Question New system - best M2 setup?

[James Blonde]

I've bought a new system, and it has 4 slots for M2 drives (my current system only has 2) - so it's exciting! It's going into a Corsair 7000D case.

My current system has 2 M2 drives - a Samsung 1Tb (OS), and a Corsair 1Tb (steam library - 336Gb used). I've also got a 1Tb Samsung SSD (general software installs - 836Gb used), plus 2 higher capacity 3.5" HDDs for photo storage, music, downloads, documents, etc. It's likely most / all will be moving to the new system. (though it only has 4 SATA ports, so...) I've got a brand new, unused 2Tb M2 drive

How would you set this all up in a new system? Would you use the 2Tb or 1Tb for the OS? Put all the installs (including the steam library) on 1 M2?

I guess I'm thinking for the M2 drives - 1Tb OS, 2Tb installs, 1 Tb steam library, then I've effectively got a spare 1Tb SSD (and keep the other drives as they are) but am I missing a trick here?? Or have I just answered my own trivial question?

Thanks!

 

[dark_globe]

generally speaking you always want to put your fastes/best performing drive in m.2 - 1 slot (the one closest to cpu socket)
because it is directly connected to cpu pcie lanes and offers the best performance .
as for the other drives it depends on a chipset and specific motherboard in terms of what it can do .
what motherboard and cpu do you have in your new build ?

 

[James Blonde]

I9 13900K on a Z790 Gigabyte Aorus Master (I chickened out of the Ryzen)

The Samsungs are 970 Evo (1tb) Evo Plus(2tb) and the Corsair is an MP600 Core (1tb)

 

[James Blonde]

OK, revising my thoughts here now....Makes sense to sell one of my M2 drives with my current PC, and it might as well be the OS one (97% health) - makes life easier in every regard I think.

So will buy a new M2 drive. I'm assuming I want my fastest drive as my OS drive, and that's the one I want closest to the processor. I'm guessing size doesn't impact on speed, so a fast 2Tb is as good as a fast 1Tb ? If i get a 2Tb OS, use the other 2Tb for general installs, and keep the 1Tb for Steam, it means I can reutilise the 1Tb SSD for something, plus the 2 other drives.

That logical? And / Or maybe better split / optimise my installs between the Steam Library drive and the installs drive?

 

[helper800]

OK, revising my thoughts here now....Makes sense to sell one of my M2 drives with my current PC, and it might as well be the OS one (97% health) - makes life easier in every regard I think.

So will buy a new M2 drive. I'm assuming I want my fastest drive as my OS drive, and that's the one I want closest to the processor. I'm guessing size doesn't impact on speed, so a fast 2Tb is as good as a fast 1Tb ? If i get a 2Tb OS, use the other 2Tb for general installs, and keep the 1Tb for Steam, it means I can reutilise the 1Tb SSD for something, plus the 2 other drives.

That logical? And / Or maybe better split / optimise my installs between the Steam Library drive and the installs drive?

I would put the OS on that 970 evo plus because it has significantly higher write endurance and 2gb of DDR4 cache that makes it much better than the corsair drive. Sell the 970 1TB drive if you will. If you need bulk NVMe storage something like this is great. If you want less storage but very fast for how cheap it is, you want this.

 

[James Blonde]

And if I got the Crucial P5 Plus, use that for the OS rather than the 970 Evo Plus?

Or the Corsair MP600 Pro - not much more, but faster write / read speeds?
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/2tb...7100mb-s-read-6800mb-s-write-1000k-1200k-iops

 

[helper800]

And if I got the Crucial P5 Plus, use that for the OS rather than the 970 Evo Plus?

Or the Corsair MP600 Pro - not much more, but faster write / read speeds?
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/2tb...7100mb-s-read-6800mb-s-write-1000k-1200k-iops

Either or would be fine with the OS on it. The corsair drive is also fine but you will not feel it being faster than the crucial P5 plus.

 

[John Chesterfield]

Don't put your OS on a larger drive, there's absolutely no need and it's a pain when reinstalling OS. Put game libraries and other program files on larger drives.

I'm using one third of a 500GB NVME Samsung Evo for W11 and a moderate amount of software. If that drive ever started to fill up with software, I'd just point certain software installs to one of the larger drives.

 

[James Blonde]

Don't put your OS on a larger drive, there's absolutely no need and it's a pain when reinstalling OS. Put game libraries and other program files on larger drives.

