Question Help deciding which SSD to use as boot drive (KC3000 vs MSI M482, Gen 4 vs Gen 3 slot)

[haanijj]

Hi everyone, I'm trying to decide the best way to configure my two M.2 SSDs on an ASRock B550M motherboard, which only has one PCIe 4.0 M.2 slot and one PCIe 3.0 M.2 slot.

Here are the two drives I have:

1. Kingston KC3000 PCIe 4.0, 512GB – With DRAM
   Rated speeds: 7000 / 3900 MB/s
2. MSI Spatium M482 PCIe 4.0, 1TB – DRAM-less
   Rated speeds: 7300 / 6400 MB/s

Currently, I’m using the KC3000 in the Gen 4 slot as my boot drive, and the MSI M482 is in the Gen 3 slot as secondary storage. Would it make more sense to flip them? The MSI M482 is faster on paper, but it's DRAM-less. The KC3000 has DRAM, which should help with OS tasks and small random reads/writes.

Any thoughts on whether I should:

• Keep the KC3000 as the boot drive in the Gen 4 slot?
• Move the MSI M482 to the Gen 4 slot and make it the boot drive?

Appreciate any advice on which configuration would give me the best performance and longevity overall. Thanks!

 

[Misgar]

I'd stick with booting from the 512GB KC3000 because it has DRAM.

I'm booting this PC from a 1TB KC3000 from 2022 and I haven't bothered with a new PCIe Gen.5 SSD. In real life, outside benchmarks, I probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

 

[geofelt]

I doubt you would be able to tell any difference without a synthetic benchmark.
And the difference would be trivial.
Save yourself the effort of changing.

 

[Bob.B]

Hi everyone, I'm trying to decide the best way to configure my two M.2 SSDs on an ASRock B550M motherboard, which only has one PCIe 4.0 M.2 slot and one PCIe 3.0 M.2 slot.

Here are the two drives I have:

1. Kingston KC3000 PCIe 4.0, 512GB – With DRAM
   Rated speeds: 7000 / 3900 MB/s
2. MSI Spatium M482 PCIe 4.0, 1TB – DRAM-less
   Rated speeds: 7300 / 6400 MB/s

Currently, I’m using the KC3000 in the Gen 4 slot as my boot drive, and the MSI M482 is in the Gen 3 slot as secondary storage. Would it make more sense to flip them? The MSI M482 is faster on paper, but it's DRAM-less. The KC3000 has DRAM, which should help with OS tasks and small random reads/writes.

Any thoughts on whether I should:

• Keep the KC3000 as the boot drive in the Gen 4 slot?
• Move the MSI M482 to the Gen 4 slot and make it the boot drive?

Appreciate any advice on which configuration would give me the best performance and longevity overall. Thanks!

Leave the kc3000 as the boot drive swap slots and test see if you can tell a diff.