The Silverstone 140mm and 120mm ultra fine magnetic fan filters are worth a mention too as they're are excellent for reducing dust in your PC if you have a case without filters.


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  • Just for future reference a NVMe slot is pretty much the same as a PCIe slot in another form factor right? So there should be no performance drop with these adapters?

    • +1

      Pretty much.

    • +6

      Yes, so long as your motherboard (and CPU) can provide a PCIe 3.0 x4 slot, the NVMe drive will run at full speed (just don't buy the newer PCIe 4.0 drives).

      If you had a really old setup, like a P8-Z68 motherboard coupled with an i5 2500K CPU, then the NVMe drive would only run at half speed; because even though the motherboard has PCIe 3.0 support, the 2500K only supports PCIe 2.0.

      • +3

        But you most likely would not be able to use it as a boot drive on a system that old from my understanding ???

        • +3

          Correct - but some old boards got BIOS updates with specific NVMe support, so check the release notes if yours is one of these šŸ‘ You might get lucky.

        • +4

          Some of the older bios you could insert the NVME boot instructions into the BIOS.

          Have done it on a Gigabyte Z77. But this could easily brick your motherboard and end up requiring an external programmer.

          https://www.win-raid.com/t871f50-HowTo-Get-full-NVMe-supportā€¦

          • @Ragnarok1983: PLEASE anyone considering using the NVME adapters on a Z77 READ THIS POST. I did exactly what you folks are proposing, I purchased the NVMe PCI adaptor, popped it in and initially seemed fine, excellent speeds as a secondary drive.. Getting confident I cloned the C to the new NVME drive and attempted to set it up as a boot drive in the bios. But now my Gigabyte Z77 UD5 is permanently bricked. Problem started when I attempt to swap over to boot off the NVMe, corrupted primary bios, then secondary and now its permanently dead. Tried everything I can think of, bioses are actually restored but the mainboard is still bricked something permanently corrupted.

            Couple of things I learnt in this expensive lesson
            1) Z77 bioses were never built to run the code for NVMe boot disks (Z77's came out when the older near useless M2s were around). I'd been mistakenly lead to think the latest bios might have it but unfortunately didn't. Gigabyte is well know for dodgy bioses that don't recover well so that's on me for thinking it might work.

            2) With the older boards if you install these adapters they ultimately pull bandwidth from the graphics card. e.g. my board and most of the "replacement" boards I've been hunting for on ebay to replace my dead board will half the graphics card PCI bandwidth when installing a PCI NVMe card (4x is what I went with) Exactly what impact this has on actual game play (e.g. does the graphic card actually need the full bandwidth).. I was not able to test as my machine is dead now.

            Such a shame, in theory a NVMe boot drive would have been an excellent upgrade to an old machine, getting around the limits of SSDs using the SATA interface but you want to balance that with what I just did.. bricking your board. :(

            Anyway.. keeping an eye on anyone that's been successful as I need to replace the Gigabyte Z77 UD5 WIFI so if anyone is successful getting an NVME to boot on this series let us know your board. Also any that are not getting a graphics card speed reduction as a result.

            • -1

              @paulojr: a few false information I'd like to point out:

              1, it MAY or MAY NOT pull bandwidth from GPU slot, and is depending on your motherboard.

              All motherboard in the last 10 years or so have similar designs, there will be 16x lanes of PCIe bandwidth coming directly from CPU to the first x16 PCIe slot (aka GPU slot), this is to allow CPU talk to GPU directly, because the PCIe lanes communicating to CPU is so valuable (less latency, better compatibility, higher prioritization etc.), some motherboard build a PCIe switches to split half of the 16x to the second PCIe slot (your board does this), some other board will simply wire the 2nd PCIe slot from South Bridge(which is much cheaper because no PCIe switches required and much easier wiring), so your 16x GPU slot will left intact.

              2, 99% of GPU won't have meaningful performance differences using either PCIe3.0 x8 or x16. I don't see why you need to care so much about half PCIe bandwidth, RTX 2080ti, which was the best card using PCIe 3.0, have less than 5% performance difference using x8 than x16.

