Storage for new build

[KillerMeatloaf]

Hello, I am building a new gaming PC and was just told by a Best Buy employee that I would not be able to run: SSD,Nvme ssd and a hard drive because I will be limited to how many PCI Express lanes I have available? 

 

I would like like a Nvme SSD just for my PC Boot, a Intel 730SSD for the few games I play as well as a 2tb Seagate for mass storage. Is this possible? 

 

 

[Oshino Shinobu]

Nonsense, you can run that fine without any loss of performance. Even with SLI, modern systems all have enough PCIe lanes provided to accommodate non-graphics card PCIe devices such as NVMe storage. 

 

SATA SSDs and HDDs have nothing to do with it as they don't use PCIe lanes in the first place. 

 

EDIT: Also, I wouldn't use an NVMe SSD just for boot and OS drive. You're paying more for no real world performance increase. NVMe excels at sequential read/writes, for things like moving around large files and being used a drive to work from for productivity programs. For booting and OS use, it offers virtually no improvement as those tasks mostly use random read/writes, which NVMe isn't much better than regular SATA SSDs at. While it is better on paper, it actual real world use cases, it makes next to no difference. 

[Guest]

You'll be fine.

You may find that using M.2 will shut off the bottom SATA ports on some boards though. But you don't seem to be using enough for that to register as a problem.

[Jurrunio]

No need for 2 SSDs. NVMe SSD and SATA SSD perform the same in loading games, booting system etc. Their difference only show in file transfers and benchmarks, but these arent worth the extra price for NVMe since it isnt the mass storage of your system in this config. Either get a larger NVMe (240GB at least) so you can store some data on it or a smaller SATA SSD (around 120GB).

 

As for PCIe lanes, Your GPU will happily run at x8 bandwidth, so even if NVMe took x4 to itself the performance is still the same (if you have 2 GPUs, NVMe SSD will connect to the CPU through the chipset, though at the cost of its speed). SATA SSD and HDD use SATA, which is connected to the chipset and have nothing to do with CPU's PCIe lanes.

[Jurrunio]

Just now, Legendarypoet said:

You may find that using M.2 will shut off the bottom SATA ports on some boards though.

In that case, the M.2 slot only works for SATA protocol, not NVMe. Useless IMO.

[Oshino Shinobu]

Just now, Jurrunio said:

As for PCIe lanes, Your GPU will happily run at x8 bandwidth, so even if NVMe took x4 to itself the performance is still the same (if you have 2 GPUs, NVMe SSD will connect to the CPU through the chipset, though at the cost of its speed). SATA SSD and HDD use SATA, which is connected to the chipset and have nothing to do with CPU's PCIe lanes

Even if not running SLI, the NVMe SSD will use the lanes provided by the chipset. The lanes provided by the CPU (at least, on Intel systems) are dedicated to graphics devices. Things like storage, networking and such PCIe devices go through the chipset regardless of the graphics card setup. 

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Jurrunio said:

In that case, the M.2 slot only works for SATA protocol, not NVMe. Useless IMO.

No. This happened on a Asus B350 build. It just shared lanes with the bottom SATA ports. It was a 960 EVO and performed at NVMe speeds.

[dizmo]

First off, welcome to the forum!

As for your issue, you should be able to run all three, however to be sure we'd need to know the components of your build.

Motherboard, CPU, etc.

Also, why do you want an NVME drive? As others have said, most people don't benefit from them. I'd just spend the money on a much larger SATA drive. You can still use m.2, if you're looking to reduce clutter.

[KillerMeatloaf]

5 hours ago, dizmo said:

First off, welcome to the forum!

As for your issue, you should be able to run all three, however to be sure we'd need to know the components of your build.

Motherboard, CPU, etc.

Also, why do you want an NVME drive? As others have said, most people don't benefit from them. I'd just spend the money on a much larger SATA drive. You can still use m.2, if you're looking to reduce clutter.

Thank you everyone for the fast and reliable replies! My build is as follows:

 

Nzxt Elite s340

Asus Maximus Hero ix

Intel i57600k

Kraken x42 AiO

G.Skill Trident rgb x32Ggb

Nvidia GTX 1080

Intel 730 SSD

Seagate 2t

Corsair 750i

 

 

[dizmo]

23 minutes ago, KillerMeatloaf said:

Thank you everyone for the fast and reliable replies! My build is as follows:

 

Nzxt Elite s340

Asus Maximus Hero ix

Intel i57600k

Kraken x42 AiO

G.Skill Trident rgb x32Ggb

Nvidia GTX 1080

Intel 730 SSD

Seagate 2t

Corsair 750i

Take a look at the website here:

https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/ROG-MAXIMUS-IX-HERO/

You'll notice that it says beside the picture of the motherboard, the number of PCIe slots it has. CPU is self explanatory, PCH is going off of the motherboards chipset. When you look at the board specifications, it lists *2 and *3 as reference points.

Quote

*2 When the M.2_1 Socket 3 is operating in SATA mode, SATA port 1 will be disabled.
*3 When the M.2_2 Socket 3 is operating in PCIEX4 mode, SATA port 5. 6 will be disabled.

So, the first m.2 slot operating in PCIe mode takes up 0 SATA ports, and the second slot uses SATA port 5 and 6.

Meaning even if you populate both m.2 slots, you can still use SATA ports 1 to 4.