Compatible M2 SSDs?

[Andreas.Lindermeier]

My Mint box Basic (a version of Airtop3) has a M2 NVME SSD with 256 GB.
I would now like to either add a larger M2 SSD or replace the existing one with a larger one.
Two questions
1) what PCI version M2 SSD to get? Understand PCI has gone up to version 5.0. What is the compatibility? The two M2 NVME slots in the Airtop3, what PCI version are they? And can an SSD with a higher PCI version be connected, but you don't get the speed benefits of the higher PCI versions? Or how does this work? Sorry for noob questions
2) My SSD has quite loud wire coil under certain conditions. Are modern M2 NVME SSDs less noisy? Any manufacturers better than others?
Many thanks in advance!

[Andrey.Mazlin]

My Mint box Basic (a version of Airtop3) has a M2 NVME SSD with 256 GB.
I would now like to either add a larger M2 SSD or replace the existing one with a larger one.
Two questions
1) what PCI version M2 SSD to get? Understand PCI has gone up to version 5.0. What is the compatibility? The two M2 NVME slots in the Airtop3, what PCI version are they? And can an SSD with a higher PCI version be connected, but you don't get the speed benefits of the higher PCI versions? Or how does this work? Sorry for noob questions
2) My SSD has quite loud wire coil under certain conditions. Are modern M2 NVME SSDs less noisy? Any manufacturers better than others?
Many thanks in advance!

Dear Andreas
Next time I'd like to recommend you to ask such question directly from support. Unfortunately forum is not a good place for such questions.

1. Airtop3 supports PCIe gen 3. Usually all new storage devices have a back compatibility with old revisions. Of course it will not utilize the advantages of gen5.
   
   Each of the NVMe slots in Airtop3, including the two slots on the MB and the 3 slots on the NVM3 cards, have 4 lanes of PCIe gen. 3 (no gen. 4 or 5 in Airtop3).
   PCIe gen. 3 is 8GT/s, and with 128b/130b coding, it lowers to actual data transfer rate of about 8x(128/130) = 7.88 GT/s. It's 4 lanes, so 7.88x4 = 31.5 Gb/s = 3.94 GB/s
   3.94GB/s is the maximum data transfer rate of any M.2 Key-M slot in Airtop3.
2. From my experience all storage devices are quite noisy under heavy load. Basically this noise is absorbed by the enclosure but not always.

[Andreas.Lindermeier]

Awesome answer - thank you so much, Andrey!!!

For what it is worth, I installed the following SSD and it works like a charm:
Samsung 980 Pro 2TB