I'm using one third of a 500GB NVME Samsung Evo for W11 and a moderate amount of software. If that drive ever started to fill up with software, I'd just point certain software installs to one of the larger drives.

I've always tended to let some software install in the default drive (c:\program files) and split some of the more specialist stuff (photoshop, resolve, audio libraries, etc) onto another drive, And the steam library on yet another one too! I think more drives will just help me segregate my software and libraries a bit better - less stuff on more drives.,

and also always tended to use smaller disks for OS, but because of the above default install locations, they've never been that small. Maybe I'll get a new, fast 1Tb or 500Gb drive for the OS and maybe get another 2tb for something else and really split out my installs and user profile - I've got the slots!

EDIT: Now having just said that.... whilst the motherboard has 4 slots, are there any downsides to using them all??? Just suddenly thought, before I get carried away filling them! Bearing in mind I've got as many as 2 SSDs and 2 HDDs going into the system too - assuming the M2 drives don't replace one or both of the SSDs....

 

[James Blonde]

To answer my own question, on the Z790 Aorus Master, from what I understand, it looks like 4 of the 5 M2 slots are fine, but one uses one of the SATA channels. So should be fine with 4. Mind you, 3 of them are under 1 massive heat sink.... really curious how that's going to work out!

 

[g-unit1111]

And if I got the Crucial P5 Plus, use that for the OS rather than the 970 Evo Plus?

Or the Corsair MP600 Pro - not much more, but faster write / read speeds?
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/2tb...7100mb-s-read-6800mb-s-write-1000k-1200k-iops

It’s not really that much faster. Seriously, I’ve been doing research on current M2 drives top to bottom and have been nearly tearing my hair out deciding what I’m going with. I ultimately decided to go with Western Digital, I’d go with the WD SN850X, it’s one of the better drives that isn’t a Samsung. I’m building an SFF build right now and I’m using 1 of the slots for a WD SN770 as the mass storage drive and a 850X as the boot drive.

Believe me, I usually buy Samsung drives without even thinking about it, but after the recent problems with the high failure rates of the 990 Pro, I’m switching over to Western Digital for the time being until this mess gets sorted out.

I wanted to get the SK Hynix P41 Platinum but I couldn’t justify the higher price for a Gen 4 PCI-E drive when Gen 5 drives are coming soon and I’m going Z790 for this build, which will support them.

 

[James Blonde]

It’s not really that much faster. Seriously, I’ve been doing research on current M2 drives top to bottom and have been nearly tearing my hair out deciding what I’m going with. I ultimately decided to go with Western Digital, I’d go with the WD SN850X, it’s one of the better drives that isn’t a Samsung. I’m building an SFF build right now and I’m using 1 of the slots for a WD SN770 as the mass storage drive and a 850X as the boot drive.

Believe me, I usually buy Samsung drives without even thinking about it, but after the recent problems with the high failure rates of the 990 Pro, I’m switching over to Western Digital for the time being until this mess gets sorted out.

I wanted to get the SK Hynix P41 Platinum but I couldn’t justify the higher price for a Gen 4 PCI-E drive when Gen 5 drives are coming soon and I’m going Z790 for this build, which will support them.

Funnily enough I actually went 1Tb WD SN850X with my OS drive! Primarily because it was the only fast drive that would arrive next day when ordered at 11.30pm! The 2Tb Samsung 880 can go in slot 2, the 2Tb Samsung 870 in slot 3, and the 1Tb Corsair Mp600 in slot 4.

I'm now wondering why I bought so much storage...! I've always been a storage hog, but genuinely wondering what I'm actually going to do with it all!

 

[g-unit1111]

Funnily enough I actually went 1Tb WD SN850X with my OS drive! Primarily because it was the only fast drive that would arrive next day when ordered at 11.30pm! The 2Tb Samsung 880 can go in slot 2, the 2Tb Samsung 870 in slot 3, and the 1Tb Corsair Mp600 in slot 4.

I'm now wondering why I bought so much storage...! I've always been a storage hog, but genuinely wondering what I'm actually going to do with it all!

Yeah that's a good choice. I'm definitely avoiding the 990 Pro after all of the issues I've heard about the failure rates. I'm building SFF so I don't have as many options with my M2 slots, I'm using the 850X as my boot drive and the 770 as my storage drive.