Dec 28, 2018
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what i have currently

i7 9700k
asus rog maximus xi hero
asus rog rtx 2080 8gb
corsair hx850i platinum power supply
windows 10 pro

corsair 500D case
corsair h150i pro AIO cooler
+3 LL120s in push
+3 ML120s in pull
+3 LL120s exhaust

I WANT TO GET THE MOST OUT OF MY SYSTEM , i left myself room in the future for overclocking and a custom water loop.
With that said i realize my current AIO cooler is made for "quiet but cool" applications.

i have a solid fiber internet connection to actually be able to upload and download at high speeds.

I want a 2k 165 hz as the main monitor with a second 1920x1080 144hz just for keeping an eye on discord and personal use while gaming on the main 2k

Other times i would want to switch to a single 4k display for single player games and 4k movies and shows.
and also looking at future generation VR rigs like the new oculus.

i know i wanna put my operating system on a Samsung 870 evo nvme m.2 or a 870 pro nvme m.2 ( slot 1 filled )

the second M.2 slot on my MOBO! i am aware that when you take up both m.2 slots you loose SATA port 6
... everyone says "no point in putting games on an nvme m.2 drive " " its for large data transfers"

im told to put my games / programs/ launchers on 860 evo EXTERNAL SATA and call it a day

BUT.. i want to utilize the 2nd m.2 slot on my motherboard

2 TB 860 EVO INTERNAL SATA {VS} 2TB 870 PRO nvme pcie

lets say i dont care about the 150$ price difference

all my programs / launchers / games everything i use daily will be on this drive, wont these benefit from being on a faster drive?

why do people recommend you put an O/S on an nvme m.2 if its truly just "large data transfers" that benefit

it makes no sense that things stored on a drive with faster READS and writes wouldn't benefit


NEXT QUESTION: RAM

32 GB vs 64 GB
same MHz
same latency

again lets say i dont care the price is 200-300$ difference for sake of argument

would i see a performance difference in any of my applications?
2k 165hz ,
4k 60hz
VR rig

THANK YOU ALL

all the help and advice ive gotten on this build has been phenomenal so far, and really its just getting started with my plans to put a custom loop in the future and im sure ill be blowing up the forums for water cooling advice

any advice, tips , tricks , things to watch out for , all appreciated
 
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The whole point of putting using an SSD (SATA or NVMe) as a boot drive is to increase load speeds on daily operating system tasks, boot times, and minimize the impact of Windows background processes (like Windows Update or Windows Defender). From what I've heard, there's not nearly as much of a difference moving from a good SATA SSD to an NVMe SSD compared to moving from a HDD to SATA SSD.

With that said, I've got 2 Samsung 850 Pro SATA SSDs in RAID0 (giving me effectively double the speed of a single drive) as my current boot with plans to move to RAID0 970 Pros after my next upgrade. I definitely don't notice any speed issues whatsoever and even back when I was using a single 850 Pro as boot I was hard pressed to find any slowdowns...

Barty1884

Retired Moderator
There's no real 'gain' in having a dedicated NVMe drive for games, but no reason you can't do it if you just want to go all out.
I doubt anybody is recommending an external drive (as in USB), but a standard 2.5" is usually cheaper and won't negatively impact load times.

There's more benefit that just 'large data transfers', but between SATA and NVMe, your benefits are going to be mostly theoretical vs actual real world differences.


At the end of the day, what matters here is your actual use-case. As a gaming rig, dual NVMe drives is probably a waste.
Similarly, you'll be unlikely to exceed 16GB of RAM usage so, even with all else being equal (speed, timings, latency) on the RAM front, 32GB vs 64GB is almost certainly a moot point.
16GB, tighter timings, faster speeds is probably the 'best' plan.
 

poisonite101

Commendable
Aug 8, 2017
25
0
1,560
The whole point of putting using an SSD (SATA or NVMe) as a boot drive is to increase load speeds on daily operating system tasks, boot times, and minimize the impact of Windows background processes (like Windows Update or Windows Defender). From what I've heard, there's not nearly as much of a difference moving from a good SATA SSD to an NVMe SSD compared to moving from a HDD to SATA SSD.

With that said, I've got 2 Samsung 850 Pro SATA SSDs in RAID0 (giving me effectively double the speed of a single drive) as my current boot with plans to move to RAID0 970 Pros after my next upgrade. I definitely don't notice any speed issues whatsoever and even back when I was using a single 850 Pro as boot I was hard pressed to find any slowdowns related to the drive. So then, why do I plan to move to NVMe? Simply, it's overkill and I want the best of the best and I want it to stay that way for as long as possible.

With regards to your RAM question, you will pretty much never find any difference between 32gb and 64gb of regular DDR4 RAM for any game (even demanding titles will only use a max of 10 or 12 at max settings). In fact, you'd probably have a hard time even finding a work-related desktop application that takes advantage of more than 32GB. That's not to say there are none, they're just very specialized.
 
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