Hi guys, been building my own PC's forever, but my current PC is my first with NVME type drives in it so I'm a little unfamiliar with what might happen if I move a drive to a different slot.  Right now I have a 500GB PCIE gen 3 in the top slot on my X570 board which is the direct link to the CPU lanes then I have a 2TB SATA SSD as well.  I got a 2TB gen 4 NVME drive that I want to add to the system and I want to put it in that top slot so it doesn't need to share bandwidth with the rest of the PCIE stuff running through the chipset like the bottom slot would have to.  The plan was to move the 500GB to that other slot and eventually use it as a "scratch" drive or whatever. 
 
However, I'm not ready to reinstall windows yet, and I don't want to have to go dig into the motherboard later to swap the drives around since I have a bunch of watercooling stuff in the system as well.  Can I just move the NVME with the OS on it to a different slot with no effect?  I don't have bitlocker or other encryption enabled, I just don't want to have to immediately reinstall windows yet.  Obviously with SATA drives this wasn't really an issue since you wouldn't really need to move ports to get max performance.  

Grey_Beard
I would research the BIOS to assure that the PCIe NVMe will allow the OS to be installed. This as simple as accessing the BIOS on POST via the F2. Then look at the boot options to see if the PCIe is available. If it is, it should be plug and play, although I would access it to assure the drive is recognized as the boot drive in the BIOS. I do not have your motherboard but I have found that this ability is hit and miss, as even the ability to boot from one of these slots is determined by the BIOS version, chipset and CPU. Good luck.

Sorry I think I was a little unclear.  I'm not moving it to a PCIE slot with one of those adpaters etc, I just want to move it to another NVME slot on the board.  The top slot which my older gen 3 drive is in is the one that has dedicated PCIE lanes direct to the CPU from the NVME slot though and is the preferred slot to use for a boot drive/etc.  The 2nd NVME slot has to go through the chipset along with all the other stuff on the board like LAN ports, USB controllers, etc.  Since the whole board is PCIE gen 4 though unlike a B550 series chipset there will be plenty of bandwidth in that second NVME slot for a gen 3 drive though.  I just want to make sure it won't cause some issue for the currently installed OS if I move the drive to that other slot.

kram36

flyinion
{snip}Can I just move the NVME with the OS on it to a different slot with no effect?{snip}

Yes.
 
You can also use Samsung's Data Migration tool to move your OS to your newer faster drive.
 
https://semiconductor.samsung.com/consumer-storage/support/tools/

Thanks!  Does that tool work with WD drives or should I grab the WD equivalent?  The current gen 3 NVME is Samsung, the gen 4 going in is a WD Black.

use of some nvme slots with turn off certain sata plugs on mobo, manual should tell you which ones will be turned off,

Cool GTX
 Make a backup image to load onto the new Boot Disk 

 
Macrium Reflect, the free version is good for home use

Thanks, I actually have the backup software from the guys that make O&O Defrag so I could probably use that as well.  As long as the current drive will boot after moving (which it sounds like it will) I'm not really too worried about it.  I've been planning to do a reinstall anyway, I'm just also trying to avoid it cause of all the "fun" afterward of installing drivers and apps.  Also because I'm debating to reinstall Win10 or move the 11 when I do it.