M.2 screws, a relatively new addition to the menagerie of things that you have to screw into your motherboard. Emma : i9 9900K @5.1Ghz - Gigabyte AORUS 1080Ti - Gigabyte AORUS Z370 Gaming 5 - G. Skill Ripjaws V 32GB 3200CL16 - 750 EVO 512GB + 2x 860 EVO 1TB (RAID0) - EVGA SuperNova 650 P2 - Thermaltake Water 3.0 Ultimate 360mm - Fractal Design Define R6 - TP-Link AC1900 PCIe Wifi As the name implies, they’re screws designated to screw in M.2 drives into your motherboard. And they can be a right nuisance at times because they have a tendency to magically disappear when you actually need them.

So there’s a non-zero chance that there might be a screw that could fit an M.2 standoff in your collection. Memory: 32GB DDR4 2400 ** Power Supply: 650 Watts Power Supply Thermaltake +80 Bronze Thermaltake PSU If you just want to make sure the drive stays where you put it and want something that’s lowkey. This is an option. If you’re handy at all in any way, you most likely have an assortment of screws you’ve collected over the years.

So if you want to buy some screws for M.2 standoffs, what you need are M2 screws. Specifically, you want to get the following M.2 screw size: “ M2x3mm“. MacGyver it (Not Recommended) Some motherboards don’t have standoffs. Some do, and you need to install them. Some come with them pre-installed. And so on.

Now, sometimes, we just have to wing it and find a way to make it work. You’re missing that M.2 screw but you still want to finish setting up your PC now, and not in 3 days when the new screw arrives, right? Intel Core i5 4690K, 4x8GB G.SKILL Ares 1866MHz CL10, Gigabyte Z97X-Gaming 5, 128GB Team MP33, 1TB Toshiba 2.5", 160GB Momentus 5400.6 (for video capture), Zotac GTX 1070 AMP!, Enthoo Pro, EVGA 650G1, Elgato 4K60 Pro Mk.2, Windows 10 Pro In answer to your original question about speed the correct answer is indeed that random performance (which is mainly affected by seek time) matters much more to Windows, your applications and your games then the sequential performance. In your benchmarks the 4k values (specifically the lower queue depth ones, 4KiB Q1T1) tend to provide the most insight into this performance characteristic. Plex: Ryzen 5 5600 - Gigabyte B550M AORUS Elite AX - G. Skill Ripjaws V 16GB 3200Mhz - MSI 1050Ti 4GB - Crucial P3 Plus 500GB + WD Red NAS 4TBx2 - TP-Link AC1200 PCIe Wifi - EVGA SuperNova 650 P2 - ASUS Prime AP201 - Spectre 24" I’ve built a multitude of Computers, Workstations and Renderfarms and love to optimize them as much as possible.If you have a hard time figuring out what or where your M.2 screw is, make sure to look at your manual.