Does any PCIe slot support NVMe SSD's automatically or do I need

2 SSDs which offer much higher performance numbers than SATA SSDs As a result, they require the connector, meaning you can only use an NVMe SSD with a PCIe

Okay, that board supports NVMe drives in all three slots If I were you, I'd diagnose further by trying the 3rd slot, or swapping into

nvme slot vs m2 Samsung 980 NVMe SSD 500GB-image Samsung 980 NVMe SSD 500GB STORAGE & NAS 18,000 Out of Stock + · Addlink S70 Lite 512GB SSD NVMe PCIe Gen3x4

nvme and m2 slot difference There are two types of SSDs: SATA and NVMe SATA uses an older interface with one designed around hard drives while NVMe is designed for flash memory