New ssd required

[ian369]

Hi, I have 2 Samsung 500GB 850 EVO SSD 2.5" drives in my pc one for the O/P system and one for games.
My games drive is full and I want to replace it or add another, I don't know which option would be the best or easiest for me.
My motherboard is an Asus Maximus V111 Hero Alpha.
Which drives will fit and be compatible for my system please. I was thinking of at least a 1tb drive.
Thanks.

 

[Grimley]

My basket at Overclockers UK:

• 1 x WD Blue SN550 1TB SSD NVME M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3 Solid State Drive (WDS100T2B0C)= £79.99

Total: £88.69 (includes shipping: £8.70)​

​

 

[Tetras]

There's an m.2 slot which can support sata or nvme m.2 drives (I believe it's PCI-E 3 @ 4x), or just add another SATA drive as that board apparently has 6.

PCI-E 3 drives with DRAM are the next step up from the sn550, e.g. 970 Evo Plus or SN750.

Beyond that there's PCI-E 4 drives, but they would be technically throttled in your board.

If you mainly play older games it doesn't really matter what you buy, even SATA is fine, but newer games are starting to take advantage of nvme drives and faster drives are pulling clear.

 

[ian369]

Thanks very much to the both of you It has given me an idea of what drives are suitable.
Would I be able to move the data from my existing drive over to the new one or just start again on the new drive.

 

[Snapshot]

If it's just data i.e. not the operating system, you should be able to move it easily with File Explorer. You will probably need to create a partition and format it first. It would probably be a good idea to change the drive letters around at the same time so your programs think they're looking in the same place.

 

[ian369]

Thank you Snapshot thats good news. Lovely pcp by the way.

 

[Tetras]

In most cases, there's not much advantage to moving OS, files, games or apps to a different, faster drive (assuming it is SSD to SSD), so I wouldn't bother if it's a lot of work for you.