NVME PCIe x16 Adapter, ELECTOP M.2 Key-M SSD to PCI 3.0 Express Expansion Card, Support 2230/2242/2260/2280 with Heat Sink, Compatible with Windows XP / 7/8 / 10 & MAC OS System

Just to give a little background info, I built my PC in 2015, I am running a Intel i7-4790K OC to 4.6 GHz with Cooler Master Hyper Evo 212, ASUS Z97-AR mobo, 32 GB G.Skill ARES DDR3-2400MHz RAM(11-13-13-31), 250GB Samsung Evo 850 SSD, and EVGA Nvidia GeForce GTX 960 SSC 2GB. So my build isnt exactly the newest, but still holds its own in all departments outside the GPU.I decided I wanted to upgrade some of the parts of my PC that wouldnt be a huge investment, and that would also be able to be brought over to a new build when I decide to do that in the next couple years.The first upgrade was a 500GB Western Digital SN750 w/ Heatsink NVMe SSD. I was able to snag the 500GB WD SN750 with Heatsink for $90 which in my opinion is quite the steal, considering NVMe’s run hot, I was quite happy to take advantage of the sale and spend more then originally planned(250gb, no heatsink) to get the 500gb heatsink model. Because of this, I DID NOT USE the heatsink that came as part of this kit. Because of this I cannot speak to this products ability to stay cool utilizing the included thermal pads and heatsink, but it does seem to be decent quality(nothing amazing, and certainly not as nice as the OEM heatsink by EKWB on my SN750). I will save that if I need it for any additional NVMe’s in future builds. I did this because my Samsung Evo SATA SSD was near full, as well as to get a faster and larger boot drive. The problem is, since I have a motherboard that is 5-6 years old, it predates NVMe SSD’s. Luckily, ASUS did a BIOS update that allowed NVMe to work on all Z97 and Z99 boards in 2016 in the onBoard M.2 slot. However, my built in M.2 slot only runs at PCIe 2.0 x2. This Add-on board allowed me to choose from running the WD SN750 at PCI 2.0 x8, in my 3rd PCIe x16 slot(the 3rd PCIe x16 slot on my motherboard is only PCIe 2.0), OR PCIe 3.0 x4 in the second PCIe x16 slot. While I was worried the impact using the 2nd PCIe 3.0 x16 slot would have on my GPU, and future GPU(next upgrade), I did some research and found that there is less then 1% impact on FPS in most use cases when gaming at 1440p or below running a GPU at x8. Because of this, I chose to utilize the second PCIe slot to get full speed.Please keep in mind, you WILL NOT be able to boot from this addon if your motherboard doesnt natively support an M.2 SSD. You MIGHT be able to use it for storage(do some research) but you WILL NOT be able to boot from it. I was lucky that ASUS was such an early adapter of M.2 and was able to send just a simple BIOS update to support NVMe. Also, if you have an ASUS Z97 or Z99, as I said all those boards got BIOS updates to support NVMe, but if you dont have an M.2 slot natively you STILL CANT BOOT FROM IT. If you do have a native M.2 slot, you WILL likely have to adjust some settings in your BIOS to boot from an NVMe. I had to adjust the CSM settings, as well as some others in ‘boot’ and ‘advanced’ in BIOS.To give you an idea of the speed improvement, my Samsung Evo 850 had a Seq Read speed of 530mb/s. Using the onboard M.2 slot, the WD SN750 clocked in at 830mb/s, still a big improvement and worthwhile of the upgrade considering I will also be able to use it on my next build. Finally, after getting this addon card to be able to use my 2nd PCIe 3.0 x16 slot, running at PCIe 3.0 x4 my NVMe is getting 3300mb/s speeds. I did not test the PCIe 2.0 x8 slot, but can imagine it would likely be in the ballpark of around 1800mb/s. Images attached, pic1 is now, pic2 is using onboard M.2 PCIe 2.0 x2, and pic3 is SATA SSD.I will keep this review updated if there are any issues with the addon, and to add the speed of the PCIe 2.0 x8 slot, im doing some fan maintenance and will be moving some things around so ill test it in the future.All in all, I would definitely recommend this product to anyone who had an extra PCIe 2.0 or 3.0 x16 slot that is not being used, especially if your mobo natively supports M.2 allowing you to boot from the addon card, AND doesnt run at PCIe 2.0 x8 or PCIe 3.0 x4 speeds. Great investment for the price, and I also like how this device is NOT an addon that takes an additional slot in the back of the case, it just sits inside the PC.One negative thing I will say, is that the addon card has some bright blue LED lights that will pulse on And off every few seconds. In my use case I hardly see it, but that could be a make or break for someone highly invested in the aesthetics of their build.I WILL KEEP THIS REVIEW UPDATED IF THERE ARE ANY ISSUES MOVING FORWARD.

This adapter has two main components, the circuit board that you attach your SSD to and also plug into your PCIe slot and the heatsink/case. The circuit board itself and the included hardware you use to mount your SSD to the board seem to be of good quality and work just fine, if that was the whole product I feel it deserves about 4.5 stars. If you use just that part and don't bother with the heatsink/case you should be good to go, but if you want that you'd probably be better off with one of the cheaper offerings that comes with just the board and hardware.The heatsink/case on the other hand has both design and build quality problems and the TL/DR is it should be rated 1.5 stars hence my overall 3 star rating. The directions (on this very product page) tell you to put the thermal pad between the SSD and the board. The problem with this is the heatsink/case only touches the surface board on a very small part of the edges of the board and thus will do a poor job transferring heat to the heatsink. Also, most SSD's only have components on one side and that is NOT the side that faces this circuit board. If you instead put the thermal pad on top of your SSD, it just barely makes contact with the inside of the heatsink (I checked by adding everything up with caliper measurements). Even when doing this, I found the SSD ran cooler without the heatsink/case and when I assembled it as directed, it ran hotter yet and throttled (slowed down to avoid overheating). The should fix this by including a bit thicker thermal pad and updating the directions to tell you to put it on top of your SSD. You could still use the thinner one between the SSD and the board if you have a SSD with components on both sides, but the majority of the heat comes from the controller which is always mounted on top and the back will have at most some flash chips which are less in need of cooling. Note that other very similar products here either include two pads (thinner going between SSD and card) or just one thicker pad that goes between the SSD and heatsink.The other problem with the heatsink/case is that the fit and finish is poor. The back/cover of the heatsink has indentations on one side that are meant to go over where the back of the screw that holds the SSD to the card goes to make sure there are no clearance issues. That is a good thing, but the holes at the corners of the cover that you use to screw it to the heatsink are not centered vertically, they are offset to one side. This means it will only go on one way (which is OK) but the problem is that when you put it on that way, the indentations only line up with one of the three possible mounting holes. Basically they drilled the holes with the cover in the wrong orientation. If they'd done it the other way, all three mounting holes would line up with all three indentations.Another fit and finish problem is that the two screws on the corners nearest the PCIe card slot connector are too short. One of them would only thread in one turn (and thus is weak and easy to strip) and the other one would not thread in at all with the card and cover in place. They both screw in fine without that but basically the screws are too short there and unfortunately that is the side that takes most of the strain when inserting or removing the card. The two screws at the top work fine because their holes are much closer to the cover and thus thread in around 5 turns or so and are thus much less likely to strip.I suggest just buying a bare card to use in a 16x slot instead of this product. I wanted a heatsink, but this one is worse than no heat sink at all unfortunately.

Super easy setup. Bought because I had an free 16x slot and no nvme slots on my mobo. The heat sink's probably overkill in my case because it's plugged in next to the video cards fans but it certainly looks good.