Need an NVME SSD upgrade. I don't know anything about them

edo101

Limp Gawd
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Jul 16, 2018
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What should I be looking for when I buy? I normally go for bang for buck always. I don't need the fastest or latest gen 4 stuff. Just a good price to performance ratio. I've been on an X58 platform since yesteday so I was limited to my Samsung 830 SSD from 2011. It's only 128GB

I want to move to 1TB i think. Split it in half. One half for OSs (I will for now have two windows 10 partitions. One stuck at 1809 and another for latest builds. Need this for 3D Vision)

THe other half I'd like to install some games on. Is this recommended? Or should you seperate your OS drive completely from gaming drive?

What are good brand? And what should I look for in terms of form factor and interface. My motherboard is the Z490 Taichi

Thanks
 
Samsung are still a good bet, I like the 970 evo plus range, and I have two of them.

Western digital’s SN750 drives are also very good. The 850 is better but will cost more.

You will generally pay more for faster speeds, but at a certain point you will find that speed no longer makes that much difference to day to day tasks. My advice is stick to a good brand, get upper middle of the range performance, and be happy.
 
Samsung are still a good bet, I like the 970 evo plus range, and I have two of them.

Western digital’s SN750 drives are also very good. The 850 is better but will cost more.

You will generally pay more for faster speeds, but at a certain point you will find that speed no longer makes that much difference to day to day tasks. My advice is stick to a good brand, get upper middle of the range performance, and be happy.
I see the pny xlr8 cs3030 seems to be slightly faster than the WD 750? Keljian
 
What is your workload? How many tbw have you done to the 830?
Lol not sure how to measure tha. but as a small OS drive, i typically only have a few programs on it. Again its MLC not the TLC you see a lot of these days
 
I'm afraid to buy one because it would have to be a 2TB if anything. I know they are really small like half the size if a DDR memory stick.
 
I would pick a TLC NVMe SSD for a boot drive, but not from one of the manufacturers doing the whole bait and switch thing to worse components, like Adata and Silicon Power. Kingston did it in the past and seems to have learned their lesson after the backlash. Can't go wrong with Samsung or Micron (Crucial).

Your motherboard supports 2280 for the first M.2 slot, 2260/2280 for the second M.2 slot, and 2230/2242/2260/2280/22110 for the third M.2 slot.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B...scsubtag=e8e944724d3c11eb8f1b5a85c909964f0INT Enterprise level TLC SSD. Installing it on the third M.2 slot supposedly disables two of your SATA slots and limits the USB-C connection to 16 gb/s.
 
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Samsung magician should tell you, as would crystal disk info. TLC drives have come a long way since you last looked.
I would pick a TLC NVMe SSD for a boot drive, but not from one of the manufacturers doing the whole bait and switch thing to worse components, like Adata and Silicon Power. Kingston did it in the past and seems to have learned their lesson after the backlash. Can't go wrong with Samsung or Micron (Crucial).

Your motherboard supports 2280 for the first M.2 slot, 2260/2280 for the second M.2 slot, and 2230/2242/2260/2280/22110 for the third M.2 slot.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B...scsubtag=e8e944724d3c11eb8f1b5a85c909964f0INT Enterprise level TLC SSD. Installing it on the third M.2 slot supposedly disables two of your SATA slots and limits the USB-C connection to 16 gb/s.
I went ahead and got the WD SN750. Seemed like jack of all trades type NVME even if its only 600 TBW. Apperently guys on Tom's hardware think it should last me like 10 years and by that time, I'd have prbly moved on to another storage
 
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I went ahead and got the WD SN750. Seemed like jack of all trades type NVME even if its only 600 TBW. Apperently guys on Tom's hardware think it should last me like 10 years and by that time, I'd have prbly moved on to another storage
The Samsung and WD drives are both reliable “enough” and have enough endurance for the majority of users
 
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Why 2TB ?

All my Sata ports have 1TB drives I have one 2TB sata and if I buy one drive it would need to be at least 2TB for extra space because it would disable 1 sata port. If I installed 2 M.2 drives it would disable 3 sata ports. I mean you really almost need two of them to take advantage of their increased speeds since games don't even benefit much over the sata drives.
 
All my Sata ports have 1TB drives I have one 2TB sata and if I buy one drive it would need to be at least 2TB for extra space because it would disable 1 sata port. If I installed 2 M.2 drives it would disable 3 sata ports. I mean you really almost need two of them to take advantage of their increased speeds since games don't even benefit much over the sata drives.
you can upgrade to larger drives,
I upgraded from 1-2TB drives to 4TB drives and added an 8 and 10TB when they were on sale.

