[SOLVED] In the market for a new m.2 on my 470 Aorus Ultra Gaming motherboard and possible compatibility issues

[tksi cu]

Hey everyone, as the title says I'm in the market for a new SSD and I just realized that the second PCIe slot is gen 2. I'm looking at a few 2tb SSDs since those seem pretty affordable and will likely fix my storage issues for gaming. Some of the options I have in my list are the Western Black SN770, TEAMGROUP MP33, and Crucial P3, all of which are gen 4, gen 3, and gen 4 respectively. My PCIe gen 2 slot has 4 lanes and all of the options I gave have 4 as well, I know that newer gen SSDs can work with older ones but I'm not sure if the amount of lanes matters when installing. For instance, if I were to use an m.2 with 8 lanes but my PCIe slot only has 4, will it still work? Going back to what I was going to ask, would it be best to buy a gen 2 SSD for a cheaper price than one that's gen 4 instead? I feel it's better to just get a newer SSD and just upgrade my mobo later, but I figure I get a little help if anyone is willing to give their opinion or knowledge, it is appreciated. Also the m.2 I have installed already is in the PCIe 3 slot, I figure I should mention that.

Specs

• CPU - Ryzen 5 5600
• GPU - GeForce RTX 4060
• Motherboard - x470 Aorus Ultra Gaming
• RAM - I'm not sure what exactly they are but they are 2 Corsair 8gb sticks with a speed of 2133 MHz
• Power - 650 watt
• Current M.2 installed in PCIe slot - Samsung 860 Evo 500 gb

If there's any other information is needed I'll try my best to give it.

Edit:
looked up my current m.2 info and it would fit perfectly in the PCIe slot instead, so I could fit one of the three mentioned SSDs into the gen 3 PCIe slot.

Edit 2:
Just learned the difference between a Sata SSD and a NVMe SSD, trying to find if my mobo is compatible with with NVMe SSDs. If anyone has any insight that'd be appreciated.

Edit 3:
I did some more research and saw that the Gen 3 m.2 slot should be compatible with a Gen 4 NVMe m.2 because it is able to support M key m.2s. So hypothetically if I were to move my current SSD to the PCIe slot my computer should run normally yes?

Edit 4:
After some more research I determined that the Western Black SN770 is the fastest while being cheap since it's on sale atm on amazon. If anyone has another recommendation I'd like to hear.

 

[Koekieezz]

The best option would be the fastest ssd with the least price but with the most capacity and features like dram, knowing that generation doesn't matter at all with an ssd, cause the downside is only the speed due to lower gen, but the lane does matter. Usually i'd go with gen 4 drives if its cheaper, but with dram ones, Kingston KC3000 is one of the example, Team MP34 Pro, Team Cardea zero z440, MSi M470 or M480 or M480 Pro, are usually my pick here in my country. Crucial P5 Plus should be okay ish too. The idea is by having gen 4 drives you got the latest chips inside (more than 64 Layers of 3D Nand per drive) and better ssd controller which sometimes does affect the performance and longetivity of a ssd, and whenever you switch your board to a X570 or B550 or maybe migrate to AM5/LGA1700/1816, you'll get the most of your ssd out there if you do really seek for the high R/W performance.

Personally, i dont really care about the speed, but the durability and the dram of the ssd itself, as i use Kingston KC3000 1TB (Gen 4) and Team MP34 1TB (Gen 3), both have drams (1GiB each), and i dont see the downside with my usage, also its been strong for a year so yeah, Durability + Longetivity >> Speed to me. While of course sure i do enjoy the gen 4 speed (i use B550), i barely see any differences between the 2, but when im verifying my game integrity, it shows it's performance, well its just personal satisfactory that you could do stuff faster, but overall, it always depends on the user.

If you're trying to find the perfect Price to Performance ratio, check here for a list of ssd you could find in your country, try to get the one with dram and compare it with non dram option (the one that use HMB), if the price difference is small with the one you want, then grab the dram one. HMB isn't a problem actually, but sometimes latency does add up when you're moving big chunk of files.. which something that had to be in mind.