Are these good upgrades for my HDDs?

[IShyGuyI]

(Sorry for the long post) So I have 2 2tb hard drives and I've been wanting to upgrade for a while. I've also been meaning to upgrade my boot drive so it's not constantly full. I want to switch from HDDs so SSDs and was wondering if these were good or if there are better options that aren't too expensive my budget you'll probably be somewhere around $600 ish total. Below are the drives I want to switch to. The 500gb is going to be my new boot drive and the 2 4tb SSDs will be replacing my HDDs and the remaining 2tb nvme ssd will be a new addition. I am mainly doing this because I want games to download and load faster and because ive almost run out of space on my HDDs. I appreciate any help you can provide.

[PDifolco]

What's your system ?

NVme are way faster than SATA SSD but real speed depends on the PCie gen your CPU/board can support

If you mostly use the drives as "cold" storage a SATA SSD will be enough anyway

[IShyGuyI]

8 minutes ago, PDifolco said:

What's your system ?

NVme are way faster than SATA SSD but real speed depends on the PCie gen your CPU/board can support

If you mostly use the drives as "cold" storage a SATA SSD will be enough anyway

I have a Taichi x570 motherboard and a ryzen 7 3700x cpu.

[Dedayog]

12 minutes ago, PDifolco said:

What's your system ?

NVme are way faster than SATA SSD but real speed depends on the PCie gen your CPU/board can support

If you mostly use the drives as "cold" storage a SATA SSD will be enough anyway

Use case matters here more.    NVMe is faster, yes, but not enough to be noticeable for most uses, even with a Gen 5 PCIe slot.

 

The Samsung 970's will be more than adequate.

[Ryker Robb]

I wouldn't recommend the 500gb nvme, i would recommend using the 2tb nvme as the boot drive, and getting a slower higher capacity drive as you 2nd nvme(like the wd black sn770 2tb for $100, or crucial p3 2tb for $80). It also appears you have 3 m.2 slots on your motherboard. You could go for a 4tb nvme drive like the crucial p3 plus, for around the same price as the sata ssd you picked out. And you don't have to get rid of your hdds either, you could keep them in as extra storage.

[venomtail]

If I had a choice I'd configure a system like this:

1TB boot drive (you could get away with 500GB but it's tight, at least for a dev)

Two 4TB M.2's for all you mass storage.

 

Or if this is too much, here are simply cheaper offers by a large margin for a 4TB M.2 and Boot drive.

 

No wires, everything's on your motherboard:

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor  (Purchased For $0.00) 
Motherboard: ASRock X570 Taichi ATX AM4 Motherboard  (Purchased For $0.00) 
Storage: Crucial P5 Plus 1 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  ($58.99 @ Amazon) 
Storage: Leven JP600 4 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  ($149.99 @ Amazon) 
Storage: Leven JP600 4 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 3.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  ($149.99 @ Amazon) 
Total: $358.97
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-10-27 09:58 EDT-0400

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, IShyGuyI said:

(Sorry for the long post) So I have 2 2tb hard drives and I've been wanting to upgrade for a while. I've also been meaning to upgrade my boot drive so it's not constantly full. I want to switch from HDDs so SSDs and was wondering if these were good or if there are better options that aren't too expensive my budget you'll probably be somewhere around $600 ish total. Below are the drives I want to switch to. The 500gb is going to be my new boot drive and the 2 4tb SSDs will be replacing my HDDs and the remaining 2tb nvme ssd will be a new addition. I am mainly doing this because I want games to download and load faster and because ive almost run out of space on my HDDs. I appreciate any help you can provide.

Don't use SATA SSD's, likewise don't use low-capacity SSD's.

 

The difference in speed between a SATA III SSD and a PCIe 4 is around 16 times. 

 

SATA III = 500MB/sec

PCIe 3 x4 = 4000MB/sec

PCIe 4 x4 = 8000MB/sec

 

Look up the actual benchmark speed before you actually decide on something, because there are also DRAM-less models which are not fast.

 

For example, that 2TB Sabrent drive can be 7100MB/sec on PCIe4 or 3500MB PCIe3

 

You leave half the performance on the table if you don't plug it into the right slot.