HAL-X100-Internal-Storage-1-3-2021.jpg
 
I only have SSDs installed never going back to HDDs think I was just hording data anyway.
 
Western Digital SN850 is the best one you can get right now. Pcie 4.0 7000/5000 R/W

I have one. Looks like you need a pcie 4.0 drive / chipset to use MS directStorage when it comes out later this year if that's something that concerns you.
 
Western Digital SN850 is the best one you can get right now. Pcie 4.0 7000/5000 R/W

I have one. Looks like you need a pcie 4.0 drive / chipset to use MS directStorage when it comes out later this year if that's something that concerns you.
d3athf1sh I have a Z490 with a 10850K I can't use PCI-E 4. What is MS directStorage?
 
Western Digital SN850 is the best one you can get right now. Pcie 4.0 7000/5000 R/W

I have one. Looks like you need a pcie 4.0 drive / chipset to use MS directStorage when it comes out later this year if that's something that concerns you.
Really? I thought it would be any nvme. I had read that its about the way nvme/pcie drives work that's different from SATA.
 
Western Digital SN850 is the best one you can get right now. Pcie 4.0 7000/5000 R/W

I have one. Looks like you need a pcie 4.0 drive / chipset to use MS directStorage when it comes out later this year if that's something that concerns you.
Source
 

That doesn't provide any more information beyond the original article from microsoft/blog/engineer/pr. It also does not indicate needing pcie 4. It only indicates that it will have specific hardware platform requirements.

Direct storage could require pcie-4, specific motherboards, processors, chipsets, and videcards. At this point, I would not bank on it being pci-e 4 only. For all we know it could be pci-e 5 only and released in 10 years. When it comes to microsoft, wait till said software is released and then wait a few months.

*note* xbox ssd is only about 2.4 GB/S.

All of my nvme's are faster than that at max sequential (note, I don't know specific 4k random performance of the xbox ssd) and all of them are nvme 3 drives.
 
That doesn't provide any more information beyond the original article from microsoft/blog/engineer/pr. It also does not indicate needing pcie 4. It only indicates that it will have specific hardware platform requirements.

Direct storage could require pcie-4, specific motherboards, processors, chipsets, and videcards. At this point, I would not bank on it being pci-e 4 only. For all we know it could be pci-e 5 only and released in 10 years. When it comes to microsoft, wait till said software is released and then wait a few months.

*note* xbox ssd is only about 2.4 GB/S.

All of my nvme's are faster than that at max sequential (note, I don't know specific 4k random performance of the xbox ssd) and all of them are nvme 3 drives.
what about nvme drives like intel 660p? there are sata drives that are faster... @AzixTGO

if you want to future proof your rig, i'd be looking at a pcie 4.0 drive, even if you have to upgrade your platform later on at least you won't have to replace the drive. amd been on pcie 4.0 for a while now. not sure why intel still keeping it's fanboys in the dust.

edit: actually i can think of a reason
 
what about nvme drives like intel 660p? there are sata drives that are faster... @AzixTGO

if you want to future proof your rig, i'd be looking at a pcie 4.0 drive, even if you have to upgrade your platform later on at least you won't have to replace the drive. amd been on pcie 4.0 for a while now. not sure why intel still keeping it's fanboys in the dust.

edit: actually i can think of a reason
Well whenever it does happen and I need to upgrade I will. I'm not spending more money on tech I can't use at the moment. I've spent enough money doing what I thought would be a simple upgrade of RAM, CPU, mobo, CPU cooler. I woulda opted for AMD specifically for these reasons but you can't beat a 10850K that essentially turned into a 10900K for 240 bucks
 
what about nvme drives like intel 660p? there are sata drives that are faster... @AzixTGO

if you want to future proof your rig, i'd be looking at a pcie 4.0 drive, even if you have to upgrade your platform later on at least you won't have to replace the drive. amd been on pcie 4.0 for a while now. not sure why intel still keeping it's fanboys in the dust.

edit: actually i can think of a reason

Might be this

https://www.pcworld.com/article/357...a-plan-to-kill-game-loading-times-on-pcs.html

The need for NVMe speed (and smarts)​

Microsoft’s post makes it clear that you’ll need an NVMe drive to tap into DirectStorage’s benefits, however. That’s because NVMe drives offer both extremely high bandwidth compared to traditional SATA-based storage, as well as multiple “NVMe queues” that can contain multiple IO requests, making them “a perfect match to the parallel and batched nature of modern gaming workloads”—and GPU capabilities.

