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

haanijj

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Aug 25, 2019
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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!
 
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.
 
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