Is it OK to add 3rd and 4th disk onto existing 250G SSD and 1T HDD in Acer Predator G3-710?

AG2018

I recently bought Acer Predator G3-710 from Costco, which already has 250G SSD and 1T HDD.

Question one: Can I add one more SSD (such as Samsung 960 EVO Series 500GB NVMe M.2 Internal SSD MZ-V6E500BW)?  I will have 2 SSD and 1 HDD in the end. 

Question two: going further, can I add one more HDD (such as 1TB)? I will have 2 SSD and 2 HDDs in the end. 

Thanks a lot!

brummyfan2

Hi,
You have one M.2 slot and 3 HDD bays, if your M.2 slot is already occupied by a M.2 SSD(250GB), you may have to replace it with a NVMe SSD, Acer recommends a M.2 SATA SSD but others have installed a NVMe SSD. 
http://www.userbenchmark.com/System/Acer-Predator-G3-710/21107

billsey

You only have the one M.2 slot, so only one M.2 SSD. There are three drive bays (one hot swap) plus the optical bay and four SATA connectors on the motherboard. So ... you could easily upgrade to two SSDs and two HDs but could only swing a third HD or SSD by pulling the optical drive out and replacing it with the third drive. Note that the second (and potentially third) SSD will be a SATA drive, likely in a 2.5" form factor.

brummyfan2

Hi,
1. Yes, the m.2 slot is between the CMOS battery and the Graphics card slot, you can find out the drives in your laptop by installing HWiNFO64 Free program, run it, expand Drives and get all the details of the drives in your laptop.
https://www.hwinfo.com/download.php
2. You have the "ATA" cable in the PC? If so, yes you can use it.
3. NVMe SSDs are faster on benchmark but very difficult to find any noticeable difference in speed between SATA and NVMe, if you regularly transfer large files, then you will benefit by installing NVMe SSD.
You have only one slot for M.2 SSD, so if you want  to install a NVMe SSD, you have to replace the current M.2 SATA SSD(250GB) with NVMe drive.

brummyfan2

Hi,
You have one M.2 slot and 3 HDD bays, if your M.2 slot is already occupied by a M.2 SSD(250GB), you may have to replace it with a NVMe SSD, Acer recommends a M.2 SATA SSD but others have installed a NVMe SSD. 
http://www.userbenchmark.com/System/Acer-Predator-G3-710/21107

billsey

You only have the one M.2 slot, so only one M.2 SSD. There are three drive bays (one hot swap) plus the optical bay and four SATA connectors on the motherboard. So ... you could easily upgrade to two SSDs and two HDs but could only swing a third HD or SSD by pulling the optical drive out and replacing it with the third drive. Note that the second (and potentially third) SSD will be a SATA drive, likely in a 2.5" form factor.

AG2018

thanks a lot for the helps from brummyfan2 and from billsey. I really like the community here! 

brummyfan2

AG2018 said:

thanks a lot for the helps from brummyfan2 and from billsey. I really like the community here! 

You are welcome 

AG2018

I opened my computer case today and found the following information.

1. I found a dual-band WIFI card using one M.2. slot, but I did not see another M.2 slot for the SSD.  please see my question 1 below. 

2. there are 4 SATA connectors on the motherboard.
--the first one has a red color cable connecting CD/DVD ROM.
--the 2nd one is connected to 1TB HDD.
--the third one is labeled as "ATA"  and connected to the hot swap. (the hot swap is below the CD/DVD ROM and no disk is connected now), please see my question 2 below. 
--the fourth one is left open (i.e. no any cable with it).  

question one:  I am curious where is the pre-installed  250 G SSD.  One youtube video shows that SSD is just below the GPU card. I saw one little metal cover with rectangle shape and size of about a quarter, without any wording or naming. Is it the SSD? if not, where can I find it? 

question two: if I use the hot swap to install my second SSD ( it is also the 3rd disk after the 250 G pre-installed SSD and 1 TB pre-installed HDD), I will need to buy a SATA SSD, right? but the cable has the name of "ATA", is it ok? 

question three: if I use NVME SSD, I guess that it will be much faster than SATA SSD, am I right?  Does NVME SSD need PCI.E slot?  my GPU card takes 2 out of 4 PCI-E slots, and the remaining 2 PCI slots are very short, it seems are PCIe *1 slots. can I get 500 G NVME SSD with PCIe*1 type? 

Thanks a lot! 

brummyfan2

Hi,
1. Yes, the m.2 slot is between the CMOS battery and the Graphics card slot, you can find out the drives in your laptop by installing HWiNFO64 Free program, run it, expand Drives and get all the details of the drives in your laptop.
https://www.hwinfo.com/download.php
2. You have the "ATA" cable in the PC? If so, yes you can use it.
3. NVMe SSDs are faster on benchmark but very difficult to find any noticeable difference in speed between SATA and NVMe, if you regularly transfer large files, then you will benefit by installing NVMe SSD.
You have only one slot for M.2 SSD, so if you want  to install a NVMe SSD, you have to replace the current M.2 SATA SSD(250GB) with NVMe drive.

AG2018

brummyfan2, Thanks a lot, It is very helpful! 

brummyfan2

You are welcome