              3, You have a 10 year old ish board, you can't really tell if your NVMe SSD kills it, or its capacitor just had it, high tier motherboards usually use 10k hr rated capacitor, if it had a hard life, it can break at any time.(Plus installing PCIe card kinda flex the 10 year old glass fibric PCB and can cause Copper layers to break)

              4, I have modded BIOS for my ASUS P8Z77-M PRO, it will support boot via PCIe NVMe as well as PCIe AHCI, I've even installed Windows 10 to my Macbook Pro's SSD mounted to a PCIe adapter and plugged into this mobo, it's still running now as my secondary PC, with delid 3770k @4.5Ghz, 32G RAM@1866, RX470 4G, and few SSDs with both windows 10 and Hackintosh Big Sur.

        • I used a hacked BIOS to enable NVMe boot support on that exact same hardware configuration. I, too, was surprised that it was possible.

          It required a lot of mucking around in the BIOS options just to get Windows 10 to recognize and install onto the drive, but I did manage to get it to boot from it in the end.

        • I hacked an asrock z68 extreme 4 running a 2600k, and the nvme works great as a boot drive. The CPU still has a 1+GHz overclock after 10 years

      • +1

        Ayeee that's my build šŸ„²

        2500K @ 4.9GHz still running strong

        • +1

          I couldn't believe that only the 2600K supported PCIe 3.0.

          My 1060 GPU had been getting throttled by PCIe 2.0 for years!

          • @Heero: Oh no!! I'm still running a 120GB SSD alongside a 1TB HDD so no throttling here…

            Jk, my 2500K is paired with a 5600XT so there's definitely a bit of throttling lmao

            But tbh this isn't my main Windows device which is why I haven't upgraded my 2500K hahaha

            I got a 4800HS + 1660Ti on my laptop and that's beefy enough for EVERYTHING + really convenient due to the portability of a laptop

          • +1

            @Heero: You sure the 2600k supports pcie 3.0? I thought only Ivy bridge series started supporting 3.0…

            • @Munki: Yes, you're right. My mind is playing tricks on me again!

          • @Heero: is there any noticable throttling ? I use i5-2400 with a 1060 3GB at PCIe 2.0
            going to use similar M.2 adapter on a 1x slot, don't know what will happen :D

            • +1

              @bazingaa: Better question is probably will it even run (or fit) in a 1x slot.

              And yes there likely will be heavy bottlenecking.

              • @wwwsam: I got a Firecuda 510 from a recent deal (planning to use in next build as a OS drive) and going to use PCIe 1x adapter from AliExpress
                It will hopefully run at 500 MBps as a secondary storage with Q67 :D

                I also got a SN550 with an USB 3.1 Gen 2 enclosure, I get whopping 27 MBps with this PC as it only has USB 2.0

  • How much performance do you lose using a PCIe card with an m.2 on it compared to straight m.2 slot?

    • Not a significant difference. If you have a PCIe 4.0 M.2 slot in your motherboard then that'll obviously be faster.

    • +1

      Negligible provided they running the same protocol. Ie. Pcie gen4 etc.

  • +5

    As an old school builder I love these accessories extending the life of your old PCs. Thanks for the write up mate!

    • +2

      Keep in mind that some older motherboards will require a BIOS update before allowing you to boot from an NVMe drive, and not all motherboards will have such a BIOS update officially available, in which case, you will need to find a custom "hacked" BIOS instead. You will, however, be able to access the NVMe drive upon loading into Windows 10.

      • Great point. I have a z77 motherboard with a 3770k and fortunately found a hacked BIOS so I can boot directly from the NVMe drive in the pcie card.

        • Hi, where would you find that?I have a z77 mobo also and is it difficult to do?thanks in advance.

  • -5

    Does this code work with PSUs as well?

  • Picked up the NVME heatsyncs before VIC lockdown, they are quite good!

  • +3

    Please factor a surcharge when purchasing with CC or PayPal. For small purchases may be minimal however larger is worth comparing with other retailers that may be slightly expensive without surcharge which may holistically be cheaper.

  • Can old motherboard boot from this? I suspect it can't :/

    • Generally not - but it can boot from a SATA SSD, you don't need one of these adaptors unless you have a specific NVMe requirement (like you already have a drive, or you're completely out of SATA ports).

      • I hear you but Sata ssd are much slower and if you want to upgrade, you likely will prefer a nvme ssd.

