PCIE or USB drive?

[Steven Schaefer]

I have an m.2 ssd that I want to add to my rig, but I don't have a slot for it. My two options are a PCIE X1 adapter card, or a USB adapter. I have a USB 3.1 Gen 2 port to plug into.  If I'm interpreting the specs correctly (and they're accurate), the PCIE adapter should be faster, but it seems sketchy to me.

 

The Drive: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B25ML2FH

The PCIE adapter: https://www.amazon.com/ELUTENG-Adapter-Expansion-Aluminum-Heatsink/dp/B0CN998KS9

The USB adapter: https://www.amazon.com/SSK-Aluminum-Enclosure-Adapter-External/dp/B07MNFH1PX

Note, this is a secondary drive, so support for booting off of this is not a concern. It's just gonna be for a Steam library mostly.

 

I have used a PCIE X4 adapter card before and it worked just fine, but only having the X1 interface makes me feel like I'm missing something here.

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

I'd probably go pcie x1 just so its inside the system and out of the way. x1 is probably fine for most game drive use.

[Dedayog]

1 hour ago, Steven Schaefer said:

I have an m.2 ssd that I want to add to my rig, but I don't have a slot for it. My two options are a PCIE X1 adapter card, or a USB adapter. I have a USB 3.1 Gen 2 port to plug into.  If I'm interpreting the specs correctly (and they're accurate), the PCIE adapter should be faster, but it seems sketchy to me.

 

The Drive: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B25ML2FH

The PCIE adapter: https://www.amazon.com/ELUTENG-Adapter-Expansion-Aluminum-Heatsink/dp/B0CN998KS9

The USB adapter: https://www.amazon.com/SSK-Aluminum-Enclosure-Adapter-External/dp/B07MNFH1PX

Note, this is a secondary drive, so support for booting off of this is not a concern. It's just gonna be for a Steam library mostly.

 

I have used a PCIE X4 adapter card before and it worked just fine, but only having the X1 interface makes me feel like I'm missing something here.

 

Why didn't you just buy a SATA SSD?  They're basically the same speed for hosting a game library.   Plus it connects easier.

 

What motherboard are you using?

[Computer Crunch]

I would use PCIe for convenience and speed, as it is inside the computer rather than on the outside and you will get the full potential of your drive.

[Eigenvektor]

2 hours ago, Computer Crunch said:

you will get the full potential of your drive.

If the motherboard has a free PCIe 4.0 slot, then on x1 the drive will be limited to 2 GB/s (16 Gbps), rather than its maximum possible of 5 GB/s. If the slot is PCIe 3.0, it'll be limited to 1 GB/s. USB 3.1 Gen 2 @ 10 Gbps should offer roughly 0.9 GB/s (theoretically 1.25 GB/s, but there's overhead)

[Mark Kaine]

4 hours ago, Dedayog said:

Plus it connects easier.

i mean... not really... sata connectors are a special kind of hell lol... but otherwise i agree for this use case sata ssd would be a much better choice.  

[Steven Schaefer]

Thanks all for the feedback.

There is an empty X4 slot on the board that I've been using until now for an m.2 adapter card. But I just added a GPU and didn't realize before buying it that it covers up this slot.

However, after some more searching, I found this "pcie m.2 riser card" that has a right angle pcie plug, and if my measurements are right it should just *barely* squeeze in behind the GPU.

So we'll see if it fits when it gets here.

https://a.co/d/9IumMcx