Question msi b550 gaming plus pci_e slots

[Deepwaterlife48]

so for the last 10 months or or so ive been using an msi b550 gaming plus mobo. 5 months ago today, i moved and having a ethernet connection was not possible so i picked up the tp link wifi 6e axe5400 pcie card.

my boot ssd is in the top m.2. slot. m2_1

my gpu is in pci_e1 but since it is a rather large 3 fan rx 6700 xt it also covers up pci_e2.

i have the wifi card sitting in the left side of pci_e3 (the second x16 slot)

to this point the second m.2_2 slot has been unused as is pci_e4.

the reason i put the wifi card under the gpu in the x16 slot was because i wasnt sure if the card would clear the top of the components. i was considering making the second m.2 a backup drive to remove the sata hard disk drive and cage but manual states that pci_e3 would be disabled. i under stand using a second m.2 nvme drive on this particular board would limit the speeds to pcie gen 3 speeds, but i would think it would still be significantly faster than a sata hdd.

currently i have 7tb installed. a 1tb boot ssd 980 pro, 2 team group ex2 sata 2tb ssd's and a seagate barracuda compute 2tb hdd. trying to declutter a bit and thought removing the hdd and cage in favor of a 2.5 ssd or a second nvme drive would help.

does it make any difference having it in one of the x16 slots vs the x1 slot? if i do want to use the second m.2, is the simplest solution to move the wifi card?

 

[helpstar]

yes, simplest working solution
no difference between x16 and x1 for the wifi card

 

[Deepwaterlife48]

roger that. moving the wifi card to the lower slot. will probably remove the hdd for a second nvme drive at some point because looking up a few different sources last night, even using a 4.0 drive in a 3.0 pcie slot it is still significantly faster than a sata hdd.

also. from what ive read, sata is a dying platform which is why sata 3 hasnt been changed to "sata 4" is that correct? it's cheaper to just go nvme for developers and not waste money?

 

[USAFRet]

also. from what ive read, sata is a dying platform which is why sata 3 hasnt been changed to "sata 4" is that correct? it's cheaper to just go nvme for developers and not waste money?

SATA III being a "dying platform" does not make the drives in your system go away or be obsolete.

 

[Deepwaterlife48]

let me rephrase. with sata 3 being an older limited platform with slower transfer speeds, it seems to me, that developers are choosing to pursue technologies to improve nvme rather than develop stronger sata technology.

for example i have a 2tb seagate barracuda compute hdd and 2x team group ex2 2tb ssd's that are all connected via sata for 6tb of data storage via sata.

im curious, if you have a 2.5 ssd and a hdd on sata, wont they both be bottlenecked by the 6gb transfer limit even though the individual drives are faster? i dont know why i didnt realize this last year before purchasing the new team group drives.

 

[USAFRet]

let me rephrase. with sata 3 being an older limited platform with slower transfer speeds, it seems to me, that developers are choosing to pursue technologies to improve nvme rather than develop stronger sata technology.

for example i have a 2tb seagate barracuda compute hdd and 2x team group ex2 2tb ssd's that are all connected via sata for 6tb of data storage via sata.

im curious, if you have a 2.5 ssd and a hdd on sata, wont they both be bottlenecked by the 6gb transfer limit even though the individual drives are faster? i dont know why i didnt realize this last year before purchasing the new team group drives.

Even though both are "SATA III", an SSD is miles faster and more responsive than an HDD in the same port.

 

[Deepwaterlife48]

roger that.