 

SATA drives peak at 500MB/sec, regardless of what it is. Like you can buy a WD Red Pro (a 7200RPM drive) that has controller to cache speed of 500MB/s, but it'll sit around 250-300MB/sec once it stops hitting the cache.

 

It's impossible to exceed it (and if you wanna nitpick, it's more likely 550MB/s)

This is from a SATA SSD

 

 

Meanwhile this is a PCIe4 SSD on a PCIe 4 x4 connection:

I'm ignoring the write speed just to prove a point, because that's usually the highly variable part of it.

 

At any rate, always BUY a NVMe SSD over a SATA SSD.

[Dedayog]

5 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Don't use SATA SSD's, likewise don't use low-capacity SSD's.

 

The difference in speed between a SATA III SSD and a PCIe 4 is around 16 times. 

 

SATA III = 500MB/sec

PCIe 3 x4 = 4000MB/sec

PCIe 4 x4 = 8000MB/sec

 

Look up the actual benchmark speed before you actually decide on something, because there are also DRAM-less models which are not fast.

 

For example, that 2TB Sabrent drive can be 7100MB/sec on PCIe4 or 3500MB PCIe3

 

You leave half the performance on the table if you don't plug it into the right slot.

 

SATA drives peak at 500MB/sec, regardless of what it is. Like you can buy a WD Red Pro (a 7200RPM drive) that has controller to cache speed of 500MB/s, but it'll sit around 250-300MB/sec once it stops hitting the cache.

 

It's impossible to exceed it (and if you wanna nitpick, it's more likely 550MB/s)

This is from a SATA SSD

 

 

Meanwhile this is a PCIe4 SSD on a PCIe 4 x4 connection:

I'm ignoring the write speed just to prove a point, because that's usually the highly variable part of it.

 

At any rate, always BUY a NVMe SSD over a SATA SSD.

And the information skewing continues...

[jaslion]

Whats the usecase?

 

Nvme is faster but that doesn't matter one bit if it's not needed

[Kisai]

9 minutes ago, Dedayog said:

And the information skewing continues...

The user said they wanted to replace their drives with 3 SSD's

 

Most likely they can't use 3 NVMe PCIe4 drives to begin with, as most motherboards, even with 3 NVMe M.2's only one of those is going to be the PCIe4 and the rest are going to be PCIe3.

 

If they wanted cold storage, they would have asked for USB drives, not SSD's. They're all TLC drives, so you may as well be able to make use of it instead of having it crippled by SATA.

 

Even then, if you're going to cold storage, and wanted to stick with SATA, you'd pick one large capacity drive rather than two low capacity drives that are also nerfed by the SATA connection.

 

Personally, I'd buy a 4TB boot drive PCIe drive and just dump everything not being played to a 7200RPM 8TB+ WD Red Pro, Gold or Purple. The only reason to avoid Mechanical drives is for noise and thermal reasons. If you want to avoid them for speed problems, well you know what wastes a lot of time? Downloading. If you can just kick everything you're not playing off the SSD, then you might not even need a 4TB boot drive.

 

But kicking stuff off one SSD to another, pointless, just play it off the SSD. So don't consider SATA SSD's.

 

 

 

 

[Dedayog]

3 minutes ago, Kisai said:

The user said they wanted to replace their drives with 3 SSD's

 

Most likely they can't use 3 NVMe PCIe4 drives to begin with, as most motherboards, even with 3 NVMe M.2's only one of those is going to be the PCIe4 and the rest are going to be PCIe3.

 

If they wanted cold storage, they would have asked for USB drives, not SSD's. They're all TLC drives, so you may as well be able to make use of it instead of having it crippled by SATA.

 

Even then, if you're going to cold storage, and wanted to stick with SATA, you'd pick one large capacity drive rather than two low capacity drives that are also nerfed by the SATA connection.

 

Personally, I'd buy a 4TB boot drive PCIe drive and just dump everything not being played to a 7200RPM 8TB+ WD Red Pro, Gold or Purple. The only reason to avoid Mechanical drives is for noise and thermal reasons. If you want to avoid them for speed problems, well you know what wastes a lot of time? Downloading. If you can just kick everything you're not playing off the SSD, then you might not even need a 4TB boot drive.

