IO Crest 2 Port M.2 to PCI-e x1 Adapter - Green, SI-PEX40115

worked cery well with my ssd M,2

I bought this card to use in my HP Microserver N54L as it was the only card I could find on the market that supports an M.2 SSD in a low profile PCI-E x1 slot. With the intention of upgrading to 10Gb network in the future, I needed the use of the x16 slot for a 10Gb network card while still retaining an SSD boot drive that didn't use one of the hard drive connections.Of course being PCI-E 1 lane, the maximum transfer speeds are greatly reduced from a 4 lane card and will also never run a single M.2 drive at full speed. I paired this up with a Crucial MX300 M.2 drive and using StableBit scanner, was getting a fairly consistent 285MB/sec burst speed which is still much faster than a 1Gb network connection could transfer (approx 110MB/sec).I had initially intented also installing my Plextor M6e SSD in the second port however the card did not see it even though it is the same standard as the Crucial drive. Perhaps seeing as the Plextor was one of the first M.2 drives to be produced it may be slightly different in operation to modern ones. I have ordered a second Crucial drive for the second port.One downfall I have noticed with this card is the mounts. It comes with 4 screws and 2 nuts to hold the M.2 drives in place however the screws are too short. On a single sided M.2 drive, they cause it to bend and on a double sided drive they are too short to reach the nuts. See photos for examples. I had to install my Plextor drive with it's own screw / nut from the x4 adapter card it used in order to (unsuccessfully) test it.The card also does have an activity light at the back but the rear brackets don't have a hole so that it can be seen. This isn't a big deal as it's at the back of the machine anyways.Other than that, it does what it says on the tin. Even being an x1 card, it is still vastly superior to a mechanical drive for booting the operating system (Windows Home Server 2011 in my case). Also being x1 AND having a low profile bracket makes it, from what I can see, the ONLY card out there than can be used in a HP Microserver N54L while still leaving the larger x16 slot for other upgrades. The modern Gen8 Microserver only has the x16 slot so if you want to use it for an SSD then you might as well get a x4 adapter card.

Works well, but difficult to fit a heatsink to the SSD's as the gap between two SSD's is too small for double sided SSD heatsinks.

Pasting my review of this that I somehow added to my review of the PEX40115. I see this is no longer available and has several less than ideal reviews. I have two these in different older Dell towers running Windows 10. For me, it was just plug-n-play - aside from me learning how to properly install the M.2's. Here's the original reviewSI-PEX40116 - bought this long ago and only today found a system to put it in. Other systems only had x1 slots available. At first it didn't work at all but that might have been a seating problem. I have 4 2TB SSD's on the card. Removed 2, started working. Added the other two back and carefully/firmly seated the card - now all 4 work. These don't seem to be available any more but just in case someone gets one and decides to fill all 4 slots, don't be dumb like me and think too hard about the mounts. There are no instructions and it did not dawn on me that ALL 8 of those tiny screws were needed. Two screws for each SSD. One to mount the spacer and the other to hold down the SSD.I had ended up using some longer screws to secure the SSD. Looking from the side it just didn't look nice and neat. I bought a spare recently and practiced some more on it when I realized if I used all 8 screws then it was super simple to mount all 4 SSD's neatly.

Been using two PEX40115's for 3 years now in different machines. Anticipate using the spare I bought in yet another machine so back here again to acquire another spare. Just realized I'd never left a rating/review. It's easy to forget to do that when things work so well right off the bat and then continue to work well for so long.My use: Perfect use of my sole remaining PCI-e x1 slot to add allot of M.2 SSD storage to an already small Dell tower that's not designed to hold allot of storage devices.Jan 2022SI-PEX40116 - bought this long ago and only today found a system to put it in. Other systems only had x1 slots available. At first it didn't work at all but that might have been a seating problem. I have 4 2TB SSD's on the card. Removed 2, started working. Added the other two back and carefully/firmly seated the card - now all 4 work. These don't seem to be available any more but just in case someone gets one and decides to fill all 4 slots, don't be dumb like me and think too hard about the mounts. There are no instructions and it did not dawn on me that ALL 8 of those tiny screws were needed. Two screws for each SSD. One to mount the spacer and the other to hold down the SSD.I had ended up using some longer screws to secure the SSD. Looking from the side it just didn't look nice and neat. I bought a spare recently and practiced some more on it when I realized if I used all 8 screws then it was super simple to mount all 4 SSD's neatly.

With the prices on M.2 NVMe chips falling through the floor, I want to add an M.2 NVMe chip to every computer I can.Unfortunately, only the newest motherboards have PCIe M.2 slots. I first tried using this board to install an M.2 chip in a Dell Optiplex 9020. When I installed WIndows 10, the installation saw the chip and allowed me to install to it, but the joy ended there, it was not bootable! If I install WIndows 10 on another SATA disk, boot to it, the windows installation will see the M.2 chip, it is considered a Mass Storage Device, but no way to make Optiplex 9020 boot to it.Next, I added it to Dell Precision T5810, now this was a totally different story! As before, I could install Windows 10 to the M.2, but then would not boot. I then updated the BIOS to the very latest, once it rebooted, voila! Windows 10 booted from the M.2 chip on the adapter board!After Windows 10 was up and running I ran Crystal Disk Mark speed test, was only getting about 1500 MB/s read speeds, not bad, but still way below the rating of the M.2 chip. Turns out I had installed the PCIe M.2 adapter in a slower PCIe slot, moved it to a faster slot, rebooted and ran Crystal Mark Disk check again, this time 3400 MB/s, awesome!Moral of story, make sure your PC or motherboard will boot from an M.2 chip mounted on this board, then buy it!And for a great deal on what has so far has been a very impressive M.2 NVMe chip, I can just say 2 words, Inland Premium. Search Amazon for Inland Premium, I chose the 512GB version, have installed at least 10 or more of these, working great so far. Or, you could go for the chip made by the company famous for its failed folding phone and pay over twice as much and get just marginal better performance, choice is up to you!

Para ser mi primer compra en Amazon. Me gustó mucho todo. El producto está excelente. Cumplió con todas mis espectativas. Lo recomiendo ampliamente. Lo estoy utilizando con un SSD M.2 Gigabyte de 128GB NVME. Volveré a adquirir productos con este vendedor. Ampliamente recomendado. Me encanta.

Ho controllato prima se il sistema supportasse il boot da PCIe, poi ho acquistato questa scheda e un disco NVMe PCIe M.2 GEN3 X 4 SSD. Funziona perfettamente con il sistema ed è molto veloce. Meglio rispetto a SSD SATA che avevo prima. Installazione facilissima e autoconfigurante con windows 10.