To NMVe or not to NVMe...that is the question

Barometer

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 25, 2012
Messages
155
Confession....this "PCI-E Lanes" business is over my head at the moment.

So until I can devote time to studying it, I have a question for the Super Techs..... :)

SYSTEM SPECIFICATIONS
The Motherboard is a ROG Strix X470-F Gaming board
CPU is Ryzen 7 2700X
RAM is G.Skill X-Flare 3200 DDR4 (16GB)
GPU is PNY GeForce 1060 GTX 6GB
SSD = Crucial MX500 1TB SATA

Here are the Expansion Slot specs for the board
AMD Ryzen™ 2nd Generation
2 x PCIe 3.0 x16 SafeSlots (supports x16, x8/x8 mode)

AMD X470 chipset - 1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 slot (max. at x4 mode)*
- 3 x PCIe 2.0 x1 slots

* The PCIe x16_3 slot shares bandwidth with PCIe x1_1 and PCIe x1_3


Here are the storage specs
AMD Ryzen™ 2nd Generation/ Ryzen™ with Radeon™ Vega Graphics
- M.2_1 socket 3 with M Key, Type 2242/ 2260/ 2280/ 22110(PCIe 3.0 x4 mode and SATA mode) storage devices support

AMD X470 Chipset:
- M.2_2 socket 3* with M Key, Type 2242/ 2260/ 2280 (PCIe 3.0 x2 mode and SATA mode) storage devices support
- 6 x Serial ATA 6 Gb/s connectors

* The M.2_2 socket shares PCIe clock with PCIe x1_1. When PCIe x1_1 or PCIe x1_3 is occupied, the M.2_2 socket can only support SATA mode.



Finally, the question.....

With the hardware above, can I add a NVMe drive without compromising GPU or SATA bandwidth?

If anyone understands the question and takes the time to reply...thank you much.
 
Sure. The only time it would be an issue is if you ran multiple GPUs or m.2 or had other PCIE devices. One GPU + m.2 by itself won't be a problem at all.

Usually the issue with NVME vs Sata really comes down to cost which may put off some people doing more budget builds. If that's not an issue for you, I say go for it.
 
The primary M.2 socket (M.2_1 on your board) has dedicated CPU lanes. No reason not to use an NVMe drive on it.
 
There is no reason not to use the NVMe drive, as long as you are aware that the day-to-day experience using a NVMe SSD and a modern SATA SSD will most of the time be identical. In other words, NVMe is fine as long as you're not paying extra for it.
 
There is no reason not to use the NVMe drive, as long as you are aware that the day-to-day experience using a NVMe SSD and a modern SATA SSD will most of the time be identical. In other words, NVMe is fine as long as you're not paying extra for it.

That's what I've read. Only difference is when transferring really large files. So if you do photography or video editing for example (I do), it could help.
I guess I'll try one.

Thanks guys.
 
Only difference is when transferring really large files

Yep, but even then typically only if you have a transfer method that exceeds SATA speeds. USB 3.0 (or 3.1 Gen 1, which are the same thing stupidly) operates at 5 Gb/s while SATA3 operates at 6 Gb/s, so you won't realize improved speed from NVMe for any import method unless it's faster than USB 3.0. Obviously if you've got super high bitrate data that you're manipulating on a NVMe drive (think Red 8K footage or something) then the speeds offered by NVMe will help out there, but you'll likely be capacity constrained on a single M.2 drive.

NVMe is really pretty stupid for consumers. As a server guy, it makes a *ton* of sense in the enterprise storage sphere, but is somewhere in the neighborhood of 99% useless on even most prosumer desktop workloads.

With all that said, I am the proud owner of three NVMe drives in my personal systems lol. But they were all nearly the same cost as their SATA brethren, so I picked them up.
 
That's what I've read. Only difference is when transferring really large files. So if you do photography or video editing for example (I do), it could help.
I guess I'll try one.

Thanks guys.

only if you are transferring to another NVME drive. NVME to any other type of drive will be limited to the write speed of that drive, i.e. single hard drive up to 200MB/s, SSD up to 550MB/s.
 
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