I’ve built a multitude of Computers, Workstations and Renderfarms and love to optimize them as much as possible. It’ll have a table of contents that’ll most likely tell you where the M.2 screw is and show you what it looks like. M.2 Drives don’t really need to be screwed down flat onto the motherboard, they temporarily (!) work perfectly fine just hovering at an angle of 30°. If you have a hard time figuring out what or where your M.2 screw is, make sure to look at your manual.

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? Memory: 32GB DDR4 2400 ** Power Supply: 650 Watts Power Supply Thermaltake +80 Bronze Thermaltake PSU That’s a conundrum, indeed. Can you fashion something out of plastic that would hold down the drive even without the plastic slide having to be fastened?

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Just make sure you don’t destroy anything by trying to jam in a screw that’s way too big. Tape the M.2 Drive Down 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. That is not an M.2 screw; that’s an M.2 standoff. It’s the thing that you screw the M.2 screw into. M.2 screws, a relatively new addition to the menagerie of things that you have to screw into your motherboard.

So you don’t need to screw them in, but it’s such a simple and easy safety measure, there’s no point not doing it.

Typical Apple Innovation…

Just went through this and tried Blue tac – I know, I know … of course as the machine environment warms up the blue tac softens. My OS’s became unstable and then this morning the BIOS could not find the drive at all. It had sprung up and was at an angle – 31 Degrees perhaps? As this was an additional drive I used the screw from the smaller capacity drive and removed it. Miraculously no harm seems to have been done. But who knows at this stage? so my advice is to wait – you know it makes sense – until you have a proper screw. You don't really need screws for it, just make sure it's not flopping around all over the place and you should be fine. Yes, this is a possibility, but one that should be done with utmost care, if you don’t want to loose your data or fry you parts mid-session. Motherboard: MSI A320M PRO-VH PLUS ** Processor: AMD Ryzen 2600 3.4 GHz ** Video Card: Nvidia GeForce 1070 TI 8GB Zotac 1070ti If you just want to make sure the drive stays where you put it and want something that’s lowkey. This is an option.

Get some actual M.2 screws and do it right. But in the meantime… Look for Old Small Screws in Your Home Does the SSD's 500 mbps read & write speed make a huge difference compared to my HDD's speed (being 100-150 mbps)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" It’ll hold your drive down just fine, to the point where you don’t even need to bother with the M.2 screws when you do find them. Though the drives might come loose If you move your PC around a lot. Skip the M.2 Screw entirely Our servers are getting hit pretty hard right now. To continue shopping, enter the characters as they are shown