Solved NVMe drive Question

Winuser said:

Yes it does fit. It's just not recognized.

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Even after initializing it ?
Did you check the BIOS?

The beelink u59 mini-pc does have an m.2 connector, but as you found out, they only communicate using the SATA protocol rather than the PCI-E protocol. Thus, an M.2 Sata based M.2 ssd will be required. A PCI-E based M.2 NVMe drive will NOT be able to communicate over the physical port in this computer. (Note: Some computers have physical ports that can speak both NVMe and SATA, but the beelink U59 is not one of them).

This video does a good job explaining the differences between the protocols allowed over the M.2 interface.

pparks1 said:

The beelink u59 mini-pc does have an m.2 connector, but as you found out, they only communicate using the SATA protocol rather than the PCI-E protocol. Thus, an M.2 Sata based M.2 ssd will be required. A PCI-E based M.2 NVMe drive will NOT be able to communicate over the physical port in this computer. (Note: Some computers have physical ports that can speak both NVMe and SATA, but the beelink U59 is not one of them).

(snip)

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I'm having trouble believing that the mini PC has a slot with an M key (only), but cannot use an NVME drive.

The M key is specified for PCI-E X4. I admit that I can't find that it's specific to NVME. (I believe that all NVME drives are PCI-E, but not all PCI-E drives are NVME. Non-NVME PCI-E drives are getting to be quite scacce, though.)

The M key is specified for PCI-E X4

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Not necessarily.

bobkn said:

I'm having trouble believing that the mini PC has a slot with an M key (only), but cannot use an NVME drive.

The M key is specified for PCI-E X4. I admit that I can't find that it's specific to NVME. (I believe that all NVME drives are PCI-E, but not all PCI-E drives are NVME. Non-NVME PCI-E drives are getting to be quite scacce, though.)

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The M key provides support for PCIe x4, as well as SATAA and SMBus

Whether or not it's physically hard wired connected to a Pci-e controller or just a sata controller interface i what dictates which protocol it supports. The Beelink u59 is not connected to the Pci-E controller, thus an NVMe drive will not work.

I see that the U59 shipped only with a SATA M.2 drive.

If it cannot use a PCI-E drive, it ought to come with a B key (or M+B). Not just an M key. But maybe they didn't follow industry standards.

As I've already posted, my #2 system has a M keyed slot which accepts both PCI-E and SATA drives. An M.2 slot with an M key (only) may not be limited to only PCI-E drives (like my #1 system), but I wouldn't expect it to be SATA only.

I'd be a little more accepting the SATA-only thing about the U59 if I could find a manufacturer's spec that the box cannot use an NVME drive, but I was unable to find one.

I promise I'll make no further posts in this thread.

Flashorn said:

Even after initializing it ?
Did you check the BIOS?

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I thought I answered this earlier today when I was at work but the cell signal is terrible so if my reply shows up twice that's why. I decided not to try it again in the Mini PC and just use it as a USB drive. I was going to wait until I got paid again from my part time job but I found this on Amazon last night and couldn't resist. It's not the greatest and I never heard of the company but for what I use the PC for I don't think it will matters much. There was another one for $20.00 but this one had a few more users rating it. Supposed to be here between 5:00 - 8:00 tonight. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BF8QT2DX?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details

I want to thank everyone again that responded to my post.. When I asked my question I was only expecting yes, no, or maybe answers. Instead I got a good education on M.2 drives.

bobkn said:

I'm having trouble believing that the mini PC has a slot with an M key (only), but cannot use an NVME drive.

The M key is specified for PCI-E X4. I admit that I can't find that it's specific to NVME. (I believe that all NVME drives are PCI-E, but not all PCI-E drives are NVME. Non-NVME PCI-E drives are getting to be quite scacce, though.)

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Looking at the pics it looks like the drive is B + M and the PC is M. I ordered a 512 GB SATA drive from Amazon and it should be here any time. It was only $26.99 plus tax.

pparks1 said:

This video does a good job explaining the differences between the protocols allowed over the M.2 interface.

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It's not a bad video by far, but technically, M.2 is the standard that defines the various connector types of the sockets plus the various form factor specifications of the modules whereas the interface that M.2 uses either is SATA or is PCIe, and, the protocol that M.2 SATA uses is AHCI whereas the protocol that M.2 PCIe uses is NVMe. When things may get a little bit more complicated is when you also factor in that motherboards and PCIe expansion cards can (potentially) use one or more PCIe switch components to divide the PCie lanes that it may occupy from the host (upstream) up into additional PCIe lanes to connect multiple devices (downstream) with what is known as PCIe bifurcation.

Good point. Even I was mistakenly calling SATA the protocol, when it is not.

I installed the M.2 SATA drive in the Mini PC and Windows 11 Pro installed without a problem. I'll finish setting it up later. My wife and I are going to a NAMI meeting tonight so I don't have the time to finish.

Winuser said:

I installed the M.2 SATA drive in the Mini PC and Windows 11 Pro installed without a problem. I'll finish setting it up later. My wife and I are going to a NAMI meeting tonight so I don't have the time to finish.

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That's good news. Let us know how it works out.
I'm curious to see if the drive is as good as the
one that was there before.

I installed all of the missing Beelink drivers. The Mini PC is now in the proccess of installing all of the updates from MS.

As with the 2.5 in form factor, they are not all the same. Very cheap ones might lack dram.

I can't tell the difference in practice between an old crucial mx300 2.5 in and newer and supposedly faster 2.5 in ssds. However, the old mx300 has dram.

