The days where an SSD was a luxury are long gone. In fact, with how cheap solid-state drives have become, it’s perfectly viable to build a system with all solid-state storage. Now 2.5″ SSDs are great options for decently fast storage. However, if you want the best possible performance, M.2 drives are the way to go. The one limiting factor to M.2 drives are the number of slots on your motherboard. Given with newer generations motherboards such as Z490, you can get a board with upwards of three M.2 slots. But lower-tier motherboard and especially older motherboards may only have a single M.2 slot. So what do you do if you’re happy with your system, but you want more, fast storage. Well, Silverstone has you covered with their ECM24-ARGB M.2 NVMe SSD to PCIe X4 adapter card.
The Silverstone ECM24-ARGB is a PCIe expansion card that allows you to run a single M Key M.2 SSD in a PCIe slot on your motherboard and supports both AHCI and NVMe SSD, up to PCIe Gen 4. The ECM24-ARGB comes with an aluminum heatsink and several thermal pads designed for advanced cooling of your SSD. However, even going back a few generations, it seems there are plenty of options for motherboards with two or even three M.2 slots. So, does the Silverstone ECM24-ARGB offer more than just an extra M.2 slot? We ran several tests in an attempt to answer that question. So, let’s get into it. We’d like to thank Silverstone for supplying Thinkcomputers the ECM24-ARGB M.2 to PCIe adapter card for review.
Specifications
| Model No. | SST-ECM24-ARGB |
| Connectors | 4-1 Pin 5V ARGB |
| Interface | PCI Express x 4 |
| SSD Interface | M.2 (NGFF) |
| Module Key | PCIe x4 NVMe-based M key |
| Net Weight and dimension | Heatsink with PCB:121mm (W) x 20mm (H) x 130mm (D), 110g Heatsink with PCB:4.76″ (W) x 0.79″ (H) x 5.12″ (D), 110g |
| Support Length of M.2 SSD | 30mm, 42mm, 60mm, 80mm |
| Thermal Pad | |
| Thermal conductivity | 1.5W/m.k |
| Operating temperature | -40 °C ~ 180 °C |
| Thermal pad thickness | 0.75mm, 1mm, 1.5mm, 1.75mm |
| Net Weight and dimension | Blue Pad 1：70mm (W) x 1mm (H) x 20mm (D), 3.2g Blue Pad 2：70mm (W) x 1.5mm (H) x 20mm (D), 4.61g Gray Pad 1：70mm (W) x 0.75mm (H) x 20mm (D), 2.53g Gray Pad 2：70mm (W) x 1.75mm (H) x 20mm (D), 5.52g |
Packaging and Unboxing
The Silverstone ECM24-ARGB adapter card comes in a small white box with the Silverstone logo on the top left-hand corner. At the top right, we see the ECM24-ARGB comes with addressable RGB lighting. There is an image of the ECM24-ARGB adapter card that takes up the majority of the front of the box. Below the image of the Silverstone ECM24-ARGB is the ECM24-ARGB product branding,
The back of the box for the Silverstone ECM24-ARGB adapter card has a blown apart image of the ECM24-ARGB at the top right-hand corner, next to a list of the technical specifications. Under the specifications is a list of special features of the ECM24-ARGB adapter card, as well as the UPC code and serial number.
