M.2. Please Just Standardize
Well, you can’t claim you were warned.
A few months rolled by, taking their toll on my tolerance for Christmases adorned in horizons of frigid and dour grey, and it was January 2015.
I had rigorously resisted any reckless “seasonal” investments” by virtue of a magnificent and reliable studio with which I was eminently satisfied. That and old age not to mention a growing terror of drastic change combined, with a stubborn disinterest in taking hours to heed supposedly educated technical teachings and learning of nothing save for the criminally confused state of technology. Notwithstanding all that, I felt that to voluntarily lose touch with trends would be to let my work ethic wander and ignore a mantra that expels life’s daemons, “Progress is Never Painless”.
Eventually, I summoned the courage to resurvey a range of topics covered throughout the short past, in agitated expectancy that a solitary applicable committee, corporation or manufacturer had striven to quell the bewildered customer’s grievous quandaries.
First up, NGFF, yet another superfluous abbreviation for this stupefying storage medium of which, after hours of scouring for the tiniest scrap of certainty, I was utterly sick.
As I write in the small hours of a silent, star lit January dawn, there is little worth adding to the last three pages. Some kind of informal open ended summary might prove constructive. How about a carefully coordinated table. One to casually fill in as M.2. morphs maddeningly into more manifestations than a chameleon with multiple creature syndrome stuck in a hall of mirrors, before descending into a devastating maelstrom of data curdling confusion and being indignantly usurped by something every bit conscious boffin agrees is “faster and generally better all round really”.
Since all my attempts to clarify led me to a vile vortex heaving with hexadecimal obscurity, you’ll have to consider the notes below to be strictly contextual and my humblest apologies to any kind visitors that have read or worse, acted upon subsequently erroneous assertions.
Some Rules of Thumb for the Thumb Sized.
In the precursory part of this procrastination I was curious to ascertain whether any readily obtainable expansion cards delivered a working environment for NGFF’s complete cast of subtle variants. M2 Sata, M.2 Pci-e 2.0 x2, M.2 PCI-E 2.0 x4 and the future revision, M.2 PCI-E 3.0 x4.
After embarking on an woeful wander across the web, I returned with no solution and a permanent squint, though a handful of forums along the way had unearthed many a morose storage hunter who harboured the same aggravated need for standardization.
Following the arrival of the z-97 and x99, a double helping of the crispiest chunkiest chips, fresh from the Intel’s formidable fryer, M.2 was no longer a lucky extra, mindful afterthought or a luxury limited to those with enough space and sovereigns for cumbersome pci appendages. It was an intrinsic element in both designs and showed all signs of long term tenancy amidst a motherboard’s solder.
The Z-97 was the Intel’s first silicone ensemble that permitted it’s licensees to integrate NGFF by default. If the M.2 socket used two PCI-E 2.0 lanes from the PCH (Southbridge) it could serve as dual purpose quarters for M.2 PCI-E and M.2 Sata moulded modules, but only if the manufacturer either chose, had the option or been considerate enough to configure it to communicate over both the PCI-E and Sata buses, as was the case Asrock’s aforementioned 990FX Killer and z97 Extreme 6.
The X99, in many of its rich and varied realisations, appeared to represent a concerted effort by licencees to economize on production by phasing out M.2 Sata altogether. In fairness, the majority might have acted on the assumption that any user opting to recruit the Haswell-E platform would be loathed to waive velocity for value, especially when presented with a greater quantity of conventional SATA ports than on many dedicated RAID controllers, coupled with the prospect of another PCI-E centric invention, SATA Express.
Bearing in mind such unfounded theories and the fruitlessness of my previous quests, I decided to focus on some of the latest marvels of maternal engineering and vowed to remorselessly investigate;
A: The veracity behind their founding vendors’ perpetual propaganda.
B: Whether any embodied this elusive skeleton socket.
The importance of B cannot be overstated and relates to any business with a turnover, no matter how modest or magnificent. False, misleading, irresponsible and exploitative, are are just four advertising methods frequently employed by emphatically praised promotional experts and avidly admired marketing departments, though in this context, such acclamation and reverence doesn’t originate from consumers, especially those pitifully clinging onto pathetic concepts like post sales support, or counting on kinder attention from a call centre than their own credit cards received on the day of purchase.
Instead, it comes at a grudge, from rival profiteers who then proceed to imitate and improvise on the treacherous tactics of these morally destitute role models, resulting in severe and cyclical collateral damage to their customer base. What on earth was that? A long winded and excessively hostile rant of questionable relevance? I suppose it could have been shorn of several syllables, but the portions of aggression and pertinence were as proper as Jeeves serving Bollinger to royalty. Let’s find out why.
When frequenting ornate on-line showcases of the modern computer’s most prolific component proponents, rabble rousing eulogies preaching a product’s radical features are as inevitable as their subsequent denouncement as “ground breaking” gimmickry.