Question What is the best new SSD for my system ?

[adar.winter]

Hi everyone.

My mobo is Gigabyte B365M Aorus Elite. I have a 3070 occupying on Pci-E slot. I have one NVME drive occupying the NVME slot. and my windows drive is C: and it is an SSD drive, with about 500mbps speed for writing and reading.

One of my drives has died and now I want a new one, and I don't know if to go with a SSD SATA drive (about 500mbps reading speed) or a NVME SSD with an adapter (hopefully speeds 4 times or more faster).
I want to install games there, after effects files there, and also store Work data there.

I am not sure what kind of adapter I need, what is the max speed I can get with a NVME+Adapter on my particular mobo, and if it's worth the price, since i want the cheapest solution.

ChatGPT 4o said I have a PCI-e slot that is 4X, so I can get NVME speeds of 4000mbps with an adapter, but I dont fully trust ChatGPT yet. Is that true?
Is it worth paying about 60$-100$ more for the NVME+Adapter compared to a simple SSD SATA solution (For my desired uses)?

Thanks guys


Specs:
Win 10 64bit
Gigabyte B365M Aorus Elite mobo
3070 GPU 8GB VRAM
32GB RAM
c: with windows is Samsung SSD 860 EVO 500GB
F: drive is WDS100T3X0C-00SJG0

 

[USAFRet]

What specific drives are in there now?

If this is your motherboard, you have two M.2 ports compatible with NVMe drives.
https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/B365-M-AORUS-ELITE-rev-10/sp#sp

Don't bother with an adapter. And don't rely on ChatGPT (for anything).

 

[adar.winter]

Thanks for pointing me out to the other M2 connection.
A friend (who is a Hardware guy), pointed me to this point - he said my GPU is sitting right above that other M2. If there was another NVME on the mobo, the GPU would sit like a centimeter above it, and either conneting the GPU would break or crack or damage the NVME (Something that happened to him a couple of years ago on a different mobo+GPU) or they would be really close and they will heat each other up and cause damage to the NVME or might get it to not work properly (much lower speeds or something).
So he recommended the adapter.

Also, that same friend, said that the mobo might limit my speeds anyway and be my bottleneck and if that's the case, than why spend money on an NVME?
Is that true? can I check if that's the case?

 

[Eximo]

Shouldn't be a way for a GPU to damage an M.2 drive that is installed correctly. M.2 drives are below the height of the PCIe expansion slots, and any heatsinks designed by the motherboard makers will also clear the GPUs.

I suspect they may have installed the drive such that it was sitting at an angle rather than flat and then put a GPU above it which broke it.

As for the GPU heating up the drive, that can be a concern. You just have to make sure your chassis has proper airflow to get the heat from the GPU out of the system. Flash memory operates best above room temperature, the thing that you need to keep cooler is the SSD controller.

Any NVMe drive is better than pretty much any SATA drive in terms of performance. Doesn't matter if your system can't handle the latest drive's maximum speeds. As you discovered, roughly 8 times as fast as SATA III is your max limit, and there are newer drives that can go as fast as 7-10,000, but you won't notice those differences in general use. Only if you had another similarly fast drive or another system with a fast enough connection and drive to utilize it.

 

[USAFRet]

Also, that same friend, said that the mobo might limit my speeds anyway and be my bottleneck and if that's the case, than why spend money on an NVME?

That is not a concern. Both ports are the same speed.
There is no "bottleneck".

 

[adar.winter]

Shouldn't be a way for a GPU to damage an M.2 drive that is installed correctly. M.2 drives are below the height of the PCIe expansion slots, and any heatsinks designed by the motherboard makers will also clear the GPUs.

I suspect they may have installed the drive such that it was sitting at an angle rather than flat and then put a GPU above it which broke it.

As for the GPU heating up the drive, that can be a concern. You just have to make sure your chassis has proper airflow to get the heat from the GPU out of the system. Flash memory operates best above room temperature, the thing that you need to keep cooler is the SSD controller.