SIW2 said:

I can't tell the difference in practice between an old crucial mx300 2.5 in and newer and supposedly faster 2.5 in ssds

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Wouldn't there be a difference in boot times and games loading ?

Flashorn said:

Wouldn't there be a difference in boot times and games loading ?

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Unlikely to really be noticed. I built my newest desktop 2.5 years ago, and did a WD SN850 2TB NVMe (at the time was $450). When i started putting gams on it, i realized I would run out of space and didn't want to pony up another $350+ on another PCI-e Gen 4 drive, so i bought a 2TB Sandisk SATA SSD. My NVMe benches around 7,000MB/sec, while the Sandisk is only 520MB/sec. I tested Call of Duty on the NVMe and then moved it over to the SATA drive. By pure numbers, the NVMe is over 13x faster. But my stop watch timed tests showed like 11.3 seconds to complete on the NVMe and 12.5 on the SATA SSD. Obviously it is faster, but not really what I would call a meaningful improvement. So, all of my games are now moved to that SATA SSD, and my super fast NVMe can be used for VM's and such (which benefit far more from the faster speeds).

Still wanna get anothor NVMe now that prices have come down. I can get a 4TB SN 850x now for $279, which is almost 1/2 of what I paid for that original 2TB drive.

To be fair, one game is not an accurate benchmark by any means.

And to be even more fair, different games load (and pre-load) different amounts of files from different locations.

If the files it needs to pre-load are in, say, your \Users\ directory, which I suspect is on your much faster NVMe, then your benchmark is moot.

I didn't go for as much storage in a single drive, but rather across multiple drives, so when I built my machine just over 3 years ago, I went with 3x 1 TB NVMe (Sabrent Rocket 4 - PCIe 4).

Last year, around February, I replaced them with 3x 2 TB NVMe (Samsung 980 Pro - PCIe4). But I bought enclosures for the original NVMe SSDs and now use them via USB Type-C, so I actually have 9 TB on hand.

The day I decided to remove every other non-NVMe SSD in this system after building it was the best day of my life. The 3 in enclosures now are definitely 'slower' as I only have 3.1 @ 10 Gbps speeds available, and transfers are not as fast as between the internal drives - but they still are faster than internal SATA III SSD drives.

johnlgalt said:

To be fair, one game is not an accurate benchmark by any means.

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Agreed. For me it was a handful of games, i only used the one as an example. But I think the point still remains that i don't think somebody is going to see a whole lot of different from on Sata SSD and a slightly newer model with a smidge better read/write performance.

There are some games that I have heard with mods and such that take 10-15 minutes to load from a standard hard drive and drive performance does make a huge difference. If you have a game like that, you probably know it, and know from research that it requires something special. This I would think is the exception rather than the rule.

johnlgalt said:

I didn't go for as much storage in a single drive, but rather across multiple drives, so when I built my machine just over 3 years ago, I went with 3x 1 TB NVMe (Sabrent Rocket 4 - PCIe 4).

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Yeah, I have 2 M.2 slots in my mobo. i opted for the larger capacity at the time (2TB, but was about $450) at the time. I knew I would ultimately want more storage, (but not at that price) so I was saving that extra M.2 slot for a time when the price on another SN850 was cheaper. They are like $119 now for the SN850x 2TB. Unsure if I will get another 2TB or just wait for the 4TB to go down just a bit more. I'm not out of space by any means, so I haven't pulled the trigger yet.

johnlgalt said:

Last year, around February, I replaced them with 3x 2 TB NVMe (Samsung 980 Pro - PCIe4). But I bought enclosures for the original NVMe SSDs and now use them via USB Type-C, so I actually have 9 TB on hand.

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A while back I bought a crucial 1TB NVme for like $79 and put it into a $20 10 Gbps enclosure. For $100, it's been a great little portable drive that via USB-c r USB A 3.2 Gen 2, I get around 1,000MB/sec on.

On disk location of staging areas, swap, and temporary files will play a big factor as well. That's why what is loaded and where it is loaded from becomes a factor.

If the game puts all of its resources in the installation location, then installing it to a slower SSD will show, although still probably not as drastically slower than if comparing an SSD to a mechanical HDD. But if it makes use of things like the system-defined \temp directory, or \Users or even \Documents, unless those are moved to slower drives, it shouldn't affect loading performance all that much.

In the end, though, loading time is subjective to begin with, because there is initial loading, and there is in-game loading (cut-scenes, chapter / area loading, saved game loading), and more. All of those could potentially be a cause for concern depending upon setup.

I was rather naive in selecting the motherboard that I did, as when I was building mine, I decided having triple NVMe slots was mandatory, and that limited me to exactly 2 motherboards on the market at the time lol. In retrospect, my reasons for the mandate were flawed, but a side benefit is that I can install games to a completely different drive, and it is every bit as fast as my system drive, being the exact same model, so that actually ended up being a very tangible benefit to my previous stubbornness lol. The old drives now in enclosures are long-term storage, and I have 1 internal NVMe used for system (C:), one for the \Users tree (making use of this tutorial here by Kari) (D:), and the last for VMs and game installations (E:). Now, even when I clean install, I can point my game installers to the already installed games on E: and all that needs to be done is the system re-prepared with reg files and such for the game, the majority of the game is already there on E:, from Steam, XBox for Windows, EA, Battle Net, UBISoft, and more. It's a ton faster.

Like I said - completely unintended benefit - but benefit nonetheless.