 

But kicking stuff off one SSD to another, pointless, just play it off the SSD. So don't consider SATA SSD's.

 

 

 

 

I'm concerned with your positioning of SATA drives being 16x slower than NVMe drives (and to not get SATA cuz slow), as if that is a real world experience.

 

Keep stating technical facts, fine.  But at least put things in perspective for users and the real experiences they will have.

 

 

[Ryker Robb]

12 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Most likely they can't use 3 NVMe PCIe4 drives to begin with, as most motherboards, even with 3 NVMe M.2's only one of those is going to be the PCIe4 and the rest are going to be PCIe3.

Op has asrock x570 taichi, which has 3 gen 4 nvme slots.

[Kisai]

8 minutes ago, Dedayog said:

I'm concerned with your positioning of SATA drives being 16x slower than NVMe drives (and to not get SATA cuz slow), as if that is a real world experience.

 

Keep stating technical facts, fine.  But at least put things in perspective for users and the real experiences they will have.

 

 

3.3x between those two models on read, 6.1x on Write. 

 

It's literately multiples. That is reason enough to not consider SATA SSD's. Why would you spend 50$ less money for only a third of the performance? 

https://sabrent.com/products/sb-rkt4p-4tb

https://semiconductor.samsung.com/us/consumer-storage/internal-ssd/870evo/

 

Samsung makes NVme drives too. That Sabrent drive is closer to the 980 PRO

https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/memory-storage/solid-state-drives/

 

Realistically, people often look at the price for a part and don't consider the performance. With SSD's it matters a LOT, because there are lower performing drives, even mechanical drives that cost more than higher performing ones, even at the same capacity. 

 

What you want to avoid is paying money for a drive you can't use.

 

For example, that drive is 11.6x faster than that SATA SSD. But the user in question could NOT use that performance with their existing system. So spending the extra money there would gain zero benefit.

 

 

The Motherboard supports 3 M.2's:

But you will disable PCIE5 if M2_3 is populated which is the PCIe4 x 4 lane slot.

 

Since that is a 3000 series Ryzen, PCIE4 is supported on that board. So the logical answer is PCIe4 NVMe SSD for the Boot/OS drive. One of those M2's is going through the chipset though, and thus will share bandwidth with everything else on the chipset, including USB and SATA ports.

 

At any rate that is up to how the user decides to connect the drives. If they have SATA drives or USB attached drives in the system, then the M2_3 NVMe is going to be sharing that bandwidth.

 

[Dedayog]

5 minutes ago, Kisai said:

3.3x between those two models on read, 6.1x on Write. 

 

It's literately multiples. That is reason enough to not consider SATA SSD's. Why would you spend 50$ less money for only a third of the performance? 

https://sabrent.com/products/sb-rkt4p-4tb

https://semiconductor.samsung.com/us/consumer-storage/internal-ssd/870evo/

 

Samsung makes NVme drives too. That Sabrent drive is closer to the 980 PRO

https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/memory-storage/solid-state-drives/

 

Realistically, people often look at the price for a part and don't consider the performance. With SSD's it matters a LOT, because there are lower performing drives, even mechanical drives that cost more than higher performing ones, even at the same capacity. 

 

What you want to avoid is paying money for a drive you can't use.

 

For example, that drive is 11.6x faster than that SATA SSD. But the user in question could NOT use that performance with their existing system. So spending the extra money there would gain zero benefit.

 

 

The Motherboard supports 3 M.2's:

But you will disable PCIE5 if M2_3 is populated which is the PCIe4 x 4 lane slot.

 

Since that is a 3000 series Ryzen, PCIE4 is supported on that board. So the logical answer is PCIe4 NVMe SSD for the Boot/OS drive. One of those M2's is going through the chipset though, and thus will share bandwidth with everything else on the chipset, including USB and SATA ports.

 

At any rate that is up to how the user decides to connect the drives. If they have SATA drives or USB attached drives in the system, then the M2_3 NVMe is going to be sharing that bandwidth.

