I don't understand this SSD stuff, educate me please

[shanvhere]

I am about to build a mega PC system, and I come across this. I know the difference from a HDD and a SSD, but this I have no clue.

https://www.wdc.com/products/internal-ssd/wd-black-nvme-ssd.html

I see this and being told this is great for gaming, but do I install windows to that and all my gaming I will play, or do I get a 2.5 SSD for the windows part?

 

[R_1]

for gaming the SSD or the Hard drive are only relevant to loading times. no extra FPS, nothing more than loading the game into RAM and level load times.

if you get this drive install windows and the games you cannot wait for to it. windows will load crazy fast, any programs installed there will load fast, games there will be fast.

 

[cherry blossoms]

NVMe drives are indeed fast, and a FEW games will show markedly faster load times vs even a sata based ssd drive with the correct driver. Most will be within a few seconds of each other, and both will be markedly faster than a standard 7200rpm harddrive.

Can you benchmark it vs can you notice it/feel it normally? You'll have to decide. Depending on how much you spend for the NVMe drive, could the price difference get you more storage space? The Micron 1100 for instance is hovering around 300 USD for 2 TB of space as I write this. I would prefer an MLC solution as my boot drive and for critical work, but as a secondary drive, even if not quite as fast as the 4 TB 860 EVO, it is still a good bargain as a storage/game drive, though the Evo is a tiny bit more responsive in certain tasks, probably R/T caching, and ROM differences in how to behave at small que depths

Some videos below: NVME Vs SATA (and not even the fastest sata ssd)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNMcW2tL3r4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUE0a35izRw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvcv7j4GXfg

Your system drive should be fast of course. Depending on your workloads you may benefit from the NVMe drive for certain tasks with large data sets. Either choice will be much faster than a mechanical HDD.

 

[Shektron]

Amid all the technical jargon, my reply shall be for a novice(AKA tech noob) - an HDD is the slowest option, followed by a SATA SSD. The NVMe drives may or may not be faster than a SATA SSD, it really depends on the application using the storage itself. In some applications, the NVMe will indeed be better(but the difference will not be drastic), and in others the NVMe will perform similar to the SATA SSD.

 

[shanvhere]

for gaming the SSD or the Hard drive are only relevant to loading times. no extra FPS, nothing more than loading the game into RAM and level load times.

if you get this drive install windows and the games you cannot wait for to it. windows will load crazy fast, any programs installed there will load fast, games there will be fast.

 

[shanvhere]

Thank you all for the information!