That’s great for PC enthusiasts who have invested in one. Until this point, the benefits of a blistering NVMe drive have largely been constrained to large file transfers or editing 4K/8K video. Games haven't been noticeably faster on an NVMe drive than a standard 2.5-inch SATA SSD
 
what about nvme drives like intel 660p? there are sata drives that are faster... @AzixTGO

if you want to future proof your rig, i'd be looking at a pcie 4.0 drive, even if you have to upgrade your platform later on at least you won't have to replace the drive. amd been on pcie 4.0 for a while now. not sure why intel still keeping it's fanboys in the dust.

edit: actually i can think of a reason
I also haven't read anything that suggests Direct Storage will be gen 4 exclusive. even Nvidia's IO should work with gen 3. ANd I can't use Gen 4 for a while because there is no world where I will go to Rocket Lake for 2 less cores. No way. This 10850K build will be with me for another 5 years. Unless I get stupid rich and I'm bored. Will it be faster on gen 4 yeah. But Gen 3 should be just as good for the top tier ones. Like the SK Hynix I'm getting and the WD 750s and Evos of the world
 
Well whenever it does happen and I need to upgrade I will. I'm not spending more money on tech I can't use at the moment. I've spent enough money doing what I thought would be a simple upgrade of RAM, CPU, mobo, CPU cooler. I woulda opted for AMD specifically for these reasons but you can't beat a 10850K that essentially turned into a 10900K for 240 bucks
where are they selling 10850k's for $240? is see one on ebay w/ $599 shipping
 
did you look at the slide in that article? all i see is GEN4 ssdView attachment 318002
Yes. Why would the add more cluter to a graph. I am willing to bet Gen 3 works as well. Hell even Gen 2. There are levels to this. And if not... then there's gonna be a quite small group of people enjoying it. Me, I'm not worried. Hell i'd be on a SATA 3 SSD if it wasn't for the space convenienve of NVME. My games load fast enough as is. To make this tech exclusive to gen 4 when gen 3 is barely utilized by games properly is asinine and really not a good design. It has to scale.

Best part, it's not a requirement to play games. Games will work fine even on HDDs. I think I'm good. The cheapest 1TB Gen 4 SSD I can get is a Sabrient Q4 and i don't care about paying for a low end Gen 4 SSD for around the same price as a top end Gen 3 SSD
 
employee discount
o.k.... sure.

so you get em below cost? must be nice!

Games will work fine even on HDDs

keep thinking that. old ones yeah, as long as you don't mind texture/asset pop in and waiting on loads.

new games for the consoles won't even run if you aren't using the built in or approved pcie 4 add on drive. like i said older games were designed for HDD's but devs are now finally free to move away from that ancient tech.
 
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quoting an old post from reddit before amd 5000 series and consoles were released:

On the one hand, RTX I/O allows the data to be streamed to the GPU directly in its compressed form instead of being processed by the CPU. This means a given set of data is smaller and thus takes less bandwidth to transfer.

BUT, this also would mean developers might start relying on direct transfers like that a lot more since the option will be available, and thus having the extra bandwidth from 4.0 will help. Especially given this gen of consoles is going to support it, so it's going to be a feature part of all popular game engines.

Yes, you need a CPU that actually supports PCIE 4.0 lanes. Just hold off a bit on upgrading if you want Intel, their 4.0 compatible Rocket Lake chips are coming out Q1 2021. But honestly, as an Intel die-hard myself, I'm excited to see what AMD is bringing out later this month... They have already gotten close to Intel's single-core performance. If they can match or exceed it with this next series then I think I might finally switch, as they already have PCIE 4.0.


https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/j3y36g/can_someone_explain_whether_or_not_rtx_io_will/
 
quoting an old post from reddit before amd 5000 series and consoles were released:

On the one hand, RTX I/O allows the data to be streamed to the GPU directly in its compressed form instead of being processed by the CPU. This means a given set of data is smaller and thus takes less bandwidth to transfer.

BUT, this also would mean developers might start relying on direct transfers like that a lot more since the option will be available, and thus having the extra bandwidth from 4.0 will help. Especially given this gen of consoles is going to support it, so it's going to be a feature part of all popular game engines.

Yes, you need a CPU that actually supports PCIE 4.0 lanes. Just hold off a bit on upgrading if you want Intel, their 4.0 compatible Rocket Lake chips are coming out Q1 2021. But honestly, as an Intel die-hard myself, I'm excited to see what AMD is bringing out later this month... They have already gotten close to Intel's single-core performance. If they can match or exceed it with this next series then I think I might finally switch, as they already have PCIE 4.0.


https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/j3y36g/can_someone_explain_whether_or_not_rtx_io_will/
Well on another Reddit Q/A, Nvidia rep said Gen 4 aint necessary. Even if it is, don't care. I needed an upgrade from my i7-930 and $240 for a 10850K was a no brainer. Especially one that I just found out can do 5.0 to 5.1 all cores
 
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