One or two M2 SSD's for gaming?

[Coffe Lake]

Hi, 

 

I am finishing my gaming build and now it is time for SSD's . 

My rig's moba will be Gigabyte Aorus Master , and since it has three M2 slots I wanna use at least one of them. What I am looking for is a high end SSD or two of them as mentioned above, when it comes to capacity 1TB is just enough for all the games I wanna keep installed and my question is whether should I buy two 500Gb or one 1TB drive. Since I have no experience with M2 SSD's any suggestions are more than welcome  

 

 

 

 

[Slottr]

Do whichever option is cheaper 

[Coffe Lake]

Just now, Slottr said:

Do whichever option is cheaper 

So it doesn't matter? 

Even three of them instead of one won't make any noticeable difference in performance ?

[Slottr]

Just now, Coffe Lake said:

So it doesn't matter? 

Even three of them instead of one won't make any noticeable difference in performance ?

Having more SSD's won't help at all, just takes up bandwidth and pcie lanes. 

 

Either way, if you're just gaming - you'll see no benefit from an M.2 SSD rather than a SATA drive (which are cheaper)

[Princess Luna]

8 minutes ago, Coffe Lake said:

So it doesn't matter? 

Even three of them instead of one won't make any noticeable difference in performance ?

Pretty much doesn't matter, average user should always go for cheap sata3 2,5inch or if you have lots of M.2 ports pick one or two.

 

M.2 by itself is sata3, it has to be specifically NVMe to give more performance and even then this "move performance" is for specific cases, for loading games it gives you no benefit at all.

[Coffe Lake]

1 minute ago, Slottr said:

Having more SSD's won't help at all, just takes up bandwidth and pcie lanes. 

 

Either way, if you're just gaming - you'll see no benefit from an M.2 SSD rather than a SATA drive (which are cheaper)

Oh, that is actually a bit disappointing  ,but my build is an overkill anyway so at least one M2 has to be in it for my .... satisfaction 

 

Any recommendations for 500Gb or  1TB drive?  

 

And about regular SATA drives , I am considering to "borrow" one or two drives from my current pc ( 870 Pro if i remember correctly) , any noticeably faster drives I could buy for that build ?

 

 

[Coffe Lake]

5 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

Pretty much doesn't matter, average user should always go for cheap sata3 2,5inch or if you have lots of M.2 ports pick one or two.

 

M.2 by itself is sata3, it has to be specifically NVMe to give more performance and even then this "move performance" is for specific cases, for loading games it gives you no benefit at all.

Well, what if I would stick with regular drives and bought one 280gb intel Optane ? Is it worth the price ?

[Princess Luna]

34 minutes ago, Coffe Lake said:

Well, what if I would stick with regular drives and bought one 280gb intel Optane ? Is it worth the price ?

Is it just a common usage and gaming pc? pick a m.2 wd green 240gb and then 1tb of whatever other sata 2,5 inch SSD cheapest you can find which is pretty affordable right now.

 

That would be quite the ideal setup even though already a bit overkill given you can go with common 7200rpm hard drives to store games, video and audio and whatever else.

[meenmeen1103]

24 minutes ago, Coffe Lake said:

Well, what if I would stick with regular drives and bought one 280gb intel Optane ? Is it worth the price ?

Optane is a cool technology, but pretty much only useful in their DIMM implementation, not as a 'cache drive', so no. You won't notice games load any faster than from a good 2.5" SSD like the 870 evo's you already have. Using a NVMe as just a boot drive and 2.5" SSD for a game drive is overkill enough imo, without being too over the top. Still not noticeably faster already than if just using 2.5" for it all.

[Coffe Lake]

3 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

Is it just a common usage and gaming pc? pick a m.2 wd green 240gb and then 1tb of whatever other sata 2,5 inch SSD cheapest you can find which is pretty affordable right now.

 

That would be quite the ideal setup even though already a bit overkill given you can go with common 7200rpm hard drives to store games, video and audio and whatever else.

Yes common usage, games, blender or auto-cad from time to time. 240gb for a boot drive sounds good, but why not samsung ? I mean i have no experience here but green? I've never seen Western Digital in gaming apllications.

[Coffe Lake]

6 minutes ago, meenmeen1103 said:

Optane is a cool technology, but pretty much only useful in their DIMM implementation, not as a 'cache drive', so no. You won't notice games load any faster than from a good 2.5" SSD like the 870 evo's you already have. Using a NVMe as just a boot drive and 2.5" SSD for a game drive is overkill enough imo, without being too over the top. Still not noticeably faster already than if just using 2.5" for it all.

I am actually glad u said that , optane is painfully expensive . 

So in conclusion one NVMe drive for windows and the rest does not matter that much , am I right? 

[Princess Luna]

If you're in the US then the 2 best priced solutions for a boot drive while still having reliability and performance are these:

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/dkHRsY/samsung-970-evo-250gb-m2-2280-solid-state-drive-mz-v7e250bw

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/qxc48d/intel-760p-series-256gb-m2-2280-solid-state-drive-ssdpekkw256g8xt

 

you can still look for NVMe like this one:

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/kGndnQ/western-digital-black-nvme-250gb-m2-2280-solid-state-drive-wds250g2x0c

 

It won't offer significant performance boost outside synthetics per se, reliability should still be on pair with those though, it's all a matter of preference at this point, because you wont notice any thing loading literally a second faster.

[meenmeen1103]

4 minutes ago, Coffe Lake said:

I am actually glad u said that , optane is painfully expensive . 

So in conclusion one NVMe drive for windows and the rest does not matter that much , am I right? 

Yes. As far as Samsung vs WD, WD is relatively new in the SSD space but their drives are still great performance. Samsung has just been in the lead long enough to not need the best value aspect, so their drives offer less performance/dollar.

[Coffe Lake]

5 minutes ago, Princess Cadence said:

If you're in the US then the 2 best priced solutions for a boot drive while still having reliability and performance are these:

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/dkHRsY/samsung-970-evo-250gb-m2-2280-solid-state-drive-mz-v7e250bw

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/qxc48d/intel-760p-series-256gb-m2-2280-solid-state-drive-ssdpekkw256g8xt

 

you can still look for NVMe like this one:

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/kGndnQ/western-digital-black-nvme-250gb-m2-2280-solid-state-drive-wds250g2x0c

 

It won't offer significant performance boost outside synthetics per se, reliability should still be on pair with those though, it's all a matter of preference at this point, because you wont notice any thing loading literally a second faster.

I am not from US (Greetings from Poland  ) and WD is not popular here at all . I don't even remember seeing it anywhere in stores to be honest ,but I will go with 250Gb samsung NVMe Pro for windows, and 500Gb also NVMe Pro for games.  Maybe not the cheapest choice ,but  as stupid as it may sound my favourite "Rust" just deserves that drive  ....

 

Rest of them will just be regular sata drives.

 

Thanks for your help , it was just what I needed  

[Coffe Lake]

18 minutes ago, meenmeen1103 said:

Yes. As far as Samsung vs WD, WD is relatively new in the SSD space but their drives are still great performance. Samsung has just been in the lead long enough to not need the best value aspect, so their drives offer less performance/dollar.

Yeah , I just got used to Samsung drives and many other people also did probably. Most popular is not necessarily the best, but at least the quality is predictable and "consistent" I guess