MSI is upping its M.2 add-in card game with an all-new M.2 expander card, which the motherboard and graphics card manufacturer announced at Computex. Known as the M.2 Xpander-Aero Slider Gen 5 (what a mouthful), the card supports up to two 22110-size M.2 drives at Gen 5 speeds.
The main selling point of MSI's new expander is the way the M.2 drives are installed. Compared to other models that require you to take off the heatsink and install the drives on ordinary M.2 slots, MSI's new expander card has two M.2 bays that can be accessed from the rear PCIe slots. This not only gives you access to the drives at any time but also enables hot swappability, which MSI's card officially supports.