Any NVMe drive is better than pretty much any SATA drive in terms of performance. Doesn't matter if your system can't handle the latest drive's maximum speeds. As you discovered, roughly 8 times as fast as SATA III is your max limit, and there are newer drives that can go as fast as 7-10,000, but you won't notice those differences in general use. Only if you had another similarly fast drive or another system with a fast enough connection and drive to utilize it.

How can I test if my airflow in my chassis is enough to keep things in proper temps?
What is the SSD and how can I make sure its cool enough?

 

[Eximo]

Is your computer overheating now? CPU and GPU temperatures? What do your motherboard temperatures look like? You should also be able to load up CrystalDisk Info and check the temperatures of your drives.

I would probably just get this one.

https://pcpartpicker.com/product/sw4Ycf/crucial-p3-1-tb-m2-2280-nvme-solid-state-drive-ct1000p3ssd8

 

[35below0]

The answer to your original question is taht even though the NVMe drive would be faster, the speed difference is imperceptible. Almost like a car that is 0.107s faster in 0-60 acceleration. Yeah it's faster, but if both reach 60 in under 3 seconds, both are bloody quick.

If an SSD is more convenient to install or cheaper, go with that.
If you want an NVMe, the slot is under the GPU and is labelled as M2A in your motherboard manual. Heat should not be a concern with a gen3 or gen 4 drive.

The Crucial P3 is a fine NVMe, i happen to have one and it works great for me.
For only a few dollars more, you can buy the Teamgroup MP44L - https://pcpartpicker.com/product/2x...-40-x4-nvme-solid-state-drive-tm8fpk001t0c101

It's slightly better: https://versus.com/en/crucial-p3-1tb-vs-team-group-mp44l-1tb
(TBW is 600 for the MP44L)

 

[Bob.B]

Hi everyone.

My mobo is Gigabyte B365M Aorus Elite. I have a 3070 occupying on Pci-E slot. I have one NVME drive occupying the NVME slot. and my windows drive is C: and it is an SSD drive, with about 500mbps speed for writing and reading.

One of my drives has died and now I want a new one, and I don't know if to go with a SSD SATA drive (about 500mbps reading speed) or a NVME SSD with an adapter (hopefully speeds 4 times or more faster).
I want to install games there, after effects files there, and also store Work data there.

I am not sure what kind of adapter I need, what is the max speed I can get with a NVME+Adapter on my particular mobo, and if it's worth the price, since i want the cheapest solution.

ChatGPT 4o said I have a PCI-e slot that is 4X, so I can get NVME speeds of 4000mbps with an adapter, but I dont fully trust ChatGPT yet. Is that true?
Is it worth paying about 60$-100$ more for the NVME+Adapter compared to a simple SSD SATA solution (For my desired uses)?

Thanks guys


Specs:
Win 10 64bit
Gigabyte B365M Aorus Elite mobo
3070 GPU 8GB VRAM
32GB RAM
c: with windows is Samsung SSD 860 EVO 500GB
F: drive is WDS100T3X0C-00SJG0

About the only diff you will see using a m.2 in the slot and a 2.5 ssd is less cable clutter.

 

[adar.winter]

The answer to your original question is taht even though the NVMe drive would be faster, the speed difference is imperceptible. Almost like a car that is 0.107s faster in 0-60 acceleration. Yeah it's faster, but if both reach 60 in under 3 seconds, both are bloody quick.

If an SSD is more convenient to install or cheaper, go with that.
If you want an NVMe, the slot is under the GPU and is labelled as M2A in your motherboard manual. Heat should not be a concern with a gen3 or gen 4 drive.

The Crucial P3 is a fine NVMe, i happen to have one and it works great for me.
For only a few dollars more, you can buy the Teamgroup MP44L - https://pcpartpicker.com/product/2x...-40-x4-nvme-solid-state-drive-tm8fpk001t0c101

It's slightly better: https://versus.com/en/crucial-p3-1tb-vs-team-group-mp44l-1tb
(TBW is 600 for the MP44L)

Really? The speed differences will be negligble?
SSD SATAs run at about 500mb\s and NVMEs of the same price run at about 3000mb\s. Is that negligble in terms of loading in games or in After Effects performance??

