Future upgrade path for storage? Need advice for B450 storage

[aDoomGuy]

TLDR: With the modern era of gaming where a single game can hold significantly more than 100 gigs of storage I'm feeling quite ..claustrophobic in terms of storage. Despite the fact that I currently have 6 TB or as Windows displays it 5,4 TB worth of storage I only have some 600 gigs of space left. 450 of that is on a spinning drive so for gaming I'm gonna need upgrade soon, I would according to my plan but with this Covid-19 situation going on I put that on hold because the pricing has increased drastically, oil prices have gone down significantly and that means in the United Emirates of Norway our meager little currency is falling in value. So with importers having to pay more so do we, the gamers of Norway. [/TLDR]

 

So for my questions... My B450-F gaming mobo, It has 6 SATA ports and 2 NVMe slots. However I cannot use them all if I understand correctly. Currently the M.2_1 is occupied by NVMe and that means I cannot use SATA ports 5 and 6, is this correct? Also if I populate M.2_2 then I cannot use the PCIe expansion slots and the PCIe holding my 2060 Super has to go down to 8x speed, is this also correct?

 

Maybe then it is more advisable to use PCIe controller cards for M.2 storage since I can have 2 of them holding two M.2 each and in addition 6x SATA drives, would there be any performance limitations of doing it this way? Also would M.2 storage in this configuration be raidable through the motherboards RAID controller or would it be possible to put them in a RAID together another way? I'm thinking the controller cards may have their own RAID controllers and I have to RAID them in pairs perhaps?

 

Would this be less of a headache with a X570 or a B550? My little brain hurts.  

 

Are there any other ways of keeping these massive games on reasonably fast storage in the future? Any input will be appreciated.

[PyroTheWise]

Just curious as to why you are thinking about NAS or external via the USB 3.1 specification?

[aDoomGuy]

59 minutes ago, PyroTheWise said:

Just curious as to why you are thinking about NAS or external via the USB 3.1 specification?

Well I want a NAS but not for games I think. Same with external really. I hardly have any spare USB left on the BACK of my PC... I have a 3.0 hub though with 4 USB but I prefer games to be stored internally. Got two USB 3.1something unused I think, oh yeah also USB type c is not in use. 

[PyroTheWise]

9 minutes ago, aDoomGuy said:

Well I want a NAS but not for games I think. Same with external really. I hardly have any spare USB left on the BACK of my PC... I have a 3.0 hub though with 4 USB but I prefer games to be stored internally. Got two USB 3.1something unused I think, oh yeah also USB type c is not in use. 

Yes but I would think you could easily "archive" older games to a USB external drive and when you want to play them - pull them back into main storage.

 

The situation with PCIe lanes, NVMe drives, etc... confused me some to.  Sorry that i am not that much of a help

[aDoomGuy]

19 minutes ago, PyroTheWise said:

Yes but I would think you could easily "archive" older games to a USB external drive and when you want to play them - pull them back into main storage.

 

The situation with PCIe lanes, NVMe drives, etc... confused me some to.  Sorry that i am not that much of a help

Dont worry about it buddy. Ill figure something out thats for sure!

[PyroTheWise]

2 minutes ago, aDoomGuy said:

Dont worry about it buddy. Ill figure something out thats for sure!

When you do, please pass that information along.  I enjoy learning new things and maybe I can help pay it forward eventually.

[aDoomGuy]

51 minutes ago, PyroTheWise said:

When you do, please pass that information along.  I enjoy learning new things and maybe I can help pay it forward eventually.

Sure Will!