 

This "It's literately multiples."

 

Is a true fact.

 

So why doesn't Windows or any other app load multiples of time faster?

 

Stop clouding things by pointing out the "in a vacuum" specs.  Tell us how he drive actually performs in our machines.

 

If you can notice a Gen 4 NVMe in a system vs a SATA drive, you're amazing.  100% amazing.

[IShyGuyI]

2 hours ago, jaslion said:

Whats the usecase?

 

Nvme is faster but that doesn't matter one bit if it's not needed

I want to use the 500gb as a boot drive and the 2td nvme ssd and the other 2 4tb ssd will be for mass storage. I want to use the nvme for games I play the most so they can load and download faster and the rest will go on the 4tb ssds. 

[Ryker Robb]

1 hour ago, IShyGuyI said:

I want to use the 500gb as a boot drive and the 2td nvme ssd and the other 2 4tb ssd will be for mass storage. I want to use the nvme for games I play the most so they can load and download faster and the rest will go on the 4tb ssds. 

For that use case the 4tb sata ssd you've chosen will work just fine. Although i would still recommend not getting the 500gb drive, As you can get 1tb drives for a similar price, such as: https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-Plus-PCIe-NAND-6600MB/dp/B098WL46RS/ref=sr_1_4?crid=274412Z6NVY8S&keywords=1tb%2Bnvme%2Bgen%2B4%2Bdram&qid=1698431462&sprefix=1tb%2Bnvme%2Bgen%2B4%2B%2Caps%2C142&sr=8-4&th=1 ,

or https://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Power-Elite-Heatsink-SP01KGBP44XS7005US/dp/B0C4F8SXV6/ref=sr_1_5?crid=274412Z6NVY8S&keywords=1tb%2Bnvme%2Bgen%2B4%2Bdram&qid=1698431660&sprefix=1tb%2Bnvme%2Bgen%2B4%2B%2Caps%2C142&sr=8-5&th=1 .

[IShyGuyI]

10 hours ago, Kisai said:

Don't use SATA SSD's, likewise don't use low-capacity SSD's.

 

The difference in speed between a SATA III SSD and a PCIe 4 is around 16 times. 

 

SATA III = 500MB/sec

PCIe 3 x4 = 4000MB/sec

PCIe 4 x4 = 8000MB/sec

 

Look up the actual benchmark speed before you actually decide on something, because there are also DRAM-less models which are not fast.

 

For example, that 2TB Sabrent drive can be 7100MB/sec on PCIe4 or 3500MB PCIe3

 

You leave half the performance on the table if you don't plug it into the right slot.

 

SATA drives peak at 500MB/sec, regardless of what it is. Like you can buy a WD Red Pro (a 7200RPM drive) that has controller to cache speed of 500MB/s, but it'll sit around 250-300MB/sec once it stops hitting the cache.

 

It's impossible to exceed it (and if you wanna nitpick, it's more likely 550MB/s)

This is from a SATA SSD

 

 

Meanwhile this is a PCIe4 SSD on a PCIe 4 x4 connection:

I'm ignoring the write speed just to prove a point, because that's usually the highly variable part of it.

 

At any rate, always BUY a NVMe SSD over a SATA SSD.

I want to use a 2tb mvme ssd for games to download and load faster. The other 2 4tb ssd are for everything else more like "mass storage" will speed really matter if I put all my most played games on the 2tb nvme ssd?

[Ryker Robb]

1 hour ago, IShyGuyI said:

will speed really matter if I put all my most played games on the 2tb nvme ssd?

No, you could play them directly off the sata ssd if you wanted too, and you couldn't tell the difference(depending on the game).

[Dedayog]

1 hour ago, IShyGuyI said:

I want to use a 2tb mvme ssd for games to download and load faster. The other 2 4tb ssd are for everything else more like "mass storage" will speed really matter if I put all my most played games on the 2tb nvme ssd?

Yeah, you can't tell what's on the nvme or the sata drives based on performance.

