M.2 or 2.5' SSD for games?

[w0rpz]

Is there any real-world difference between a loading a game on a M.2 or 2.5" SSD? 

 

Just wanting to see if it is worth spending extra money on a larger 2.5" SSD or a smaller M.2 SSD.

[Oshino Shinobu]

M.2 and 2.5" are just different form factors, there's no inherent difference between them. 

 

What would be the difference is NVMe and SATA, which I assume is what you're referring to. In that case, for games, it really doesn't make much difference at all. You might see slightly faster load times on NVMe, but it'll be negligible. Something to bear in mind is that 2.5" SATA isn't necessarily cheaper than M.2 NVMe, so I'd check what's available first before just buying a 2.5" SATA drive. 

[coca-cola-is-good]

24 minutes ago, w0rpz said:

Is there any real-world difference between a loading a game on a M.2 or 2.5" SSD? 

 

Just wanting to see if it is worth spending extra money on a larger 2.5" SSD or a smaller M.2 SSD.

Either one is completely fine. If you do choose an NVMe SSD, there is a difference with speeds, but it shouldn't really matter. 2.5" SATA SSDs are fairly fast already.

[RONOTHAN##]

Honestly, outside of a couple games, there's not much of an improvement from a 3.5" HDD and an SSD if it's just gonna be for games. This really comes down to what form factor you want. If you have space in your case for it, I'd just get a large 3.5" drive. 4TB drives sell for about $80 (same price as most 1TB SSDs) last I checked, and for everything but maybe Rust loading times will be within a couple seconds of an SSD.

 

If you can't fit a 3.5" hard drive in your case or don't want to for noise reasons, then go for whichever would be more convenient for you, prices are very similar between 2.5" and M.2 SSDs. M.2 SSDs don't require running any cables, but there are a limited amount of slots available for them on a motherboard, and some of those slots can be impossible to get to with a GPU installed. My system, for example, has an X570 Taichi in it, one of the boards with a full metal cover on it. In order to install/remove an M.2, I'd have to take out the GPU, take off the board cover, install the SSD, and put everything back into place. Add in the fact that the GPU is water cooled, it takes me well over an hour in order to service an M.2 SSD, where as running the cables and installing a SATA SSD takes about 5 minutes. That said, if you're in an SFF rig, installing SATA SSDs can be a bit of a pain and the simplicity of just screwing it to the motherboard when you first build the system might be worth it to you.