[SOLVED] SSD-Looking for the Best SSD to fit my needs

[enderzshadow]

I've been doing research on SSD's to give my computer a modest but noticeable upgrade.
The more I looked, the more details I got and the more confusing it was.
Can you help me find a SSD card that meets my needs?

Budget is 170 or under.

The computer is used for gaming (guild wars 2-mmo)
the Typical stuff
and some mild photo editing/lightroom

My hardware
Mobo -MSI X58A-GD45 (MS-7522)
Proc-Intel Xeon X5670
Currently I have a Hitachi 1Tb Sata
and a 150gb WD


I checked out two articles that gave me the following SSD's
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-ssds,3891.html
and https://www.pcmag.com/review/366078/samsung-ssd-970-evo-plus
Samsung 970 PRO (1TB) ($167)
and
970 Evo Plus NVMe SSD (512GB $130)

What would you recommend?

Are the two SSD's I mentioned complete overkill?

And why is the 970 Evo $130 for 512GB
while the 970 Pro is $167 for 1TB ?

Lastly, I read this article-Best SSD's for gaming
https://www.pcgamer.com/best-ssd-for-gaming/
Why are they all SATA cards? I thought SATA cards had less performance than Both Samsung SSD's I mentioned earlier

Thank you for the help

 

[hnkenshiro]

Can you link us the deal for Samsung 970 Pro 1TB?

 

[Violett]

Can you link us the deal for Samsung 970 Pro 1TB?

I've been doing research on SSD's to give my computer a modest but noticeable upgrade.
The more I looked, the more details I got and the more confusing it was.
Can you help me find a SSD card that meets my needs?

Budget is 170 or under.

The computer is used for gaming (guild wars 2-mmo)
the Typical stuff
and some mild photo editing/lightroom

My hardware
Mobo -MSI X58A-GD45 (MS-7522)
Proc-Intel Xeon X5670
Currently I have a Hitachi 1Tb Sata
and a 150gb WD


I checked out two articles that gave me the following SSD's
https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-ssds,3891.html
and https://www.pcmag.com/review/366078/samsung-ssd-970-evo-plus
Samsung 970 PRO (1TB) ($167)
and
970 Evo Plus NVMe SSD (512GB $130)

What would you recommend?

Are the two SSD's I mentioned complete overkill?

And why is the 970 Evo $130 for 512GB
while the 970 Pro is $167 for 1TB ?

Lastly, I read this article-Best SSD's for gaming
https://www.pcgamer.com/best-ssd-for-gaming/
Why are they all SATA cards? I thought SATA cards had less performance than Both Samsung SSD's I mentioned earlier

Thank you for the help

Both Samsung 970 Evo or Pro are M.2 SSD (wich is a standard), and both are PCIe( wich is an interface) NVMe, with much better speed than SATA( another type of interface). Excuse me if I am wrong, but I read this in the articles about SSD.

 

[USAFRet]

The 970 PRO is probably overkill, and no performance benefit for the price premium vs the EVO or PLUS.
The choice you want to make is between the 970 EVO and the 970 EVO PLUS.

The PLUS is just the latest iteration of the 970 EVO line. Supposedly it is a tenny bit faster, but not something you'd actually notice in use. Especially in a gaming system.

 

[Karadjgne]

Games are made up of a lot of relatively small files which are read and shipped to ram very quickly on Sata SSDs. It's done so fast that the ram is waiting on the cpu. The bonus to NVMe drives comes with large file transfers that take a lot longer than game files, talking about files over 1Gb in size each. Game files are more commonly less than 1Mb. That makes a sizable difference when loading a full screen 4k photo-realistic picture, but not an animation machine gun graphic. So while NVMe definitely has a place in photo editing, for games it very rarely shows any benefit over a standard Sata ssd.

Sata SSDs run @ 5x as fast as a standard hdd, so if a map takes 15 seconds to load on hdd, figure about 3 seconds on an SSD, or 2 seconds on NVMe. The difference is often not worth the price. Now if photo editing, on hdd if a picture took 1 minute on hdd, that's 12 seconds for ssd or 6 seconds on NVMe, when time is money and its a difference of looking at 10 pictures a minute vrs 5 or 1, then NVMe makes a lot of sense, especially if you have hundreds of wedding photos to go through.

