M.2 SSD confusion

[SeemsLegit]

Okay, so I'm slowly preparing for my first gaming PC build (high end, ryzen 5 5600X & MSI 570X gaming edge wifi MB) and I've hit a bit of a wall with chosing the right SSD. when looking into it different terms like PCI Express, SATA, PCI-E and NVMe start popping up and it all gets very confusing for someone rather unclutured in the ways of the master race like myself. I know the motherboard has one Gen4 and one Gen3 M.2 slot but thats where things stop making sense so a brief explanation would be appreciated.

 

Aside from that, what's the best way to make use of those 2 slots? For a gaming rig, obviously the steam library will take up the most space but I've also been told its not the best idea to fill up the drive housing your OS?

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

You want to use an NVME drive for your boot drive, and a larger drive for your game library. The exact configuration depends on your budget. It might be two NVME drives, or an NVME drive and an HDD. But as a starting point, a reasonable configuration would be a smaller faster TLC drive with DRAM cache for your boot drive, and a slower (but still fast) QLC or TLC drive with DRAM cache for your game library.

 

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
Storage	Silicon Power A80 512 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	$61.99 @ Amazon
Storage	Mushkin Pilot-E 2 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive	$214.99 @ Amazon
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total	$276.98
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2021-04-20 13:56 EDT-0400

 

This 2TB drive is actually quite fast, it just happens to be pretty cheap right now, too.

[Senzelian]

You should usually first look at the amount of storage you need. For the average gamer, 1-2 terabytes of storage are enough. This can cost you roughly anything from $100 to $300, depending on the amount of storage and the type of SSD you get.

 

Then you should see how much available bandwith you need. Of course anything above a few GB/s sounds great, but always keep and mind that only a limited amount of applications can actually make use of such high transfer rates. Chrome and Windows 10 are not one of them. Especially small applications such as browsers, voip applications (discord, teamspeak, ...) or password managers (or whatever else you might use on a daily basis) do not benefit from fast transfer rates.

 

So I cannot recommend a fast NVMe drive as your boot device, if it costs substantially more than a SATA SSD.

 

When it comes to gaming on the other hand, it can make sense to run a NVMe SSD. It doesn't matter too much whether it is a Gen 3 or Gen 4 SSD, but this can change relatively quickly in the future and usually SSDs are something you will keep for quite a while, as they are very reliable nowadays. So also plan for the future.

 

[SeemsLegit]

Throwing around all the acronyms doesn't really help me since I don't understand them. From my understanding so far is the motherboard has 2 M.2 slots, 1 gen4 and 1gen3, use a smaller capacity M.2 in the gen4 slot for boot/OS because its direct something something linked to the CPU and a larger capacity M.2 in the other slot for games & general use. which brings me back to my original question of WHICH M.2 SSD, theres all the different acronyms on them that it gets hard to tell apart what is what 

[Ydfhlx]

3 hours ago, SeemsLegit said:

PCI Express, SATA, PCI-E and NVMe

PCI Express = PCI-E = NVMe = M.2, this is connection type/disk protocol/format used for SSD drives.

 

SATA is an older protocol/connection, used for both SSD and HDD. Drives can have format of 2.5" for SSD and 3.5" for HDD. SATA SSD is slower than NVMe one, because it's an older type of connection designed for HDDs.

 

First of all, you always want to have your OS (operating system) on a SSD (a boot drive = drive with OS). On a high-end system I'd go for NVMe, price difference isn't high enough to not do it. Preferably a 512GB, that's big enough for a boot drive and apps while usually being better in terms of GB/$ than 256 ones.

 

And you also need to store your game library somewhere. How much space will it take is entirely up to you, for some 1TB is enough, for some - 10TB isn't. But don't worry, you can easily add storage later. Here comes the first choice: Do you want SSD or HDD for you library? The only difference is loading times of games, no performance impact at all - and of course price. Should you choose SSD, I'd go for SATA, as in case of game loading times, the difference isn't really noticeable, as shown in the video linked. And 2nd reason I'll go into later. Now it gets more complicated, because if you choose HDD then for a part of the money saved you can go for a 512GB boot SSD and move your most frequently played games to there so you'll onlyneed to load from HDD your rarely played ones.

I apologise for the wall of text, but it somehow came out like this. Concluding, if you don't mind spending extra money, your steam library is rather small or you absolutely can't stand longer loading times, go for SSD storage - but make sure they have DRAM cache, and generally refer to the tier list on this forum (with any drives btw - do your research as well tho). If your steam library is pretty large, you don't mind longer loading times or don't see reason to spend more money on this, then go for HDD.

