One or two NVME

[RuizLire]

Hello! 

I am planning a new gaming desktop. I haven’t decided on all parts yet, but I am stuck on a deciding factor of storage.

I am wondering if I should get one big and fast 2TB Nvme for both OS and games and such, or if I should split the OS with one semi fast 240 or 500GB storage and one 1TB or 2TB for games and such?

Thanks in advance

[LIGISTX]

8 minutes ago, RuizLire said:

Hello! 

I am planning a new gaming desktop. I haven’t decided on all parts yet, but I am stuck on a deciding factor of storage.

I am wondering if I should get one big and fast 2TB Nvme for both OS and games and such, or if I should split the OS with one semi fast 240 or 500GB storage and one 1TB or 2TB for games and such?

Thanks in advance

Totally up to you. Performance wise there is effectively no difference. 

[Tan3l6]

11 minutes ago, Caroline said:

None.

nVME makes no difference when it comes to games, it's just a waste of money. nVME drives were made for workstations that need to handle big (>10GB) files like 4K videos, databases or complex 3D models.

 

Games load multiple files at once and real life performance against a 2.5/m.2 SATA is the same.

Do not agree ... in many AAA games the world textures loading time difference favors NVME drives heavily over SATA.

Edit: actually come to think of it - can't fuind benchmarks to confirm :/  Maybe I'm mistaken?

 

Otherwise yeah, no difference in most loading times.

[Darkwing Drex]

I like to keep my OS storage separate from my games and such. Just in case i need to reinstall windows or move my drives to something else, I can. Speed wise, the nvme vs sata ssd is kind of a toss up. You'll barely notice a difference in load times for MOST games, in my opinion. Save 30 bucks and get a 1 or 2TB Sata ssd for your games.

[XnonXte]

If I were you I might going with 2 TB Worth of NVME SSD, And splitting it half for Windows and Games, I reccomendeting also buying a slower but respectable HDD with 2-4 TB for a Game that you won't usually play, And use the NVME SSD for the Game that you often play it...

 

Other than that NVME Could favor some game, But not really a thing when it come to like light gaming

 

But a Decent 2TB NVME SSD Should do the trick, They do much faster than sata, Easier to install, No cable BS. No extra Headache with AHCI or IDE Mode

 

[porina]

For future proofing a bit, I'd still target a single large good performance NVMe SSD for several reasons:

1, I'm lazy and would like to avoid manually making sure games are on a drive with space

2a, A good NVMe drive does generally speed up loading times. The question is more how much, and is it worth it? That's for the buyer to decide.

2b, There isn't that much difference in price between SATA and NVMe of a comparable grade anyway, but obvious SATA is inherently limited in transfer rates.

3, RTX-IO / DirectStorage might finally become a thing.

 

I went for a 980 Pro 2TB in my latest gaming build. It is probably overkill but still cheaper than the Optane of my older gaming system.

 

The main reason I'd see for multiple NVMe drives is to have a high performance one for OS, and a value orientated one for games. There are some situations where the SSD does make more of a difference than some might realise, and I think the OS one should be of a decent performance. At the least, not a DRAM-less design. On the game storage drive, most of the usage is read only, so those performance impacts are much less relevant. The times you might write a lot to them is during initial install or during patching, where performance is not so important.

[brob]

I have never bought a drive lower in capacity than the last one I bought. IOW larger drives have a longer useful life.

 

There can be a performance benefit with higher capacity drives.

 

Larger drives have higher endurance numbers which can lead to a longer lasting drive.

[RuizLire]

Still have some thinking to do, as prices is generaly high where I live, I might end up with one high grade, and high speed drive, as performance is my top priority, and direct storage is the future for speed.