 

That's what we're trying to pound into your head here

[Kisai]

13 hours ago, IShyGuyI said:

I want to use a 2tb mvme ssd for games to download and load faster. The other 2 4tb ssd are for everything else more like "mass storage" will speed really matter if I put all my most played games on the 2tb nvme ssd?

From experience, until a game is 2GB or more, or your system has less than 32GB of RAM, the disk cache in the OS will usually make up for any speed differential TO A POINT. It depends how the game accesses things.

 

For example, a game with a 100GB foot print, should ONLY be played from a NVMe SSD, a game with a 4GB foot print has a small difference. Where you will notice when playing from SATA drives, SSD or NOT is the time to load. What you notice beween mechanical and SSD is access times. So if a game uses 1000's of files, then a mechanical drive's access time will make it extremely noticeable, but if it packs those files into 8 2GB files, then it won't, because the disk cache will have those files cached in system RAM. This is probably why some people don't seem to think it matters.

 

It matters, especially for games that take advantage of GPUDirect/DirectStorage functionality.  No SATA drive will support this use case.

 

Pretty much SATA is a dead technology for games. If you are archiving stuff, it ultimately does not matter what you archive it to, if you do not intend to play off it. But if you intend to play off it, then you need to take into consideration how that game loads data.

 

As mentioned, look at the file system for the game. If it's thousands of files, then you should only use a SSD. If it's big files, you should use a NVMe drive ideally. If you are willing to min-max your system RAM, that might be a preferrable option over buying slower/smaller SSD's.

 

Also as mentioned, you should pick a larger OS/Boot/main SSD drive, because you gain the most performance there. 

 

Like from personal experience, including a 3-NVMe disk setup + SATA SSD + 7200RPM drives. You are better off putting things you are not actively playing, or chunky games that are less than 2GB on a mechanical drive, because the disk cache will ultimately deal with that. If it's 4GB+ (eg it would likely have shipped on a DVD if it's old enough) then you cross the threshold between "this behaves adequately on any drive" to "this only behaves adequately on a SSD. Anything really big (as in 20GB+) and updates frequently (such as a MMO) should only be on a large NVMe drive, because it will wear out a small drive much faster.

 

Always pick a SSD that you could reasonably keep half empty. It doesn't have to be empty ALL the time, but you shouldn't live out of the last 10GB of one. SSD's are faster when they have more free space.  

 

 

ALL competitive MMO's take advantage of the fastest drives. You know who isn't using a SSD, or even using a console because they're the ones that take over a minute to load in, when your NVMe SSD took half a second. When everyone has a SSD, you still tend to see the people on SATA SSD's pop in several seconds after you. Most of the time that doesn't matter very much if the game itself prevents players from "moving from the starting line", but in some games two seconds can mean the difference from being first in line to being last in a racing game's initial starting order.

 

Anyway, pick the NVMe drives if that is what you can afford and use. Don't bother with SATA SSD's unless you really have no choice in the matter, or you largely don't really play anything big off it. 

 

Some people don't care about loading time if they're only playing offline and single player. And yeah, it doesn't matter if the game is pretty small, because a 2GB game might take 4 seconds to load, on a SATA SSD, or 0.25 seconds on a NVMe. 

 

It is also something I'll also point out, as this is something that people don't often realize. The speed of the SSD matters as things get bigger and as games ship in ways that require the SSD.

 

At any rate, I'm not going to say "spend as much money as possible", You are often better off with one big NVMe drive than several smaller SSD's, every time. You'd only really want multiple NVMe's in a situation that calls for it, such as video recording/editing. So let's say you were recording a game. Then yes, put the game on the main SSD, and record to another SSD, It doesn't HAVE TO be a NVMe drive in that case because unless you're recording ProRes HQ (228MB/s), only the access time is relevant.

 

 

[Dedayog]

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

From experience, until a game is 2GB or more, or your system has less than 32GB of RAM, the disk cache in the OS will usually make up for any speed differential TO A POINT. It depends how the game accesses things.

