Modern PCs and add-in boards use PCI Express (PCIe) slots instead. For many people, the only card they will bother putting in their PC is a discrete GPU in the x16 PCIe slot. A smaller number of people may also use a discrete audio board in a PCIe x1/x4 slot.

Typically they will all be PCI Express, but for a graphics card you need a PCI Express x16 slot. There are three versions of this slot, but they’re backwards compatible, so a modern PCI Express 3.0 graphics card will work in a motherboard with a PCI Express x16 2.0 slot.

Peripheral Component Interconnect, or PCI, is the most common way to attach add-on controller cards and other devices to a computer motherboard. This type of connector originated in the early 1990s, and is still in use today. Presently, there are three main PCI motherboard connectors (usually referred to as “slots”.)

You may have wondered which slot you’re supposed to install a graphics card into on a motherboard when there’s more than one slot. These motherboards work just fine with only one video card, regardless of how many open slots are available. The graphics card should go into the first PCI Express x16 slot.

SSD Ranking: The Fastest Solid State Drives

• Fastest 2.5-inch SATA. SAMSUNG 870 EVO 1TB 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-77E1T0B/AM)
• Fastest M.2 PCIe Gen4. WD_BLACK 1TB SN850 NVMe Internal Gaming SSD Solid State Drive – Gen4 PCIe, M.2 2280, 3D NAND, Up to 7,000 MB/s – WDS100T1X0E.
• Best Add-In Card.

To check if SSD is compatible with desktop computer, you need to figure out the hard disk interface type of motherboard. There are two options to check it. On one hand, you can take apart your desktop and check the interface of motherboard directly.

All consumer motherboards iv seen and most laptops have at least one SATA connector which will work with an SSD. The biggest exception is super slim laptops which maight only have M. 2 as space is such a problem in such a small machine These can use the same data as SATA or a much faster PCI-E based system called NVME.

But for gaming, aim for at least 512GB or 1TB drives. Anything lower than this might disturb your gaming experience. But also, anything more might be overkill. Even if prices have gone down over the years, high-capacity SSDs can be pricey.

The NVMe interface is a lot faster than SATA, and it allows significant speed improvements. The write speed of the SATA model is of 350 MB/s, while that of the NVMe variant is of 1100 MB/s – more than three times faster. When choosing higher-end models of NVMe SSDs, the speed differences can increase six-fold.

NVME drives are going to be your option when working with very large single files. Say you’re working with 4K, 8K, or 16K footage and you need to edit it as efficiently as possible, no way you’re using a standard SATA SSD. Now for games, and booting Windows, you might as well stick with the cheaper option.

2 SATA SSDs have a similar level of performance to mSATA cards, but M. 2 PCIe cards are notably faster. In addition, SATA SSDs have a maximum speed of 600 MB per second, while M. 2 PCIe cards can hit 4 GB per second.