[SOLVED] M.2 PCIe Gen 3 x2 or SATA III for Game Storage

[ManOfArc]

My motherboard has a 2nd NVMe M.2 slot; PCIe gen3 x2. I was wondering how those x2 PCIe lanes would compare with using a 2.5" SATA III drive? By pure bit-rate, the 6Gb/s SATA interface should be noticeably slower than the 16Gb/s PCIe x2 interface. But being as how this drive would be used solely for game and maps loads, would that even matter? I have both an unused M.2 PCIe gen3 x4 drive and a spare 2.5" SATA III drive available.

 

[USAFRet]

HDD vs SSD, huge change.

Various levels of SSD?
Not so huge.

See here:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YoRKQy-UO4

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DKLA7w9eeA

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQ9LyNXpsOo

 

[NightHawkRMX]

Even between a quality 2.5in SATA SSD and top of the line pcie 4.0 x4 NVME there usually is not a large difference in game loading times. The performance difference between a quality 2.5in SSD and a decent SSD running at PCIe 3.0 X2 is unlikely to be noticeable.

I have both an unused M.2 PCIe gen3 x4 drive and a spare 3.5" SATA III drive available.

Which drives? The quality of the drive would be the deciding factor here in my opinion, rather than the interface used.

I occupy the secondary slot in my B550M pro4 with a SATA M.2 SSD I had lying around.

 

[Viking2121]

Well, pretty much any m.2 nvme drive will be faster than sata in just about every way, but for gaming, the faster speeds just don't really do much for gaming, I'd probably use the money and buy a higher capacity sata SSD, they are usally cheaper than m.2 drives, and its plenty fast enough.

 

[Eximo]

2x 3.0 is roughly 2GB/s. So don't spend money on any drive faster than that.

So low end PCIe 3.0 drives like the Western Digital Green can do 3500MB/s.

Most drives are pretty bad at sustained writes anyway, so if this is purely game storage, pretty much anything will do.

 

[ManOfArc]

As I said, I already have the drives on hand that I would choose from. So I won't be buying anything.
But the discussion seems to point to the fact that the differences between using a 2.5" SATA III and an M.2 PCIe x2 wouldn't be noticeable in gaming. So, I'll be going with the latter just to avoid any extra cable clutter. Thank you all for your advice.
And yes, I meant 2.5" above, not 3.5"

 

[Viking2121]

As I said, I already have the drives on hand that I would choose from. So I won't be buying anything.
But the discussion seems to point to the fact that the differences between using a 2.5" SATA III and an M.2 PCIe x2 wouldn't be noticeable in gaming. So, I'll be going with the latter just to avoid any extra cable clutter. Thank you all for your advice.
And yes, I meant 2.5" above, not 3.5"

I run a cheap 2tb Inland OVL m.2 for my games drive, It was 80 bucks, Before that I was using couple of sata SSD's for games, its so hard to tell the difference between the drives in game, From a HDD to a sata SSD, there was a noticeable difference.