Storage Option

[Evolutiioz]

I feel like my storage choice is kind of pointless. I was going to use the 970 Evo Plus as a boot drive, the Crucial SSD as a game drive and the Seagate Barracuda as mass storage, should I change?

[Sauron]

26 minutes ago, Evolutiioz said:

I feel like my storage choice is kind of pointless.

Why? It's not a terrible idea. Personally I would go for a larger nvme drive though and add a sata ssd later if necessary - 250GB is a little tight and since the price for a 500gb 970 evo is about the same as the price of a 250gb 970 evo plus a sata drive there isn't much reason not to do that.

[Evolutiioz]

23 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Why? It's not a terrible idea. Personally I would go for a larger nvme drive though and add a sata ssd later if necessary - 250GB is a little tight and since the price for a 500gb 970 evo is about the same as the price of a 250gb 970 evo plus a sata drive there isn't much reason not to do that.

I've been looking at Crucials M.2 drives at around £120, I could get an MX500 1TB for £104. Maybe the 1TB HDD and that SSD?

[Sauron]

2 minutes ago, Evolutiioz said:

I've been looking at Crucials M.2 drives at around £120, I could get an MX500 1TB for £104. Maybe the 1TB HDD and that SSD?

That would make sense too, in most cases a sata ssd is more than fast enough.

[Evolutiioz]

2 minutes ago, Sauron said:

That would make sense too, in most cases a sata ssd is more than fast enough.

It also saves me a little bit of money, so I guess that's a plus

[Evolutiioz]

 

38 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Why? It's not a terrible idea. Personally I would go for a larger nvme drive though and add a sata ssd later if necessary - 250GB is a little tight and since the price for a 500gb 970 evo is about the same as the price of a 250gb 970 evo plus a sata drive there isn't much reason not to do that.

UK market is all over the place at the moment, 500GB 970 Evo is up at nearly £100

[Sauron]

4 minutes ago, Evolutiioz said:

 

UK market is all over the place at the moment, 500GB 970 Evo is up at nearly £100

That's cheaper than the 250gb model plus the 500gb sata drive

15 minutes ago, Evolutiioz said:

It also saves me a little bit of money, so I guess that's a plus

Sure, you can always add an nvme drive later if you want.

[Kedohawyr]

1. 250GB for your boot drive when you obviously have other money to spend is not a great idea going forward.
2. 1TB for your spinning drive is also not a great idea for the same reasons, unless you are extremely tight on money 2TB is a better value and future proofed.
3. While NVMe is nice and in some cases the price of entry level NVMe is becoming extremely attractive, you won't notice performance increases in things like boot time or application launching (this is because the speed increase you feel over a HDD is mainly due to the much lower access times of NAND, not the sequential transfer limits of the SATA vs PCIe bus)

With that in mind I'd suggest this very nice configuration for basically the same price. This gives you plenty of storage (both fast SSD and reliable rust) for future expansion and it means your M.2 slot is still open if you decide later on that you really want to add some NVMe storage (recent drives like the SN500 show that a new generation of less expensive NVMe controllers is probably coming).

 

Alternatively if you are really attached to NVMe you could drop the SATA SSD entirely and go for a 500GB Samsung 970 Pro which would be both your boot and game drive, but then you'd probably have to go with only a 1TB HDD if you didn't want to increase your budget.

 

 

[Evolutiioz]

8 hours ago, Kedohawyr said:

1. 250GB for your boot drive when you obviously have other money to spend is not a great idea going forward.
2. 1TB for your spinning drive is also not a great idea for the same reasons, unless you are extremely tight on money 2TB is a better value and future proofed.
3. While NVMe is nice and in some cases the price of entry level NVMe is becoming extremely attractive, you won't notice performance increases in things like boot time or application launching (this is because the speed increase you feel over a HDD is mainly due to the much lower access times of NAND, not the sequential transfer limits of the SATA vs PCIe bus)

With that in mind I'd suggest this very nice configuration for basically the same price. This gives you plenty of storage (both fast SSD and reliable rust) for future expansion and it means your M.2 slot is still open if you decide later on that you really want to add some NVMe storage (recent drives like the SN500 show that a new generation of less expensive NVMe controllers is probably coming).

 

Alternatively if you are really attached to NVMe you could drop the SATA SSD entirely and go for a 500GB Samsung 970 Pro which would be both your boot and game drive, but then you'd probably have to go with only a 1TB HDD if you didn't want to increase your budget.

 

 

How about going for a 1TB MX500 M 2 drive and keeping the expandability open for an sata SSD?

[Evolutiioz]

17 minutes ago, Evolutiioz said:

How about going for a 1TB MX500 M 2 drive and keeping the expandability open for an sata SSD?

Or this?