Question 950 NVMe to 860 SATA downgrade?

[CioCIo87]

I put my current PC together in 2016. It has a 950 M.2 256GB that's home to my OS and games. My only other drive is an HDD that I just use for music. The 950's 256GB capacity just isn't cutting it anymore as I keep having to uninstall games I'd rather not whenever I want to play something new.

I'm looking at a 1TB SATA drive, specifically the 860 EVO, to save money. This 1TB drive would solely be for games. My question is: will my gaming experience noticeably suffer? I don't mind longer loading screens if that's all it's going to be but if in-game performance is going to be affected, I'd really rather avoid that.

Alternatively, I guess I could consider an adapter for a new higher-capacity NVMe but I don't what bottlenecks (if any) that would introduce. I can't think of any practical way to mrely swap out my current NVMe for a new one, given the OS installation.

I'd appreciate any advice that more knowledgeable folks could offer.

 

[drivinfast247]

You'll be fine. You won't notice a difference.

 

[The prime mediocre]

The difference in loading times will be very slight when it exists. In-game asset streaming won't be any different--the bottleneck there was removed with the transition from mechanical to solid state. Assuming you've got four available PCIe lanes and the requisite slot, you wouldn't see any difference in performance with an adapter. Though I definitely think you're on the right track looking at SATA drives. I would suggest looking at lower-priced drives for game storage. You could look at the WD Blue 3D NAND drive, which is currently the cheapest 1TB TLC drive with a proper DRAM cache. The 1TB Samsung 860 QVO is a full $30 less than the EVO right now. All three drives have very similar read speeds.

 

[Gam3r01]

Agreed that you wont benefit from NVME speeds, stick to the SATA drives.
I would still recommend a 860 EVO due to its superior endurance compared to competition. Its getting close to 100 bucks/TB lately.

 

[The prime mediocre]

Does endurance matter that much? The 1TB WD Blue and 860 QVO are rated for 400 and 360TBW, respectively. Who writes over three hundred terabytes of data to a game storage drive during its lifetime?

 

[mdd1963]

My own NVME drive has racked up a full 12 TB... in two years....

That should put worrying about 340 vs. 400 TB (only the warranty amount in a 5 year period anyway, not the point at which it just 'quits working' )in proper perspective....

 

[CioCIo87]

I ended up going with the 860 QVO. Like prime mediocre said, it was a full $30 less ($118) than Amazon's asking price of $148 for the EVO and at that low a price point, I'm not going to worry too much about its lifetime. Thanks, guys, you saved me a bit of dough I likely didn't need to spend on this!