SSD Performance Question

[Gareque]

So having recently built a PC and fitting a WD Black NVMe SSD, I figured I'd separate around 150Gb for Windows and other things, then the remaining 350 for games with longer loading times.

 

Hasn't taken long however, but I am starting to think a fairly pricey NVMe drive (for me anyways...) may be wasted on Windows, though loading up in around 2 seconds is certainly nice, the space could be used for other things.

 

So my question is this, I could pick up a 120Gb regular SSD for pretty much nothing, format the NVMe and use the small SSD for Windows, but what kinda change on performance would it cause?  Also, would it realistically only affect booting in to Windows, or would it affect other things I'm not thinking of?

[GoldenLag]

it would be slower. though in regular use it wouldnt be a major setback. 

[Jurrunio]

the smaller the capacity the lower the SSD's durability, so even if you get a SATA drive for the OS to have more room for other things, at least start at 240gb (especially with cheap SSDs that wont be as durable in the first place).

 

Will it affect boot times, probably not in a noticeable way.

[dgsddfgdfhgs]

good question, I didnt notice huge diff between sata cachless & nvme drive , say just under 3 sec boot time 

[Gareque]

16 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

the smaller the capacity the lower the SSD's durability, so even if you get a SATA drive for the OS to have more room for other things, at least start at 240gb (especially with cheap SSDs that wont be as durable in the first place).

 

Will it affect boot times, probably not in a noticeable way.

By the durability, I am guessing you mean the lifespan in terms of how many write cycles it has etc?

 

If so, if all your doing is installing Windows to it, then I would've thought it should be more than enough for it.  It doesn't do damage to the drive reading from it from what I can find, unless that's wrong?

 

The only reason I thought 120Gb is because it would be more than enough for a Windows partition and I can pick one up for less than £20.

[Schakal_No1]

NVMe shines on IOPS, the bandwidth increase is not that relevant. IOPS is how often you access anything on your drive, not how much data you will access. Your OS will access the drive much more often than any games would. So put the OS on the NVMe Drive and games on the ssd. If these increases are not that important to you, going with regular SSD and no NVME is not that much worse but a lot cheaper.

[Gareque]

18 minutes ago, PacketMan said:

An NVMe SSD is wasted with games, you can benefit from its speed in Windows programs, startup, swap file, etc

So going for an NVMe SSD for games instead of a regular SATA SSD will save you maybe a few seconds, there are videos on youtube

NVMe for Windows, SATA for games

Ordinarily I'd get what you mean, but I don't really do a whole lot of file transfers or windows-programs etc.  The sole use of the PC is gaming and art software such as Photoshop.

 

In gaming terms however, it potentially cuts down loading screens by a lot more than simply booting up fast if that makes sense?

[Gareque]

1 minute ago, Schakal_No1 said:

NVMe shines on IOPS, the bandwidth increase is not that relevant. IOPS is how often you access anything on your drive, not how much data you will access. Your OS will access the drive much more often than any games would. So put the OS on the NVMe Drive and games on the ssd. If these increases are not that important to you, going with regular SSD and no NVME is not that much worse but a lot cheaper.

Ah, fair enough.

 

I already own the NVMe, so no point worrying about that now lol.  So realistically, things would run a fraction slower if the OS is on a regular drive, but in all reality I'm guessing it isn't likely to make much difference either way?

[Schakal_No1]

1 minute ago, Gareque said:

 I already own the NVMe, so no point worrying about that now lol.  So realistically, things would run a fraction slower if the OS is on a regular drive, but in all reality I'm guessing it isn't likely to make much difference either way?

If your games are already on a ssd, your loading times are most likely capped by your processor, not by the drive. But your OS will work more fluently with the NVMe but not like the difference between SSD and HDD. It does not only affect boot time but general use.

[Gareque]

1 minute ago, Schakal_No1 said:

If your games are already on a ssd, your loading times are most likely capped by your processor, not by the drive. But your OS will work more fluently with the NVMe but not like the difference between SSD and HDD. It does not only affect boot time but general use.

Ah fair enough.

 

Thanks for the info!

[Jurrunio]

11 minutes ago, Gareque said:

By the durability, I am guessing you mean the lifespan in terms of how many write cycles it has etc?

 

If so, if all your doing is installing Windows to it, then I would've thought it should be more than enough for it.  It doesn't do damage to the drive reading from it from what I can find, unless that's wrong?

 

The only reason I thought 120Gb is because it would be more than enough for a Windows partition and I can pick one up for less than £20.

Windows itself writes to the drive, updates, logs and such. Not a lot, but they add up over time.

[Gareque]

2 minutes ago, Jurrunio said:

Windows itself writes to the drive, updates, logs and such. Not a lot, but they add up over time.

Ah, a fair point.  Hadn't really thought about logs.