        • They're only slightly slower for real world use - for example https://www.techspot.com/review/2116-storage-speed-game-loadā€¦ - most games load in almost the same time from a SATA SSD vs an NVMe SSD

          Unless you're copying large files from A to B regularly, you won't notice much difference between a modern SATA SSD and an NVMe SSD.

          • @Nom: Don't forget directstorage coming soon?

            • @ValouSydney: Yeah, we don't really know how DirectStorage is going to work out (no games use it yet) and by the time you do actually need it, these legacy machines are going to be seriously old šŸ˜

        • +1

          If you have an older motherboard that's old enough to not natively support booting from NVMe, chances are you wont be able to leverage the extra speed NVMe has over SATA anyways due to other hardware bottlenecks…

          If you really want to, you should use SATA SSD as your boot drive and NVMe SSD as your everything else drive.

    • +1

      How old is old? you can modify UEFI based bios to get NVME support.

      https://www.win-raid.com/t871f50-HowTo-Get-full-NVMe-supportā€¦

      • Time to upgrade old haha 2600k+asus maximus iv gene z. Remarquably still powerful enough to play AA games coupled with a good rtx graphic cards!

        • You should be able to hack nvme support into that BIOS I reckon

  • +1

    Thanks, grabbed a couple of things.

  • what is the purpose of the cable. Do you need that for m.2 nvme?

    • ARGB cable so you can plug it into your motherboard's ARGB header or controller to control the lights.

      • +2

        Thank you!! don't need that.

        • +2

          Grab the cheaper one without ARGB.

  • Would this work with DirectStorage?

  • A really noob question coming…
    Currently using x570 Asus tif mobo.

    If I plug this in (for a third nvme), will I lose any speeds to my two existing nvme? Considering reshuffling for a gen 4..
    Would love some helpful insight. Happy Sunday

    • +1

      You could potentially lose some speed to your second NVMe drive, but it wouldn't really be noticeable.

      Because the second M.2 slot and second PCIe x16 slot both connect through the chipset (and not directly to the CPU), if you were to copy a large file between those two drives then the chipset would be switching back and forth between them (along with any other devices, i.e. onboard network / USB / etc). The switching happens so fast that you probably wouldn't be able to detect a speed deficit without monitoring tools.

      • Yes thank you for confirming. That's what I read through some forums too. For my use I probably won't notice the detriment. I'd like to upgrade gen4 as my initial was faulty and couldn't be bothered waiting…so ideally one gen 4 and second bang for buck nvme. Then this adapter.

  • -2

    Will this work with ps5

  • I want to buy an NVMe SSD, but I've got an old GA-P67A-UD3-B3 mobo, which extension card should I purchase?

    • why would you want to waste money on an NWMe SSD for something so ancient, it doesn't even have a PCIE 3 slot.

      • It should still work but at a reduced bandwidth.

        Like I mentioned before, you'll run into hardware bottlenecks long before you get any good gains from NVMe.
        So unless you've maxed out your SATA ports, its not really worth while to go NVMe on such old hardware.

        • No worries, thanks for advice.

        • This šŸ‘

  • +1

    Just a heads up everyone,

    For some reason the link to the PCI-e M.2 card WITHOUT the ARGB feature isn't working, it defaults to the ARGB model..

    Please find a different link to it here: https://www.centrecom.com.au/silverstone-m2-nvme-ssd-ngff-toā€¦

  • Got the ECS04 RAID Controller for $176.39 delivered. Excellent price for something i've never seen drop lower than $249.

    • Do you actually need that specific card ? You can easily pickup 8 port SAS cards from eBay for $50, both low profile and full height, if any old controller will do šŸ‘

      • +1

        Probably not, but I wanted to make sure it was brand named with an easy manufacturer warranty process. Needed 6gbps, PCI-E Gen 3.0 x8 and RAID10 support, it ticked all those boxes and I have a lot of silverstone stuff in my chassis already, so I thought why not.

        • I did the same, I checked cheaper ebay ones and they all seemed lesser spec'd. Whether or not I'd max them out, I'm not sure. All branded cards seemed to cost more than this after discount so I pulled trigger. It's one of those things you want to have for a project but never end up buying. Discount sealed the deal finally and I can start looking at my file server again.

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