M.2 NVMe boot story on Z170

[nichitapavel]

Hello guys!
Sorry if this is a repeated question, but can someone explain to me the NVMe boot on Z170 situation? I have been searching online about it but I did not find nothing more than a couple of comments on it. I see lot of stuff for X99 and Z97 that they support NVMe boot but not for Z170. The comments I found, some from PCPer guys, is that is supported, but is hard to find specifics about, for example in motherboard manuals NVMe is mostly mentioned when a U.2 port is available, how about M.2?

I guess the simple question is: is it possible to boot from a M.2 NVMe SSD on a Z170 motherboard? If yes, is there something specific that I should look for?

Thanks in advance!

[Activate: AMD]

Yes, provided the motherboard has a PCIe m.2 slot, z170 should be capable of booting from it. If I remember correctly, windows 7 can have issues trying to clean install to an NVMe drive, but windows 10 should be good

[nichitapavel]

Thanks!
In my findings through internet jungle I found the same thing as you did about Windows 7, you need to "pre-load" a driver for it to work.

Also I found this, in the last paragraph it says:

While we understand that NVMe SSDs may ship with an included driver, hardware needs to be considered as well and this is where the Z170 chipset comes in; NVMe has full support and will boot in the right situation

Thanks again!