Does my laptop have PCI-E slot?
I have an ASUS TP300LA laptop and it is running slow now. I want to upgrade it using either PCI-E or SSD but I'm not sure if it has a PCI-E slot. I tried installing CPUID PC Wizard but there is an error when I open it.
12 Answers
I want to upgrade it using either PCI-E or SSD
That doesn't quite make sense.
- SSD is a type of disk that uses fully electrical storage, rather than rotating platters as HDDs do.
- PCI Express (PCI-e or PCIe for short) is a type of connector for addons.
These are two standards that serve completely different purposes. There are SSDs that use PCIe to connect. There are also SSDs that don't use PCIe. Finally, there are PCIe devices that are not SSDs (most notably graphics cards).
You're probably deciding between SSDs in different form factors and using different interfaces:
- 2.5" SATA SSD - they are the same size as standard laptop HDDs and use the same connector. Many modern laptops don't support these anymore for the lack of space to install such disk.
- M.2 SATA SSD - uses an M.2 connector on a motherboard, wired electrically for a SATA interface (the same one 2.5" disks use, but with a different connector)
- M.2 NVMe SSD - also uses an M.2 connector, but wired for PCIe rather than SATA
There are also some other types, including some that were specific for laptops, but they're rather rare.
Your laptop model uses 2.5" disks.
PCI-e slots don't exist in laptops.
You probably mean a M.2 slot into which you place a NVMe or SATA SSD.
Given the age of that model (2014, 4th Generation Intel CPU) it doesn't have a an M.2 slot. The manual also doesn't mention anything about it.
As far as I can tell your only option is to replace the existing internal 2.5" SATA harddisk with a 2.5" SATA SSD drive.
That would also mean you need to clone the content of your existing harddisk to the new SSD or to re-install everything from scratch on the new SSD.
