Question Second M2 (2TB) on Aorus X470 Ultra Gaming

[rekatluos]

So my MB is AORUS X470 Ultra Gaming. I have a WD Black 500GB M2 (2280) on my first slot (the one behind the GPU, PCIE x4 3.0).
I'm looking to get another M2 of about 2TB, but i'm getting a bit confused about speeds and what disables what exactly.
I only have one more M2 slot on my MB which seems to be PCIE X4 2.0. I was looking at Samsung 970 EVO even tho' its kinda pricy, but i have some questions.

Should i move my WD Black to the second slot and perhaps get a 970 for the first slot (3.0) ?
Will the second slot disable anything important? (from what i've read using the first slot disables x6, but i'm not using that one anyway).
What would the max speed be for the second (2.0) slot ? I've read the real speeds would be about 1.5gb/s.
The thing that confuses me isn't the 2.0 and 3.0 part of PCIE, its actually the NVMe part. I know that PCIE 3.0 is about 2x faster than 2.0, but is it the same when talking about NVME ?

Do you guys have any recommandation for a good M2 NVME of about 2TB (other than 970...as i said, i'm considering it, but damn its pricy). I also found Intel 660p (m2) with 1.8 read/write. Would it be more cost-effective to buy that one for the 2nd slot and be done with it ?

Hopefully i didn't ask too many questions. Looking for the best approach to my confusion here, thanks!

I plan on adding the 2tb M2 for: Gaming, Downloading big files (torrents perhaps) and development (build times using visual studio and such, currently using my first ssd for this).

P.S: My WD Black (1st slot M2) is holding my windows and some dev projects at the moment. If i'd move it does that mean i'd have to reinstall windows ?

 

[Eximo]

NVMe is a communications protocol (Non Volatile Memory Express). PCIe is just the bus it is using to get access to the CPU or Chipset. Yes, each PCIe generation is roughly double the previous, with some minor losses to overhead. PCIe 2.0 x4 = 2000MB/s. Most NVMe drives available can do about 1500-1600MB/s for a short duration. PCIe 4.0 x4 = 8000MB/s. Pretty sure only Corsair has a drive on the market, and it doesn't go that fast.

Any drive with a speed rating higher than the max theoretical bandwidth to the M.2 slot will only go as fast as the slot is able. This is very few drives under a sustained load, most will drop down to a more reasonable speed with any average queue depth. Only constantly moving around massive files is when throughput makes a big difference.

Yes, chances are good that moving the boot drive around may cause issues with Windows. But for your stated purposes, I think any moderately fast SSD, even an M.2 SATA drive would be fine to place in that second slot.

Since neither of the drives in question will take advantage of PCIe 4.0 speeds, just add your drive to the other slot.

 

[rekatluos]

NVMe is a communications protocol (Non Volatile Memory Express). PCIe is just the bus it is using to get access to the CPU or Chipset. Yes, each PCIe generation is roughly double the previous, with some minor losses to overhead. PCIe 2.0 x4 = 2000MB/s. Most NVMe drives available can do about 1500-1600MB/s for a short duration. PCIe 4.0 x4 = 8000MB/s. Pretty sure only Corsair has a drive on the market, and it doesn't go that fast.

Any drive with a speed rating higher than the max theoretical bandwidth to the M.2 slot will only go as fast as the slot is able. This is very few drives under a sustained load, most will drop down to a more reasonable speed with any average queue depth. Only constantly moving around massive files is when throughput makes a big difference.

Yes, chances are good that moving the boot drive around may cause issues with Windows. But for your stated purposes, I think any moderately fast SSD, even an M.2 SATA drive would be fine to place in that second slot.

Since neither of the drives in question will take advantage of PCIe 4.0 speeds, just add your drive to the other slot.

Hmmm....so you're saying any SSD would suffice for gaming/development builds right ? (i am in no way going to edit video and things like that, perhaps stream, but not video editing).

Should i perhaps just buy Intel 660p SSD for the 2nd slot? It is on PCIe 3.0, but its speed (on paper) seems to be 1.8gb/s so on PCIe 2.0 i wouldnt lose that much.

The idea is that if i don't need anything faster than 1.5gb/s i could buy that one since its way cheaper than 970 EVO (less than half the price of 970 in my country).

Would that be a good decission? From your point of view.

Thanks for the reply!

 

[Eximo]

That would be fine.