Because from doing a benchmark on my PC using "AS SSD Benchmark" my read\write with my current NVME is about 2900 (which is less than the ~3700 that it says in the website of that NVME). So there is some bottleneck or ceiling of how fast my mobo or setup can run. so I am not looking for NVMEs that run faster than ~3000.

And I found (In my country) this NVMW option, which is 2tb and relatively cheap and at the NVME speed I am going for:
https://shop.kingston.com/products/nv2-nvme-pcie-ssd?variant=43152961601728
In my country it's about 145$

and comparing it to a SSD SATA that is also 2tb and cheaper, I found this:
https://www.amazon.com/Verbatim-Internal-Storage-Interface-Technology/dp/B0BY6QCK9M?th=1
In my country it's about 115$

so I would like your opinion:
1. Is the speed differences between them meaningless?! because the NVME is about 5-6 times faster.
I mean, if the difference in games is 3 seconds in loading screens instead of 4 than yeah, it's meaningless. or in rendering frames in after effects is 0.3 of a second instead of 0.4, yeah, kinda meaningless. But if it's 5 seconds instead of 25, it's not meaningless. If it's 0.3 seconds to render a single frame instead of 1.5 than it's a huge difference.

2. Are these components OK? or do they suck? and if they suck, for what reason is their suckiness? Wherefore art though suck?

 

[USAFRet]

Really? The speed differences will be negligble?
SSD SATAs run at about 500mb\s and NVMEs of the same price run at about 3000mb\s. Is that negligble in terms of loading in games or in After Effects performance??

A Ferrari is WAY faster than a typical minivan, right?

Which gets you to the end of your driveway faster?

The Ferrari only shines when you take it to the track. Which is NOT what we do in day to day computer ops.

In video and photo rendering, the rest of the system matter FAR more than the basic drive speed.
Here, my current system rendering a short video out to 3 different drives, with vastly different advertised speeds:

 

[adar.winter]

A Ferrari is WAY faster than a typical minivan, right?

Which gets you to the end of your driveway faster?

The Ferrari only shines when you take it to the track. Which is NOT what we do in day to day computer ops.

In video and photo rendering, the rest of the system matter FAR more than the basic drive speed.
Here, my current system rendering a short video out to 3 different drives, with vastly different advertised speeds:

Thanks, mate.

It's just strange that modern games recommend an SSD and not a HDD, when HDDs read\write at only about 200mb\s if the difference is so tiny and meaningless. Why the requirement, then? Why the hype around NVMEs?

Also, can you answer about the two hardware devices I wrote I am considering? are they worth the money?

 

[Silas Sanchez]

Its all relative, when you go nvme the faster more responsiveness is so much more enjoyable than SATA. In some sense nvme to sata is like sata to hdd.
But there isn't massive differences, the differences are more random acess usually which is important for smooth editing video and photo.

So here is my older system with sata ssds vs my new with nvme just to give a rough feel:

Boot times: ~25secs vs 12secs.
game load times: ~10secs vs ~5secs, but many varibles at play.
loading up photsohop and premiere: 4-5secs vs 1-2secs.

Even in my 8years old thinkpad, gen 3 nvme are much much more enjoyable and id never go back to sata.

where nvme truley shines is accessing alot of large files ranbomly, like browsing very large photo files quickly. copying large files in a much shorter time frame, loading up thumbnails on large images etc.

They say gen 5 isnt any better than gen 4, but thats not true, its alot better in browsing large images and copying large files. the speed diff is big but need a very new system.

forget about hdds... they are awful due to their horrible slow random read/write speeds.

 

[USAFRet]

Thanks, mate.

It's just strange that modern games recommend an SSD and not a HDD, when HDDs read\write at only about 200mb\s if the difference is so tiny and meaningless.

No.

Moving from an HDD to an SSD is HUGE.
The main benefit is the near zero access rate of the SSD. This is across all types of solid state drives.
The spinning HDD, there is a significant wait time to find the next bit of data as the drive platters spin around.

Between various flavors of SSD, not so much.

