What is the cheapest consumer MB with an m.2 slot to run Ubuntu?

[voidft_putchar]

I bought an Aorus Gen 4 NVME SSD for my college laptop and setup Ubuntu on it.

Now I have to return the laptop and I just realised that my old computer doesn't have an m.2 slot. It's an Asus P8Z77-M Pro with an i5-3470.

I want to be able to use my NVME SSD as my primary drive so I can continue developing without having to re-setup Ubuntu (which I've deeply configured to my liking).

I'm hoping that I only need to upgrade my motherboard and not the CPU and RAM too, because I don't have the budget for it.

Also, I saw that booting from a PCIe adapter is not possible on the Z77 chipset, so that's not an option.

 

[Ageless_ZA]

You can't boot from NVMe via any adaptor on that platform. Best bet would be to get a USB NVMe dock/enclosure, and clone said NVME to a 2.5" SATA SSD then boot from that.

 

[voidft_putchar]

You can't boot from NVMe via any adaptor on that platform. Best bet would be to get a USB NVMe dock/enclosure, and clone said NVME to a 2.5" SATA SSD then boot from that.

Darn it, lol. I guess I'll just save up and get a full MB, CPU and RAM combo then.

From which generation did motherboards start having m.2 slots or start supporting NVMe?

 

[Ageless_ZA]

Then sell said NVMe on here for cost recuperation

 

[voidft_putchar]

Then sell said NVMe on here for cost recuperation

I'd rather buy the combo on here, lol.

 

[Ageless_ZA]

Darn it, lol. I guess I'll just save up and get a full MB, CPU and RAM combo then.

From which generation did motherboards start having m.2 slots or start supporting NVMe?

Z170/x99 era

You'd be better off going AMD B/X5xx to get the gen4 speed

 

[AresFaithfull]

Treat yourself and buy the combo deal i have up right now xD.

You could probably do an A320 board with any Ryzen AM4 and DDR4 RAM. Would be the absolute cheapest option, but as Ageless says the B550 will take advantage of all the drive's offerings.

 

[voidft_putchar]

Treat yourself and buy the combo deal i have up right now xD.

You could probably do an A320 board with any Ryzen AM4 and DDR4 RAM. Would be the absolute cheapest option, but as Ageless says the B550 will take advantage of all the drive's offerings.

The combo for 12k? Maybe next Christmas, lol.

I am planning to upgrade properly next year when I get a decent junior dev job. Right now, my max budget is 4k, maybe 5k by the end of Jan.

I don't even care about the Gen4 speeds. I just bought that SSD because it was cheap (R750, brand new, if I remember correctly).

 

[AresFaithfull]

https://carbonite.co.za/index.php?threads/gigabyte-x570-gaming-x-16gig-ddr4-3000-gskill-ram-amd-ryzen-3-2200g-cpu.510423/

probably the cheapest you'll find here but since you in CT remember Face to face and see that it works for this one.

TBH definetly not the best CPU but it is what you kinda looking for

 

[HarryPlopper]

Darn it, lol. I guess I'll just save up and get a full MB, CPU and RAM combo then.

From which generation did motherboards start having m.2 slots or start supporting NVMe?

I have an ASRock Z87 Extreme6 motherboard, with a Samsung 960 EVO 250 GB NVME drive in a Vantec NVME adapter. It is running the latest 2.90 beta BIOS (support for NVME was added in 2.72 beta). So I guess it's possible in at least Z87 chipsets and upwards, as long as the manufacturer has a BIOS that supports NVME.