Will games be slower on SSD's added to my system which Windows and Steam are not on?

[shen.matt92]

I built my brother a PC and at the time could only afford to put 500GB on it, a WD Blue 500GB M.2 SATA.
After experimenting with different drives, Ive accumulated a few extra hard drives that I want to add to his system.

One is a Samsung Evo 860 2.5 inch SSD 250GB and the other a Samsung 860 Evo M.2 SATA 500GB.

His MB only supports one M.2 slot, so the M.2 SATA Im getting a M.2 to 2.5 inch SATA adapter case that can fit into a 2.5 inch caddy.

So my main question is, since Windows and Steam are on the main drive, will there be any sort of lag issue putting Steam games on the other drives?

Reason I ask is because I downloaded a 4K movie to my PCs secondary storage 3.5 mechanical drive and it stutters. So I started to think maybe its because the torrent client and media player are on the main drive, see what I mean? I don't know much about this but my common sense tells me if a pc is trying to read from two sources simultaneously when your drives aren't in RAID then its much harder.


SO I guess my ultimate question is do I need the RAID 0 setup and if so will I have problems since all 3 drives are different brands, sizes and even form factors?

Or should I just go ahead and install those extra drives without RAID or re-installing Windows?


Thanks if you can clear up all my concerns. And his system is

i3 3100
Gigabyte H310M
8GB 2666 RAM
WD Blue 500GB M.2 SATA boot drive

Extra drives looking to put in:
Samsung 860 Evo 500GB M.2 SATA
Samsung 860 Evo 250GB 2.5 SATA

 

[derekullo]

Great question.

Reading and writing does take cpu usage to do.

If you open your task manager while doing your daily activities it should be fairly easy to see if the cpu is getting hammered and by what proces.

Having your steam games on another drive will not make the other drive slower.

It may even be faster due to that drive being reserved for game usage only and not having to compete with Windows for bandwidth.


I wrote a long post about how you should install windows on a raid 0 with your 2 500 gigabyte drives but then realized your motherboard doesn't allow a raid at the hardware / Intel Rapid Storage level.

https://techreport.com/review/33420/exploring-intel-h370-b360-and-h310-chipsets


Your only real solution here, besides keeping it as is, would be to install Windows on the 250 gigabyte sata drive and use the 2 - 500 gigabyte drives in a software raid 0 through windows.

Forewarning, I have never done a raid with an m.2 and an m.2 > sata adapter drive.

Most posts say don't do it, but its worth a shot to try.

 

[USAFRet]

You absolutely do NOT need to RAID those drives, nor should you.

You can have Steam games on whichever drive you choose, and multiple drives and/or folders

Having a client on one drive and data on another is of no consequence.
And especially with torrented data. That has nothing to do with anything.

Steam games location
In the steam client:
Steam
Settings
Downloads
Steam Library Folders
Add library folder

To move an already installed game
Games library
Right click the game
Properties
Local Files
Move Install Folder

 

[shen.matt92]

Thanks guys, very helpful info. I was trying to search the web and youtube on how to do RAID. It seems like theres different ways and many articles were outdated. A little off topic here, but if the answers simple Id rather not make a new post. Do I configure something in BIOS and Windows? Or just Windows? And does any thing need to be done in the first screen of Windows installation where it asks which drive you want to put it on?

Its my first time doing this and I want to make sure I get it right first try.

 

[shen.matt92]

Also derekullo, that's very interesting what you said about installing games on a separate drive maybe being faster since it doesn't have to compete for bandwidth. Is that absolutely confirmed to be true or is it just an idea? So what youre saying is, put Windows on the boot drive, then EVERYTHING else including even a media player or any other files should be on separate drives??

 

[USAFRet]

Also derekullo, that's very interesting what you said about installing games on a separate drive maybe being faster since it doesn't have to compete for bandwidth. Is that absolutely confirmed to be true or is it just an idea? So what youre saying is, put Windows on the boot drive, then EVERYTHING else including even a media player or any other files should be on separate drives??

OS and applications on your C drive.
Games/doc/music/video...on other drives.

 

[derekullo]

Also derekullo, that's very interesting what you said about installing games on a separate drive maybe being faster since it doesn't have to compete for bandwidth. Is that absolutely confirmed to be true or is it just an idea? So what youre saying is, put Windows on the boot drive, then EVERYTHING else including even a media player or any other files should be on separate drives??

What I said was true, but most programs that are small like media players / browsers just get loaded into ram after you start them.

Browsers can use a ton of ram if you have 10+ tabs open (my firefox is currently at 1.5 gigabytes of ram), but all this exists on ram so hard drive speed / raid would not matter.

You could put it on your other drive if you wanted but movies won't load any faster if the movies themselves are stored on a slower drive.

 

[shen.matt92]

Also derekullo, that's very interesting what you said about installing games on a separate drive maybe being faster since it doesn't have to compete for bandwidth. Is that absolutely confirmed to be true or is it just an idea? So what youre saying is, put Windows on the boot drive, then EVERYTHING else including even a media player or any other files should be on separate drives??

What I said was true, but most programs that are small like media players / browsers just get loaded into ram after you start them.

Browsers can use a ton of ram if you have 10+ tabs open (my firefox is currently at 1.5 gigabytes of ram), but all this exists on ram so hard drive speed / raid would not matter.

You could put it on your other drive if you wanted but movies won't load any faster if the movies themselves are stored on a slower drive.

When I did my first build I didn't know any better so I use to have a Toshiba P300 mechanical 3.5 drive with 64mb cache although I had an 8700K and GTX 1080. I asked the guy at my computer store if it would be the same as an SSD, just take longer to load things. But as far as game performance goes, itd be the same. He said yes.


I didn't think itd be that bad since Ive only gamed on 3.5 drives and they seemed fine. I thought SSD's were only for enthusiasts who just couldn't wait a few extra seconds or more importantly for data reliability.


That was so totally wrong. I noticed in games, there was massive stutter. Even simple visuals, like the Steam menu, sometimes would freeze. When switched to an SSD all the micro stutter and freezing was eliminated. So if its true that once its in the RAM it makes no difference then why was that happening? My theory is, when youre playing games and walk into a new area the app loads that area on the fly and its constantly loading new material as you walk through the game. Even when you turn around, if theres a box behind you it must load that box and its shadow.

So based on all this, the hard drive speed seems to matter very much in these situations. I learned the hard way, and eventually switched to an NVMe. Its also possible the stutter was caused by the GPU being at base clock, 1569 MHz. I actually didn't learn how to OC it using Precision XOC until after switching to an NVMe. But I still think it must've been the drive. A GTX 1080 TI at base clock should still be able to play most games maxed out at 1080p.


But huge thanks guys I now know what to do. Ill be adding just the 500GB SSD and returning the 250GB one. And will keep the current 500GB SSD as the boot drive. I live an hour away from my brother and wouldn't have the time to stay and fix it if I mess up his computer doing RAID for the first time. Ill do more research on it but in the meantime he'll just be getting the extra 500 gigs without RAID.