Getting an m.2 nvme x4 boot drive on an x2 port?

[PCMasterGuy]

I'm thinking of getting an m.2 x4 nvme as a boot drive, where I have my os, browser, some games and some programs but my motherboard only supports x2. Will the speed decrease be very noticeable for an average user like myself that's basically only using my pc for gaming and browsing? Will booting times be noticeably slower? Just for reference I'm currently rocking an i5 2300, a gtx 950, 8 gigs of ram and a 6 year old very slow and loud 500 GB hard drive, so I'm used to veeeeryyyy slow boots etc. LOL  Will I be fine with this?

[Oshino Shinobu]

For the uses you've described, NVMe is no better in real world performance than a normal SATA SSD so I wouldn't bother with it in the first place and just get a SATA SSD. 

[PCMasterGuy]

Just now, Oshino Shinobu said:

For the uses you've described, NVMe is no better in real world performance than a normal SATA SSD so I wouldn't bother with it in the first place and just get a SATA SSD. 

Hmm ok, not even when it comes to boot times?

[Oshino Shinobu]

6 minutes ago, PCMasterGuy said:

Hmm ok, not even when it comes to boot times?

Nope, it makes basically no difference most of the time.

 

NVMe excels at sequential read/writes, which is things like transferring large files (either across multiple NVMe drives, across the same drive, or to multiple SSDs at once. If it's transferring to a single slower drive, it will be limited by the other drive) and loading large projects into RAM for things like video editing and 3D modelling. 

 

Booting, OS use, most programs and games are all random read/write based. While NVMe is faster than a normal SATA SSD for random read/writes on paper, it doesn't translate to real world performance. 

 

IMO, NVMe is best suited to being scratch drives for working on large files or for use in content providing machines (ie. servers) as they handle multiple high speed transfers well. 

 

 

[PCMasterGuy]

1 minute ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

Nope, it makes basically no difference. 

 

NVMe excels at sequential read/writes, which is things like transferring large files (either across multiple NVMe drives, across the same drive, or to multiple SSDs at once. If it's transferring to a single slower drive, it will be limited by the other drive) and loading large projects into RAM for things like video editing and 3D modelling. 

 

Booting, OS use, most programs and games are all random read/write based. While NVMe is faster than a normal SATA SSD for random read/writes on paper, it doesn't translate to real world performance. 

 

 

Cool, OK, I'll just stick with a SATA SSD then. You just saved me some $, Thanks!