So I ordered a second NVMe SSD for my laptop as a result of a sale ($200 for a 500GB Samsung 860 EVO!). Then, after receiving it, I wondered why I ordered it since I don't really
need all that much fast solid state storage in my laptop (at least, not yet). Sure would be nice if I could drop it into my gaming rig, but that doesn't have an M.2 slot.
Waitasec, NVMe is just PCIe. Hmm...
Works like a charm! UEFI picked it up so it might even be bootable, but I haven't tried it (still using my venerable Intel 520!). Naturally, I ran ATTO on it and compared it to my 840 EVO (my 850 EVO is connected via 3GB/s SATA since I ran out of 6GB/s ports, so I didn't bother with that--clicky to enlarge):
3GB/s reads, 1.8GB/s writes. Acceptable!