Home Lab Dilemma: Can I use Read-Intensive NVMe in a 2.5-inch bay without a specialized backplane?

Hey everyone, I’ve been spending a lot of time lately prepping for my next round of IT certifications, and as part of that, I’ve been trying to beef up my home lab. I’ve reached a point where my old spinning disks and even my standard consumer SATA SSDs are starting to feel like a major bottleneck, especially when I’m running multiple VMs for a simulated network environment. I recently stumbled upon what I thought was a fantastic deal on some enterprise-grade hardware. I picked up a few 480GB Read-Intensive (RI) NVMe SSDs. I was specifically looking for the 2.5-inch form factor because I have plenty of SFF (Small Form Factor) bays in my current rack server. I figured, "Hey, it’s an NVMe SSD in a 2.5-inch shell—this should be a simple plug-and-play upgrade to get that massive PCIe speed boost, right?" Well, as I’m sure many of the more experienced admins here are already laughing, I hit a snag almost immediately. The specific point of confusion for me—and something I’ve seen debated on other tech boards—is the physical interface versus the protocol. I realized too late that just because it’s a 2.5-inch drive doesn't mean it’s SATA or SAS. These 480GB RI units are actually U.2 NVMe, and my current backplane is strictly wired for SATA/SAS controllers https://serverorbit.com/solid-state-drives-ssd/nvme-ssd/480gb-ri-2-5inch. My personal insight from this "rookie" mistake is that the 2.5-inch form factor is becoming a bit of a minefield for hobbyists. We’re so used to "2.5-inch" meaning "SATA" that we forget about the PCIe wiring requirements for U.2. It’s been a frustrating weekend of realizing I need either a specific M.2 to U.2 adapter or a completely different PCIe bridge card to even get the BIOS to see these things. What’s even more interesting is the "Read-Intensive" (RI) rating. Since these are 480GB units, I was planning on using one as a dedicated boot and log drive for my hypervisor. However, I started worrying about whether the constant logging of an enterprise OS would burn through the endurance of an RI drive faster than a Mixed-Use (MU) drive, even with the speed of the NVMe interface. In my head, I figured 480GB is more than enough space, but the endurance side of enterprise gear is a whole different ballgame compared to consumer stuff. Has anyone else here successfully integrated 2.5-inch NVMe drives into a legacy server that didn't have native U.2 support on the backplane? I’m looking at some of those cheap PCIe-to-U.2 adapter cards, but I’m worried about whether I’ll run into issues with NVMe boot support or if I’m just creating a new set of stability problems. Do you think it's worth the hassle to adapt these RI drives for a home lab, or should I just stick with standard 6Gbps SATA SSDs and accept the lower throughput for the sake of simplicity?