Here's something that I'll bet some of the hardware wonks already know. I didn't know it though, so I thought it might be of use to someone else as well.
Background: NVMe M.2 SSD drives are several times faster than SATA NVMe drives - which, in turn, are much faster than Winchester (spinning disk) drives. They come on a little chip and, on newer motherboards, there are one or two sockets right on the motherboard that they can be installed into. They're great. But, there are some apparent limitations. For one, on my motherboard, if I plug a second NVMe SSD into the second NVMe socket - it will compete with Thunderbolt, which I need for my RME converter. It has to do with the PCIe lanes that are being shared by the two functions that are hardwired to that second socket. I thought I was out of luck.
But, recently, I discovered that there are add-on PCIe adapters that you can mount your NVMe SSD drive into, and subsequently plug into an unused PCIe expansion slot on your motherboard. You can choose a slot that uses PCIe lanes that you're not otherwise using. These days I have several of those. So, that way, you can overcome the issue caused by the second socket on the motherboard sharing with some other functionality. Or - for that matter - maybe you just want more NVMe drives than you have hardwired sockets for. You still have to carefully plan which lanes are free, of course.
Anyway - I'm very happy to know this, although I haven't bought one yet. Maybe you will be too.
Here's an example of one (although it may not be compatible with PCIe ver. 4...) even comes with an effective-looking heat sink:
https://www.amazon.com/RIITOP-PCIe-N...xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ==
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