Single NVMe M.2 drive for new gaming build?

[Faddish Coder]

Greetings,

 

I'm building a new gaming machine. It's been a while since I've done a build (2013)... so much has changed since then.  Is it still necessary to have a separate OS and data drive (for games)?

 

I'm planning on EVO 970 Plus 1 TB M.2 and figure I can add another 2 TB M.2 when the PCIe 4x drives get better.

 

I plan on playing only a few games:
- COD Warzone (200 gig)

- PUBG (25 gig)

- Flight Sim 2020 (150 gig)

- Maybe something to test out Ray Tracing (50 gig)

- a free game that's coming with the processor (~50 gig)

 

Thoughts?

 

Edit: I fail at search.  Found multiple threads with answers. Seems it won't make a difference and I can start with the single NVMe drive.

 

Edited August 31, 2020 by Faddish Coder
Corrected product name

[bmx6454]

1 nvme is fine, no need to have separate storage at this point. same way i run mine, 2 m.2's.

[Electronics Wizardy]

5 minutes ago, Faddish Coder said:

EVO 970 Pro 1 TB M.2

Do you mean the evo or pro, there 2 different products.

 

Id probalby get a lower end 2tb drive. You will probably get more drives, and the premium drives won't make a difference here.

[Faddish Coder]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

Do you mean the evo or pro, there 2 different products.

 

Id probalby get a lower end 2tb drive. You will probably get more drives, and the premium drives won't make a difference here.

Whoops.  Looking at the EVO Plus* not pro.  Getting an x570 board but it seems there are not many PCIe 4.0 drives that offer significant performance gain around the same price.  Any other brands I should be considering?

[trag1c]

I just bought the WD 1TB NVMe drive a few weeks back and it's exceptional for the money. Here in Canada its almost half the price for similar performance to a Samsung 970 EVO

[bmx6454]

5 minutes ago, Faddish Coder said:

Any other brands I should be considering?

I'm running a crucial p1 with a 970 evo plus, not any performance gain in gaming between the two for me. i would recommend the crucial p1 as a cheaper alternative to the 970 evo plus for sure.

[Electronics Wizardy]

6 minutes ago, Faddish Coder said:

Whoops.  Looking at the EVO Plus* not pro.  Getting an x570 board but it seems there are not many PCIe 4.0 drives that offer significant performance gain around the same price.  Any other brands I should be considering?

There really isnt  big performance boost, esp for gmes, the sequenticla speeds boost doesn't really matter for most real world uses.

Id get a cheaper drive, maybe a 665p or p1

[Chris Pratt]

Bear in mind that SSDs get slower the more full they are, and also SATA SSDs are still cheaper than NVMe, for larger capacities. I still like to have a separate 500GB boot NVMe drive, and then a larger SATA SSD for game storage. That way, filling up on games doesn't impact the rest of the system's performance. You won't see a difference between SATA and NVMe for games, anyways.