But for games, when the ram is queued up waiting on the cpu, it really doesn't matter how fast the small files get to the ram, so even doubling Sata read speeds doesn't help.

Your prices are a little messed up, no way a 1Tb 970 Pro is $167 from a reputable vendor.

Storage: Samsung - 970 Evo Plus 500 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($127.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung - 970 Pro 512 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($159.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung - 970 Pro 1 TB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($344.41 @ Amazon)

The only 1Tb samsung drives for $167 is the 860 EVO.

 

[enderzshadow]

Can you link us the deal for Samsung 970 Pro 1TB?

Sorry about that, probably doesn't exist.
I must of mixed something up looking at multiple articles.

The 970 PRO is probably overkill, and no performance benefit for the price premium vs the EVO or PLUS.
The choice you want to make is between the 970 EVO and the 970 EVO PLUS.

The PLUS is just the latest iteration of the 970 EVO line. Supposedly it is a tenny bit faster, but not something you'd actually notice in use. Especially in a gaming system.

Thank you for the help.

Games are made up of a lot of relatively small files which are read and shipped to ram very quickly on Sata SSDs. It's done so fast that the ram is waiting on the cpu. The bonus to NVMe drives comes with large file transfers that take a lot longer than game files, talking about files over 1Gb in size each. Game files are more commonly less than 1Mb. That makes a sizable difference when loading a full screen 4k photo-realistic picture, but not an animation machine gun graphic. So while NVMe definitely has a place in photo editing, for games it very rarely shows any benefit over a standard Sata ssd.

Sata SSDs run @ 5x as fast as a standard hdd, so if a map takes 15 seconds to load on hdd, figure about 3 seconds on an SSD, or 2 seconds on NVMe. The difference is often not worth the price. Now if photo editing, on hdd if a picture took 1 minute on hdd, that's 12 seconds for ssd or 6 seconds on NVMe, when time is money and its a difference of looking at 10 pictures a minute vrs 5 or 1, then NVMe makes a lot of sense, especially if you have hundreds of wedding photos to go through.

But for games, when the ram is queued up waiting on the cpu, it really doesn't matter how fast the small files get to the ram, so even doubling Sata read speeds doesn't help.

Your prices are a little messed up, no way a 1Tb 970 Pro is $167 from a reputable vendor.

Storage: Samsung - 970 Evo Plus 500 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($127.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung - 970 Pro 512 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($159.99 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung - 970 Pro 1 TB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive ($344.41 @ Amazon)

The only 1Tb samsung drives for $167 is the 860 EVO.

Thank you. That puts things into perspective. From reading, it looked like only 'heavy users' benefited from such performance.
And I didn't know what they would be doing.
@USAFRet
@Karadjgne

I went to the MSI forums and found out that my mobo would only take a 2.5" SATA SSD

If I have a pcie slot, could I use a M2 adapter like this
m.2 NVMe to pcie
Is it possible that my bios won't support nvme?
(Going to go to my mobo forums again and see if this mobo does)

 

[Karadjgne]

Yes and no. NVMe requires a pcie x4 to work, your board has that, but as a secondary drive only. Anything older than the x79/Z97 mobo's doesn't have bios recognition for a boot drive. There is a work around using raid drivers, but it's extremely complicated and one small mistake will leave the pc bungled up as it also requires a modified bios. So not something for the uninitiated, only experts. Stick with regular Sata 2.5, it's enough for gamers, cheaper for larger storage and works on anything that accepts a Sata data connection.

 

[enderzshadow]

@Karadjgne

Thank you for the help and all the details.

When you say 'Sata 2.5' you are talking about the 2.5 inch dimensions correct?

I think I've decided on a Sata SSD
Samsung 860 Evo
I've thought about putting everything I have (650GB) onto the 1tb version. Are there any downside/advantage to that?

Thanks again

 

[USAFRet]

A single 1TB 860 EVO will work just fine.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147673

If your current drive has only 650GB consumed, we can talk you through migrating everything to the new SSD.
Pretty quick and easy.

 

[Karadjgne]

I'd keep that Hitachi 1Tb as a secondary drive. Slap anything in there that really you rarely ever touch, long term storage like photos, old videos etc. You can also use it as a backup drive for OS drive images etc. That'll free up some space on the OS drive, especially since many of these newer games with DLC etc can easily be over 100Gb for a single game.