ASUS Zenbook UX310UQ - Does the M.2 slot support PCIe SSD?

Does M.2 slot of ASUS Zenbook UX310UQ support PCIe SSD?

Is the form factor M.2 2280?

If so, can I replace the OEM 128GB SATA SSD by Samsung 950 PRO NVMe 256GB or Plextor M8PeG 256GB?

 

Hi everyone, just want to update that i have intalled an Intel 600P 256GB in my Asus UX310UQ, working great! Read and write speed are similar to the specification.

 

In addition to whatever disk there is already there? So do you able to use two drives at once?

 

Yes I can. I have a 2.5" Samsung 840 EVO connected to the sata, and Intel 600P connected to the M.2.

Suprisingly, the EVO achieved 5xxx MB/s in both read and write with crystaldiskmark......

 

Is there any place in the US to purchase this machine?

 

Hi siutoto, what made you decide to try the NVMe unit? And the read/write speeds was the same as the 600P's specs or M.2 SATAIII? I have contacted Asus in my country (norway) and they couldnt say if the laptop supported it or not, because they havent "tested" it. So I couldnt find any official answer about it. I purchased a Samsung 960 Pro 512GB with the laptop, hoping that the asus representative i talked to were either lazy or clueless

 

Hello, the oem sandisk 128GB M2 sata was kind of slow, read was 500 and write was 280. And then i saw in a US website that they actual sell UX310 with upgrade 950 pro and extra 8GB ram. I had also tried contacting Asus US, Hong Kong and Taiwan, none could give me a solid answer......so i decided to try myself with the cheapest nvme - intel 600p. And it works according to the 600p specification on both read and write.

Let me know if 960pro works according to spec...i am waiting for the 960evo

 

Sweet, glad to hear it. I will let you know as soon as i get it

 

Yo, I've now finally recieved both the laptop and the SSD. Even though I went for a Asus Zenbook UX410UQ, it has the same motherboard as the UX310UQ. Installed the SSD and are getting slower speeds than what it is rated for, only 1850/1650 MB/s on CrystalDiskMark, compared to the rated 3500/2200 MB/s. How did it go with the EVO?

 

Hello! What a shame that I have bought the UX310 too early, otherwise I would prefer the bigger screen UX410 as well. I didn't buy 960EVO as the review of this drive in Tom's Hardware was quite bad, and not a big different compared to Intel 600P. At the end I chose the 950 PRO 256GB as the system drive.

After seeing your message, I also ran my 950 PRO with CrystalDiskMark and I got 16xx/9xx MB/s. From our similar read results, I suspect that our motherboard may only support PCI3 2.0 x 4 which known to have a maximum speed of about 1.6GB/s.

Alternatively, it can also be a limitation of PCle lanes that is available from the system - my i5-6200 can only support 12 lanes, the 940MX should have taken 8 lanes, one for WIFI mini card, so only 3 lanes remians for the M.2. And the maths seems to make sense to me:
- My 950 PRO read is 2200MB/s - each lane is 550MB/s, 3 lanes = 1650MB/s. This can also apply to your write speed.

Anyway, I will check my UX310 with HWIFO tonight and see if I can figure out something.

 

Merry Christmas! Did some searches from the internet and found someone using AIDA64 confirmed that UX410 PCIe controller is connected to the south bridge and can only support up to PCIe 2.0 x 4.

I also used AIDA64 confirmed myself, UX310 can only support up to PCIe 2.0 x 4 as well. So the maximum speed our any NVMe SSD will be limited to below 2GB/s......too bad.

 

Hi all,
think about purcashe this laptop, and hear about slow ssd what to do? after purchase replace with samsung ssd? pro series? what you advice?

thanks

 

I enjoyed reading about your experiences. I want to buy a UX430UQ and upgrade its Sandisk SATA3 SSD to Samsung 960 PRO M.2.

But now I understand that you dealed with some issues. So what is the excat reason for why your 950PRO/Intel 600p only reached about 15xx/9xx MB/s? Is it because the i7-7500U (or likewise, but 7th Generation Kaby Lake CPU) only has 12 lanes of PCI-E? Or is it because the motherboard only supports PCI-E 3 x2 bus?

I'd like to know which one is the reason for, so I can decide on what to do: wait for a new line of zenbooks to be released (with a new motherboard) or wait for a new generation of CPUs?

And overall, do you feel any improvement in your laptop performance with the M.2 SSDs regarding the SATA SSDs?

Thanks guys!

 

With the limitation that both UX310/UX410 can only achieve <2GB/s for read and write, it doesn't make sense to buy a premium SSD like 960PRO. If budget allows, buy a 950PRO, otherwise go for a Intel 600P.

