Additional SSDs to New Pc

Matt Goddard · 12 Feb 2023 at 16:54

Hi everyone... i hope you are all ok. I have just brought a PC, spec is i9 12th gen, 32GB DDR4 Ram, 2TB SSD (gen 3) and GeForce 4090 graphics card. The PC was at a good price, although i would have preferred DDR5 ram but I think the motherboard only supports DDR4. I was going to make one up or get a local retailer to do this but i picked this PC box up for the only a little more, and this box has a 4090 card whereas i was being quoted for a 4070 card. I do game on the pc but mainly i am doing heavy office work including CAD and photo editing etc. I am going to add some further SSDs and am wondering the best way to do this. I was thinking of adding a 1TB SSD (Gen 4) and them clone or move the OS onto this drive. I was then going to add a second Gen 4 SSD for storage and use the current one (Gen 3) in the pc as further storage. Presumably i can clone the drive (they may be different sizes?) and then change what will be the current C Drive to say E Drive with the new Gen 4 drive as drive C. I know i might need to make changes in the bios.... i have not even taken the PC out of the box yet and am wondering if i should unpack and complete the windows installation or install the drive immediately before doing this. i was also wondering whether to download win 11 and install the fresh os on the new SSD. Would this be best and would the win 11 key get seen when installing or would i need to manually add? Many thanks in advance for any help and advice. Matt

Tetras · 12 Feb 2023 at 17:08

It is hard to recommend anything without knowing anything about the PC, we could at least use the motherboard model, to know how many M.2 & SATA ports you have and the case model to know what you can fit.

The key partly depends on how the retailer did this and/or the OEM. If it was a standard pre-build from off-the-shelf components, then I should think you have the key somewhere (either on a card, or attached to the PC), but if it was an OEM build, then you may not and it should re-activate automatically if you do a clean install.

HangTime · 13 Feb 2023 at 00:12

Check how many NVME/M.2 ports you have, I'd be wary of adding small drives as these ports are typically quite scarce. i.e. instead of adding 2x 1TB drives I would add 1x 2TB. It's not like SATA where you've got loads of ports and don't need to worry much about having lots of drives.

Matt Goddard · 13 Feb 2023 at 10:44

HangTime said:
Check how many NVME/M.2 ports you have, I'd be wary of adding small drives as these ports are typically quite scarce. i.e. instead of adding 2x 1TB drives I would add 1x 2TB. It's not like SATA where you've got loads of ports and don't need to worry much about having lots of drives.

Sorry for the delay, i needed to find the specs i had previously seen! The spec is as follows:

Lian Li 215
Intel 12900KF
MSI MAG CORELIQUID 240R V2 - 306-7ZW1B41-813
MSI PRO Z690-A DDR4
4 x DDR4 8GB 3200MHZ FURY BEAST BLACK [KF432C16BB/8]
NVIDIA MSI RTX 4090 24GB GAMING X TRIO
MSI MPG 850W A850GF POWER SUPPLY - MPG A850GF_EU
KINGSTON NV1 M.2 NVME SSD 2TB SNVS/2000G
INTEL AX200 WITH PCI-E ADAPTER
Windows 11 Home

It has 4 x M.2 slots (all supporting PCIe 4.0).

I was going to add a 1TB for the OS (I could do 2Tb) and another 2TB for storage, so 5TB in total..... (like my alienware laptop)

Its still in its box....!