 

For example, a game with a 100GB foot print, should ONLY be played from a NVMe SSD, a game with a 4GB foot print has a small difference. Where you will notice when playing from SATA drives, SSD or NOT is the time to load. What you notice beween mechanical and SSD is access times. So if a game uses 1000's of files, then a mechanical drive's access time will make it extremely noticeable, but if it packs those files into 8 2GB files, then it won't, because the disk cache will have those files cached in system RAM. This is probably why some people don't seem to think it matters.

 

It matters, especially for games that take advantage of GPUDirect/DirectStorage functionality.  No SATA drive will support this use case.

 

Pretty much SATA is a dead technology for games. If you are archiving stuff, it ultimately does not matter what you archive it to, if you do not intend to play off it. But if you intend to play off it, then you need to take into consideration how that game loads data.

 

As mentioned, look at the file system for the game. If it's thousands of files, then you should only use a SSD. If it's big files, you should use a NVMe drive ideally. If you are willing to min-max your system RAM, that might be a preferrable option over buying slower/smaller SSD's.

 

Also as mentioned, you should pick a larger OS/Boot/main SSD drive, because you gain the most performance there. 

 

Like from personal experience, including a 3-NVMe disk setup + SATA SSD + 7200RPM drives. You are better off putting things you are not actively playing, or chunky games that are less than 2GB on a mechanical drive, because the disk cache will ultimately deal with that. If it's 4GB+ (eg it would likely have shipped on a DVD if it's old enough) then you cross the threshold between "this behaves adequately on any drive" to "this only behaves adequately on a SSD. Anything really big (as in 20GB+) and updates frequently (such as a MMO) should only be on a large NVMe drive, because it will wear out a small drive much faster.

 

Always pick a SSD that you could reasonably keep half empty. It doesn't have to be empty ALL the time, but you shouldn't live out of the last 10GB of one. SSD's are faster when they have more free space.  

 

 

ALL competitive MMO's take advantage of the fastest drives. You know who isn't using a SSD, or even using a console because they're the ones that take over a minute to load in, when your NVMe SSD took half a second. When everyone has a SSD, you still tend to see the people on SATA SSD's pop in several seconds after you. Most of the time that doesn't matter very much if the game itself prevents players from "moving from the starting line", but in some games two seconds can mean the difference from being first in line to being last in a racing game's initial starting order.

 

Anyway, pick the NVMe drives if that is what you can afford and use. Don't bother with SATA SSD's unless you really have no choice in the matter, or you largely don't really play anything big off it. 

 

Some people don't care about loading time if they're only playing offline and single player. And yeah, it doesn't matter if the game is pretty small, because a 2GB game might take 4 seconds to load, on a SATA SSD, or 0.25 seconds on a NVMe. 

 

It is also something I'll also point out, as this is something that people don't often realize. The speed of the SSD matters as things get bigger and as games ship in ways that require the SSD.

 

At any rate, I'm not going to say "spend as much money as possible", You are often better off with one big NVMe drive than several smaller SSD's, every time. You'd only really want multiple NVMe's in a situation that calls for it, such as video recording/editing. So let's say you were recording a game. Then yes, put the game on the main SSD, and record to another SSD, It doesn't HAVE TO be a NVMe drive in that case because unless you're recording ProRes HQ (228MB/s), only the access time is relevant.

 

 

All that and no actual real world examples.

 

This here tells me you're just regurgitating things you googled that fit your narrative...

 

"Some people don't care about loading time if they're only playing offline and single player. And yeah, it doesn't matter if the game is pretty small, because a 2GB game might take 4 seconds to load, on a SATA SSD, or 0.25 seconds on a NVMe. "

 

SATA and NVMe are within % points of each other for loading. You have no idea what you're talking about.

 

Ark with 30 mods can take 5 minutes to load, give or take 10 seconds with a SATA SSD (to show an extreme case).  Starfiled on my 9900K machine and my 7700X machine take the same time to load, loading screens, and have no texture loading issues or spikes.

 

WTF?

 

"Always pick a SSD that you could reasonably keep half empty. It doesn't have to be empty ALL the time, but you shouldn't live out of the last 10GB of one. SSD's are faster when they have more free space. "

 

Half empty?  Cuz they're faster when they have more free space? 

 

Now you're just a flat out liar.  False bullshit and misinformation.