But, the manufacturers always advertise the big sequential numbers.
That only counts if you were copy a big load of data between 2 very fast drives.
For normal data to day work (games?)....there isn't a lot of real difference between the types of SSD.

 

[USAFRet]

Not that long ago, a guy here tried to tell me that a PCIe 4.0 drive would let the system boot up 10x faster than a SATA III SSD.

"simple math", or so he said.
He was relying on the big difference in the sequential read numbers.
Doesn't work like that.

 

[USAFRet]

As evidenced by the above graph, rendering a 10 minute video out to 3 different SSD types results in pretty much zero difference.
The advertised numbers you see for the 980 Pro are 10 times that of the 860 EVO SSD.
And that number is what everyone keys on. FASTER!!!!


The rest of the system is the key. The drives were just loafing along, waiting for data.

 

[USAFRet]

And there is nothing wrong with wanting fast NVMe drives.
Just don't chase that, or think that your actual operations will be 5x-10x faster than a SATA III SSD.

 

[35below0]

Thanks, mate.

It's just strange that modern games recommend an SSD and not a HDD, when HDDs read\write at only about 200mb\s if the difference is so tiny and meaningless. Why the requirement, then? Why the hype around NVMEs?

Also, can you answer about the two hardware devices I wrote I am considering? are they worth the money?

@USAFRet explained very well why the difference in speed is so minimal. It's true an NVMe is faster, and there is no reason not buy an NVMe, but there is also no reason to overspend on the fastest thing out there.

Because all SSDs work in a blink of an eye and one being much faster doesn't matter when it's all still a blink of an eye.


What online store are you looking to buy from? If we could see what they have on offer, we could make a recommendation.

I would avoid the Kingston NV2 - https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/kingston-nv2-ssd
This is what i recommended: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/team-group-mp44l-ssd-review
But i don't know if it's available to you. Crucial, Western Digital and Samsung have good drives, but also some not so good ones. Best ask before you buy.

 

[adar.winter]

@USAFRet explained very well why the difference in speed is so minimal. It's true an NVMe is faster, and there is no reason not buy an NVMe, but there is also no reason to overspend on the fastest thing out there.

Because all SSDs work in a blink of an eye and one being much faster doesn't matter when it's all still a blink of an eye.


What online store are you looking to buy from? If we could see what they have on offer, we could make a recommendation.

I would avoid the Kingston NV2 - https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/kingston-nv2-ssd
This is what i recommended: https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/team-group-mp44l-ssd-review
But i don't know if it's available to you. Crucial, Western Digital and Samsung have good drives, but also some not so good ones. Best ask before you buy.

Thank you for the recommendation, but your recommended hardware doesn't seem to be available in my country.

Is this the NVME you recommended?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B9Y48V7...W470J01P1&ref_=list_c_wl_lv_ov_lig_dp_it&th=1

If it is, than it's worth it ordering from Amazon for me.

If it isn't, perhaps you can send a links to Amazon for 3 cheap (but not c**p) recommendations and I will see how much it costs to order them to my country.

I highly appreciate the help!

 

[35below0]

Thank you for the recommendation, but your recommended hardware doesn't seem to be available in my country.

Is this the NVME you recommended?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B9Y48V7...W470J01P1&ref_=list_c_wl_lv_ov_lig_dp_it&th=1

If it is, than it's worth it ordering from Amazon for me.

If it isn't, perhaps you can send a links to Amazon for 3 cheap (but not c**p) recommendations and I will see how much it costs to order them to my country.

I highly appreciate the help!

That is the NVMe i recommend yes. That is the 2Tb model. I linked the 1Tb model.
Up to you to decide if 1Tb is enough, or if you want to pay for 2Tb.

 

[adar.winter]

That is the NVMe i recommend yes. That is the 2Tb model. I linked the 1Tb model.
Up to you to decide if 1Tb is enough, or if you want to pay for 2Tb.

I have ordered this NVME from Amazon, since it costs as much as an SSD SATA (give or take about 20$-30$) and saw no reason to settle.

Thanks for the recommendation and wish me luck