In the real life usage test by Tom's hardware, loading time for word and excel between these 2 ssd are less than one second. Since I tried both drive, I can confirm 950PRO can startup Windows 10 faster than Intel 600P.

 

Sorry I didn't try to further confirm the reason behind, as the combination of 950PRO and 850EVO is fast enough to all my needs and I am very happy about it. I believe it was the M.B that could only support PCIe 2.0 and limiting the speed of the NVME ssd.

In terms of change from SATAIII to NVME, I personally think it was a big improvement.......because the OEM Sandisk was not even a top of line SATAIII.

UX430UQ is a new model and if you search the internet, you can see the M.B is completely different from the 310/410. New model with 7th generation Intel CPU should support PCIe 3.0 x4, but I guess you will have find it out yourself.......

 

Wow Bro, thanks for your sharing! But I gotta ask you last question: What are the models of each? Where did you find out that the UX430UQ has a newer model of Motherboard in relation to the UX410/310UQ? As far as I could find info, it seemed like they all share the same Motherboard or what... Please enlighten me

 

Hey guys,

In my research I found this forum to be very helpful although at the time couldn't find the exact answer that I needed so I'll report my results:

I bought the Ultrabook ASUS Zenbook UX310UQ (i7-7500U, 1T HDD, 12GB DDR4, GTX 940MX).
Basically, my question was if the M.2 port por would be compatible with the new M.2 Samsung 960 EVO Series - 250GB PCIe NVMe, so I replaced the 1T HDD with the M.2 and, to my great surprise, it works perfectly, I even boot from this drive.

Also complemented it with a Samsung 850 EVO 500GB 2.5-Inch SATA III for the rest of the stuff. (I only bought this disk just in case the other one was not compatible, if not, maybe a bigger M.2 would be enough and much faster)

As previously said, the performance of the M.2 with PCIe NVMe doesn't reach its full potencial of "3.6 Gb/s", although it is much better than the SATA III, maybe 2x or 3x. I get lectures up to 1.3 Gb/s which is not bad at all compared with the HDD that had lectures under 0.1 Gb/s.

 

Did you mean 1.3GB/s? if I am not wrong, 1GB roughly equal to 8Gb. There was one post here reported that his 960PRO could achieve about 1800MB/s for both read/write, so your reported 1.3GB/s was a bit low and I am surprised that you couldn't get 1500MB/s as per the specification. Did you fresh install your Windows 10?

It is always better to have a 2nd drive rather one large drive......if you do your system and regular backups to 850EVO, you can always restore easily when disaster happens. For your information, it only takes me about 3-4 minutes to backup my whole system from 950PRO to 850EVO, isn't it nice?!

 

Sorry siutoto, I meant 1.3 GB/s or 1300 MB/s., a bit more. It's a bit lower than expected, my test was not with a fresh install, but almost, maybe that's why it's 200 MB/s lower.

Still very happy with the results, the test I did before with the HDD was 120/70 MB/s for read/write. It was more than a substantial increase! Nice!

 

Hey Guys,
Just to share,
ASUS Zenbook UX410UQ (i7-7500U, 500GB 960Evo and 500 850Evo, 16GB DDR4).
My 960Evo can reached 1850Read/1650Write. I can see the NVME in my Bios after install Intel® Rapid Storage Technology (Intel® RST) RAID Driver. This is a beautiful machine for the price.
Thank you Siutoto, for your contribution.

 

Hey, using a UX430UQ. Anyone here who had upgraded its OEM SSD (SanDisk) to a NVMe SSD, such as Samsung 960 PRO, had issues or problems later with the UX430UQ's Touchpad? If so, how did you fix the touchpad?

 

Go device manager update the touchpad.

 

Hi all,
Thanks for a very informative post. It was just what I was looking for. I am about to buy a new zenbook. I currently own two UX32VD's and are really pleased with the performance and value of these machines.

So after all you guys have tried what shuld I buy?
The UX310UQ or the UX410UQ?
I'm really hungry for the 310 because of the second storage and the QHD+ screen.

I'm struggeling to find a reason to get the UX410 other than a smidge bigger screen.

So, any thoughts?

I think my ultimate machine would be the 430, but I can't get that here.

-Michael

 

Alright. I somewhat reinstalled that Windows 10 OS and it just got things worked out. So basiclly, having UX430UQ & Samsung 960 PRO 512GB SSD, I could say that:
by CrystalDiskMark 5:
1875MB\s Read speed.
1700-1800MB\s Write Speed.

It feels good, it feels fast and I'm satisfied!

