B250M PRO-VDH M.2 SSD compatibility

[Silmatharien]

I am looking at building a system using this board: MSI B250M PRO-VDH. In the specs, it says it has an M.2 port that supports "up to PCIe 3.0 x4 and SATA 6Gb/s with an M key."

Does this mean that I can plug in any M keyed M.2 SSD that communicates via either PCIe 3.0 x 4 (I think this is the same as NVMe) or SATA?

 

[sonyman]

Almost, but not quite. That motherboard's specs indicate it supports M.2 lengths 2242, 2260, 2280, so you can use either a SATA or NVME (PCI-E) M.2 drive which is M keyed and is one of those lengths.

I stumbled across this page when looking for more information which appears to be a good overview on the subject: https://rog.asus.com/articles/maximus-motherboards/buying-an-m-2-ssd-how-to-tell-which-is-which/