14 DAY TRIAL // The M.2 solid-state drive interface is a relatively new technology, if you discount the fact that it's based on the PCI Express interface. ASRock still managed to increase the throughput by a factor of 2, though, or 3, depending on who you ask.
Solid-state drives designed in the M.2 form factor work over the PCI Express interface, not the SATA III 6.0 Gbps standard normally employed by storage units in a PC.
That allows them to work faster than usual, though not quite on the same level as SATA Express. Still a lot better than SATA III though, and M.2 SSDs are also a lot smaller.
ASRock has just invented a way to bring M.2 performance to the same level as SATA Express though, maybe even higher.
And it all has to do with the way M.2 slots are wired. Normally, the signal route starts from the M.2 device, goes through the onboard chipset and then reaches the CPU.
On the Z97 Extreme 6, however, the M.2 is directly linked to the CPU socket, and it is this architectural element that maximized read and write speeds.
ASRock called it Ultra M.2 and theorized that the top speed could be somewhere around 32 Gbps. That’s three times faster than PCI Express x2 M.2, and six times faster than PCI Express x1 M.2 technology.
To demonstrate the advantage in throughput, ASRock installed a Samsung XP941 PCIe x4 M.2 SSD in an Ultra m.2 socket.
The transfer speed was of 1.16 GB/s, or 46% better than what the PCI Express x2 M.2 connection would have allowed.
Also, a PCI Express x2 M.2 SSD was able to move data 8.8% faster than on normal M.2 sockets, due to the latency of the Ultra M.2 design.
At present time, there is no other motherboard that has a storage interface quite on the same level as the Ultra M.2 PCIe Gen3 x4 socket of the ASRock Z97 Extreme 6.
Add to that the 12 Phase Power Design, Purity Sound 2, Dual LAN, SATA Express interface, and Super Alloy technology and you have all that enthusiasts could ever need, and more. Imagine, a system with an M.2 boot drive and only 2.5-inch SSDs besides that, over SATA Express. The system will move like lightning even when you launch the most resource-intensive applications.
And because there are no moving parts like on HDDs, there won't be any noise either. The only issue left is cost, but only enthusiasts and gamers buy motherboards like the Z97 Extreme 6 anyway, and those customers usually have cash to spare.
