Installing additional M.2 on crosshair X870E hero

[Mount91]

Hello,

I recently recieved a new build from PCS.
I should've added a second M.2 SSD when ordering, but I only got one at the time (1TB SAMSUNG 990 PRO M.2, PCIe 4.0).
I now have another exactly the same, but 2TB that I would like to install myself.

My build from PCS:

ASUS® ROG CROSSHAIR X870E HERO
1TB SAMSUNG 990 PRO M.2, PCIe 4.0 NVMe
AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D 16 Core CPU
64GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR5 5600MHz CL40 (2 x 32GB)
32GB ASUS TUF GEFORCE RTX 5090 GAMING OC

Adding 1 x 2TB SAMSUNG 990 PRO M.2, PCIe 4.0 NVMe

Questions are:
Which slot would the first M.2 likely have been installed (closest to CPU)?
Do I just have to go into bios and set something for the second drive before installing?
Which slot to use to avoid any potential line sharing issues with this motherboard/GPU?
They're both gen 4.

Hopefully not too challenging to do this myself..
Open her up, take the card out a bit and click M.2 into the correct slot, remove the heat sticker thing.
Put all that back on/in boot up then happy days right?
Apologies for the noob Q's and hopefully I can post/talk about this here, any info greatly appreciated.

Cheers!

 

[TonyCarter]

No BIOS changes needed.

If you want to stay clear of the lane being removed from the PCIe5.0_1 GPU slot, then use m2_4 or m2_5 as they’re both independent PCIe 4.0 x4.

Even if you used m2_2 or m2_3, it wouldn’t have any real world impact on the GPU performance as it can‘t even saturate an PCIe 5.0 x8 socket.

 

[Mount91]

No BIOS changes needed.

If you want to stay clear of the lane being removed from the PCIe5.0_1 GPU slot, then use m2_4 or m2_5 as they’re both independent PCIe 4.0 x4.

Even if you used m2_2 or m2_3, it wouldn’t have any real world impact on the GPU performance as it can‘t even saturate an PCIe 5.0 x8 socket.

Thank you for your quick response!
So what you're saying is for example, I just open it install it in m2_5 and boot and it will try configure itself.
Ideally not moving anything around.

That's all and most optimal?
Thanks!

 

[TonyCarter]

The only configuring it will need, will be to initialise (aka format) it so that it’s usable in Windows.

1. Insert the SSD as a secondary drive and load Windows from your existing drive.
2. In Windows 8 and later, move the mouse to the lower left corner of your desktop and right-click on the Start icon, then select Disk Management.
3. When Disk Management opens, a pop-up will appear and prompt you to initialize the SSD.
4. Select GUID partition table (GPT) and click OK.
5. Right-click in the area that says Unallocated and select New Simple Volume...
6. The New Simple Volume Wizard will open, click Next.
7. Leave the Specify Volume Size as the maximum (default value) and click Next.
8. Select a Drive Letter and click Next.
9. In the Format Partition screen, decide on a Volume label (the name you want to give the drive) and click Next.