RE: M.2 slot: -Do Aspire Desktop TC-895-EB11 (& other Aspire Desktops) have the M.2 slot ?

Thrip

I have been advised by ttttt and billsey that if I do get an Acer Aspire TC-895-EB11 for the purposes music recording that I should swap the 1TB HDD for a  x4 M.2 NVMe SSD

I have called the local computer repair shop and they told me that in order to make this x4 M.2 NVMe SSD upgrade I will need a M.2 slot in the motherboard.

Does anyone know if the Acer Aspire TC-895-EB11 has a M.2 slot in the motherboard.  

-As well does the other Aspire TC-780, and Aspire TC-885 models etc. have the M.2 slot in the motherboard ?  
 
Thank you for your time and consideration;

ttttt

@Thrip

So far I haven't seen a PC using 9th generation or higher Intel CPU and PCIe 3.0 motherboard that has no M.2 SSD slot. All those TC-895, TC-780 and TC-885 models have that slot, so don't worry. These are all capable machines. As long as there is an unused PCIe 3.0 x16 slot you can even add a second M.2 NVMe SSD too!

Normally a higher price system uses better CPU and other parts. For example, U.S. Amazon selling TC-885-UA-91 with i3-9100 CPU (the one I have) and TC-885-UA92 has i5-9400 , both are 9th generation Intel CPU ( that's why the leading number is "9"). The i5-9400 has 40%+ higher performance than i3-9100, thus the higher price. Just find one that fits your budget. Maybe a PC with 500GB M.2 NVMe SSD is like $20-$50 higher price than the same model that comes with 1TB spinning HDD for some manufacturers( such as Dell) .

Typical 500 GB x4 M.2 NVVMe SSD is selling around $70-$80 nowadays. Lower capacity drives are cheaper but may come at the expense of performance. 1TB or higher M.2 SSD is usually fastest among the same model but higher price of course. This will utilize the full speed of the M.2 slot. 128GB and 256 GB M.2 SSD are cheaper, but usually some 10-20% slower than 1TB+ drives. The reason is higher capacity drives use more cache that helps performance.

I have the impression you are not a very technical person in regarding to computers, so swapping to a x4 drive may need some efforts, but trust me, it is not difficult as long as you have the will to do it. Basically you don't need a technician for that.

Do pay more attention to the sound card and the programs that you will use for music production. The Acer Aspire desktops that you mentioned are all small form factor PCs. That means they are small in size, and the motherboard usually has only one x16 and another x1 slot open. Be sure you won't need a powerful graphics card for your PC, otherwise you may well forget about the sound card.

The reason :
All powerful graphics cards now need at least two PCIe expansion slot spaces. If you put the graphics card to the x16 slot , the space at the x1 slot will be occupied by the graphics card too, making the x1 slot unusable.

billsey

Each of those models have an M.2 slot, though some older ones have M.2 that only supports SATA drives or an M.2 that supports NVMe x2. The TC-895 you have been asking about supports M.2 NVMe x4 and will give you decent speed (I just dropped a Samsung into a AIO for a friend and he jumped from ~500MB/s for his SATA SSD to over 3000MB/s for the NVMe)