 

Now, coming back to why only 1 NVMe, and why at all? Yes, in loading times use you might barely see a difference between SATA and NVMe, but I just can't recommend a high-end system to have only SATA. And why 1? Direct storage is coming to windows soon ^TM . It'll basically speed up loading times by a lot if you have PCIe gen 4. Your CPU and your motherboard have this, so I'd leave an option to get a drive that supports it in the future. Not yet however, as by the time it actually gets introduced many things may happen, including you building a new computer, or PCIe Gen 4 SSD prices dropping by half (they're pretty expensive now). "Normal" ones you'll see are gen 3, and go for that.

 

TL;DR: 512GB NVMe boot drive + for game library either SATA SSD for faster loading times or HDD for cheaper. Size of those depends on you and your library.

 

Final thing you asked - don't fill up a SSD drive. It is generally recomended (although not a must) to have about 20% free at all times, because filling it up completely will reduce both speed and life span - think about it as trying to find something in a truck with boxes up to the roof. HDDs don't have this problem however.

 

Edit: When you'll be building your PC, the NVMe will probably go to the gen 4 capable slot, as that probably goes directly to CPU, not thruogh motherboard chipset. Check manual though.

 

Edit 2: Reading your other comments in this thread you seem to think that drives have to go to M.2 slot. SATA ones go to SATA ports, you have 6 of those on your MoBo. You can also plug SSDs to PCIe extension slots if you run out of M.2.

 

Edit 3: <rant> As a sidenote, so many people here have no idea what are they talking about... How can you possibly recommend a disk size without even asking about Steam library size??? Why do you reccomend 2x gen3 SSDs when gen4 with direct storage is just behind the corner, without even leaving a free slot while OP's CPU and MoBo can support it - OP would have to sell one of disks to have space for a gen 4 capable! And why do you recommend a NVMe of an unknown brand (in SSD market it's a synonym to questionable) and with mediocre warranty, while you can get a SATA one from a known brand and with much longer warranty for cheaper and have no notable performance difference? </rant>

3 hours ago, HairlessMonkeyBoy said:

Storage Silicon Power A80 512 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive $61.99 @ Amazon Storage Mushkin Pilot-E 2 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive $214.99 @ Amazon

 

[Hairless Monkey Boy]

1 hour ago, Ydfhlx said:

And why do you recommend a NVMe of an unknown brand

Lol, just because it is unknown to you, does not make it unknown...

2 hours ago, SeemsLegit said:

which brings me back to my original question of WHICH M.2 SSD, theres all the different acronyms on them that it gets hard to tell apart what is what 

I have provided my general recommendation already. For a more specific recommendation, I need to know the total budget for your build, if you already have parts or are reusing parts, what country you are in, and what you will be using the system for. Basically all of this:

Quote

Budget (including currency): 

Country: 

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: 

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): 

As for the acronyms, I'll admit it's daunting. But Google is your friend, my friend. There are resources out there that can do a much better job of explaining this than I can here. What I can do, is recommend the right product for your circumstance. Then you can research just those products, instead of the entire SSD space, to learn why they are right for you.

[Ydfhlx]

20 minutes ago, HairlessMonkeyBoy said:

Lol, just because it is unknown to you, does not make it unknown...

Lol, perhaps I didn't know about it because it doesn't retail in my country... Even Bestbuy doesn't sell them, if that's an indication of something to you. And there are 8 reviews of their Pilot-E SSD on pcpartpicker, compared to 750+ of Samsung 970 EVO. Yes, that is objectively an unknown brand even if you know about it.

 

And it still doesn't answer my other issues with your reccomendation like blocking PCIe Gen 4 Direct storage upgrade in the future, only 3 years of warranty, or why do we need an NVMe for games in the first place.

 

And why 2.5 TB, not 1 or not 4 - although here you're admitting OP should specify his needs for a specific recommendation:

38 minutes ago, HairlessMonkeyBoy said:

I have provided my general recommendation already.

No, you recommended 2 specific disks in specific sizes to buy...

[SeemsLegit]

Okay, with those chonky paragraphs Ydfhlx did a pretty solid job explaining things, because now it makes sense to me. I'll be looking for a gen 4 M.2 for my boot (my budget allows it, don't worry) and a sizable SATA SSD for my games, my current PC is already using up over 1TB of space and thats just for my most played games, a HDD would be too slow and I don't want to blow a small fortune on a 2+ TB M.2 drive (UNLESS I find one at a really good price).

 

But that pretty much settles things for now I think, and from what I'm understanding,  as long as it's a fishfinger shaped M.2 drive then the mind numbing acronyms don't matter besides which gen it is (and yes i know they are backwards compatible but spending extra on a gen 4 for a gen 3 slot would be dumb)