 

You're only actual facts were Direct Storage won't work on SATA  and it's not worth buying SATA if you can help it.  if the price is the same, go NVMe obviously.

 

TLDR:  SATA is just as good as NVMe for gaming, currently.  Boot times, load times, etc are all within margin of errors usually.  Going forward, to take advantage of Direct Storage when it's actually in use... get NVMe Gen 3 or better.  But for now, SATA is just fine and not as slow as the misinformed would say.

[Ryker Robb]

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

From experience, until a game is 2GB or more, or your system has less than 32GB of RAM, the disk cache in the OS will usually make up for any speed differential TO A POINT. It depends how the game accesses things.

 

For example, a game with a 100GB foot print, should ONLY be played from a NVMe SSD, a game with a 4GB foot print has a small difference. Where you will notice when playing from SATA drives, SSD or NOT is the time to load. What you notice beween mechanical and SSD is access times. So if a game uses 1000's of files, then a mechanical drive's access time will make it extremely noticeable, but if it packs those files into 8 2GB files, then it won't, because the disk cache will have those files cached in system RAM. This is probably why some people don't seem to think it matters.

 

It matters, especially for games that take advantage of GPUDirect/DirectStorage functionality.  No SATA drive will support this use case.

 

Pretty much SATA is a dead technology for games. If you are archiving stuff, it ultimately does not matter what you archive it to, if you do not intend to play off it. But if you intend to play off it, then you need to take into consideration how that game loads data.

 

As mentioned, look at the file system for the game. If it's thousands of files, then you should only use a SSD. If it's big files, you should use a NVMe drive ideally. If you are willing to min-max your system RAM, that might be a preferrable option over buying slower/smaller SSD's.

 

Also as mentioned, you should pick a larger OS/Boot/main SSD drive, because you gain the most performance there. 

 

Like from personal experience, including a 3-NVMe disk setup + SATA SSD + 7200RPM drives. You are better off putting things you are not actively playing, or chunky games that are less than 2GB on a mechanical drive, because the disk cache will ultimately deal with that. If it's 4GB+ (eg it would likely have shipped on a DVD if it's old enough) then you cross the threshold between "this behaves adequately on any drive" to "this only behaves adequately on a SSD. Anything really big (as in 20GB+) and updates frequently (such as a MMO) should only be on a large NVMe drive, because it will wear out a small drive much faster.

 

Always pick a SSD that you could reasonably keep half empty. It doesn't have to be empty ALL the time, but you shouldn't live out of the last 10GB of one. SSD's are faster when they have more free space.  

 

 

ALL competitive MMO's take advantage of the fastest drives. You know who isn't using a SSD, or even using a console because they're the ones that take over a minute to load in, when your NVMe SSD took half a second. When everyone has a SSD, you still tend to see the people on SATA SSD's pop in several seconds after you. Most of the time that doesn't matter very much if the game itself prevents players from "moving from the starting line", but in some games two seconds can mean the difference from being first in line to being last in a racing game's initial starting order.

 

Anyway, pick the NVMe drives if that is what you can afford and use. Don't bother with SATA SSD's unless you really have no choice in the matter, or you largely don't really play anything big off it. 

 

Some people don't care about loading time if they're only playing offline and single player. And yeah, it doesn't matter if the game is pretty small, because a 2GB game might take 4 seconds to load, on a SATA SSD, or 0.25 seconds on a NVMe. 

 

It is also something I'll also point out, as this is something that people don't often realize. The speed of the SSD matters as things get bigger and as games ship in ways that require the SSD.

 

At any rate, I'm not going to say "spend as much money as possible", You are often better off with one big NVMe drive than several smaller SSD's, every time. You'd only really want multiple NVMe's in a situation that calls for it, such as video recording/editing. So let's say you were recording a game. Then yes, put the game on the main SSD, and record to another SSD, It doesn't HAVE TO be a NVMe drive in that case because unless you're recording ProRes HQ (228MB/s), only the access time is relevant.

 

 

 

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

Pretty much SATA is a dead technology for games.

Although there is a difference, Sata definitely isn't dead yet for games.