BTW I suggest it to check up things about the UX430UN! which is a better version of the UX430UQ.

 

Why the UX430UN? From what I have found it does not have;
1) a second storage
2) Looks like a lesser graphics card.
3) lesser screen quality (than UX310UQ)

Is there something I'm missing here?

 

1. Well it doesn't have a second storage, but I myself can ahieve the best out of one 512GB SSD.
2. MX150 is actually better than the 940MX. You can compare the two, but it's not such big difference. It just matters in case that you can still pick up one from these: UX430UQ or UX430UN (given the very same price).
3. I'm not sure about the quality... but I find my UX430UQ very similar to my last UX32VD. So it's not big different, unless you're used to bigger resulution than 1080x1920. About the size: I guess that you know that UX310 has 13 Inch while the UX430 has 14 Inch...

 

Hi, i've bought the asus ux410ua i57200 with 1tb hdd and 8gb ram and intel integrated graphics. I updated it with 8 gb more of ram and a Samsung Evo 960 nvme m.2. I read your comments before buying it because I accepted the 18xx speeds but now I have the ssd connected, samsung magician, crystal disk info, sisoftware and other softwares displays the m.2 connection as pcie 3.0 x4. Anyway, speeds are in the mean of what has been discussed in this thread.
I've installed drivers from samsung, from asus and etc but speeds remain the same. Anyone could increase up speeds by installing something or what happens? If connection is there with 3.0 gen, why speeds are lower? Maybe some lames are already occupied in the bus?

Thank you all!

 

Hi, your OS is on the SSD or the 1 Tb hard disk? Made a recovery drive and reinstall the OS on the SSD.

 

Is correctly installed in the ssd. Speeds are the same that discussed here. Sequential reads Up to 1850 MB/s and write 1500 MB/s.
I don't think its an installation problem...

Thanks

 

Hi.
i have ux430UQ.

Does samsung 960 pro PCle 3.0 SSD works on this computer?

What is your capacity of your 960 PRO SSD.

Thanks.

 

Hi,

I would like to add some info to this very helpful forum; based on your feedback I replaced the SATA 450/440 MBps SSD in ASUS UX430UN i8550 to SAMSUNG EVO 960 500GB. New UX430UN supports only PCIe with 2 lanes. So speed sequential read/write is 1860MBps/1660MBps in Samsung Magician > performance bencmark.

It is good but to buy Samsung pro looks waste of money, EVO speed is more than fine (except shorter life) to this motherboard.

The installation and the move of preinstalled OS to new m.2 was a real pain. (no second m.2 slot so I cloned OS to USB disk than cloned it back to Samsung SSD, +fix MBR)

Overall result is fine. One more thing, new 960 EVO is not supported in Samsung RAPID mode by Samsung Magician 5.1.

Istvan

 

Thank you for your explanation.
But i wonder one more thing, 1 Tb version of 960 EVO is working on Asus Ux430UQ is't it?

Thanks.

 

I added the size of 960 EVO to my post; that is 500GB. I haven't tried 1TB version.

 

Hi again.
I bought 960 evo 1TB version and i can see the 960 evo on my bios.

i created a bootable usb by some program but bios can not see usb.

Which program did you use to create bootable usb.

Can you explain me how can i boot my 960 evo.

Thanks.

 

Hi,

If I understand well, you plan to do a fresh OS install to Samsung SSD.

USB windows image can be: BIOS BOOT , GPT for UEFI or mixed BIOS + GPT for UEFI. The RUFUS 2.4 software can create the three different kind of USB boot from *.iso. I tried all the three options and the mixed BIOS BOOT + UEFI (something similar was the name of it) boot was the winner if I remember well + use only the USB 3.0 port for booting if your stick is USB 3.0.

Don't forget to save the drivers from original OS install (c:\eSupport\eDriver\) before you drop out the original SSD.

When you will see the Samsung SSD in OS, install the latest Samsung NvME driver from Samsung web site before new reboot.

If you are satisfied with preinstalled OS and have an external m.2->USB converter for SSD copy, you can copy the preinstalled OS via USB to Samsung SSD by Samsung tools (disk copy or magician) from Samsung web site. Or there is a good disk copy tool named MiniTool Partition Wizard for disk image copy if Samsung tools will fail. This is the quickest way I guess and m.2->USB converter is only about 15$, useful if original Hynx SSD remains an external backup device.

It was a bit tricky for me as well and a lot of internet reading, sorry if I miss something or explanation is not the best, plus my case was a bit different: original SSD image was copied to USB HDD disk by Mini Partition Wizard, than I used that image to start OS and copy itself to the replaced new SSD.

Good luck!