USB 3.0 Caddy to house gaming drives?

[Tieox]

I have filled all the bays in my NZXT 340, and rather than get another case or higher capacity drives I am wondering if I could get a pci card for more USB 3.0 ports and utilise one of them for a gaming drive?

[emosun]

what capacity are the current drives becuase I would definitely go the higher capacity route as your sata ports will outrun a usb 3 card

[Bombastinator]

4 minutes ago, Kierax said:

I have filled all the bays in my NZXT 340, and rather than get another case or higher capacity drives I am wondering if I could get a pci card for more USB 3.0 ports and utilise one of them for a gaming drive?

USB 3 is fast enough to be useful for mech HDs.  It would work, assuming the addition of a pcie card wouldn’t mess up the utilization of pcie slots you’re already using for something else (yes but could possibly make something else slower.  Or not) it wouldn’t be fast though.

[Tieox]

 

 

3 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

USB 3 is fast enough to be useful for mech HDs.  It would work, assuming the addition of a pcie card wouldn’t mess up the utilization of pcie slots you’re already using for something else (yes but could possibly make something else slower.  Or not) it wouldn’t be fast though.

I've only a Gigabyte G1 1080 in the PCi-Express slots.  Got one full sized GPU capable slot clear, and two smaller underneath open, also one small above the gpu.

 

I'd only be using 2TB+ 7,200 RPM drives in the caddy purely to hold games on my Steam/Origin library as I think the Bethesda launcher would shit a brick if the drive was not attached on bootup at any point (like I have took the PC out of the house)

 

 

[RainingTacco]

8 minutes ago, Kierax said:

 

 

I've only a Gigabyte G1 1080 in the PCi-Express slots.  Got one full sized GPU capable slot clear, and two smaller underneath open, also one small above the gpu.

 

I'd only be using 2TB+ 7,200 RPM drives in the caddy purely to hold games on my Steam/Origin library as I think the Bethesda launcher would shit a brick if the drive was not attached on bootup at any point (like I have took the PC out of the house)

 

 

Do you still have free sata ports left? There are eSATA drives you could use, albeit USB 3.0 might be easier to setup/use. 

[Tieox]

1 minute ago, RainingTacco said:

Do you still have free sata ports left? There are eSATA drives you could use, albeit USB 3.0 might be easier to setup/use. 

I have two Sata ports left, although running it in via the case could be fun, it's getting quite packed in there behind the mobo tray.

 

 

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, Kierax said:

 

 

I've only a Gigabyte G1 1080 in the PCi-Express slots.  Got one full sized GPU capable slot clear, and two smaller underneath open, also one small above the gpu.

 

I'd only be using 2TB+ 7,200 RPM drives in the caddy purely to hold games on my Steam/Origin library as I think the Bethesda launcher would shit a brick if the drive was not attached on bootup at any point (like I have took the PC out of the house)

 

 

Whether or not using a second pcie slot in a given place cuts pcie lanes and where varies by motherboard model.

1080 has a x16 slot Pcie 3.0, but iirc doesn’t quite saturate x8 Pcie, so there’s a good chance that it won’t matter because the worst it will do is cut the 1080 from x16 to x8.